BooksandTrees

I did a lot of animation work this weekend. It felt great. Nothing to show yet but I've been making progress. Almost fully moved in with my girlfriend. She's been wonderful and I'm extremely grateful and fortunate to have her in my life. Work is picking up. It was slow last week. I'm dressing better for work even though I work from home.

Congratulations on this incredible step! I'm so happy for you. You've gained emotional and relationship independence, lifestyle independence with quitting video games and now health independence with surviving cancer. Great job!

Happy birthday! Keep going.

Really happy to see your early progress. Keep it up and remember to enjoy the moment.

You've got this.

It's not a lack of talent. Studying is tougher than video games and more exciting. I forced myself to study 300 hours for my exam last October and passed. I failed twice before it. You gotta put in the time to gain experience. I think you need to create a structure to be proficient at studying. You were good at overwatch because you understood the purpose of the game, the strengths and weaknesses of characters, and how to work as a team under a time constraint. If you can do the same thing with your study materials you'll pass. It's topics requiring problem solving under a time constraint. Get creative.

Don't relapse. Remember the pain you've felt from relapse. This takes a long time and although you feel terrible it's still an instantaneous situation in your life and if you can get past these few hours without gaming you'll be ok. Change your mental environment and think about something else by being in an interactive and responsible situation. You're trying to associate being bad at new things with shame and being pathetic and that means you're hiding from something in your past. There's a reason you're elite at overwatch. Research this.

Thanks for sharing your story and reading my journal! I tried to be as open as possible during my journey so far. I hope it helps you. I wrote a longer piece in celebrations called 500 days without gaming that might help you. It was a detailed approach at how I quit. I'm almost 3 years now. I relapsed either on page 2 or 3 of this diary in fall of 2018 but that is it. I used to count the weeks but stopped age 2 or 3 years because I felt like I have a new life that doesn't need counting. I also think that if you relapse and have a ton of time added up and you put too much emphasis on the amount of time, then if you relapse you'll feel you can never get back to that level again when in reality if you relapse for one day out of 30 you're not actually a failure, you stopped for 29 out of 30 days. These are all from learning experience and seeing others on the forum completely give up and never return after quitting for months or years and then relapsed. I think you're setting yourself up for a battle with shame and regret if you do that. A large portion of this journey is self forgiveness and self acceptance. Be your friend. Help yourself. I'm not online as much as I used to be because over the years I've built a friend network, therapy, and have a relationship now. It's all from the progress I've made in this journal. Good luck and be patient.

Finished the week on a strong note at work. I'm doing a trial move in with my girlfriend the next few weeks which is exciting. I also plan on rigging my cartoon characters this weekend. Or maybe just one. That's my only real hobby goal. The rest will be relaxing, errands, and meal prep.

Background art then loops for stuff like birds flying

Did a lot of drawing this weekend and finished all of my characters. Very exciting.

Happy new year to everyone! Let's be kind to ourselves and stay hopeful. Create our own destiny.

Thank you!

I live in a countryside now. I grew up in the country and then went to the city for college and disliked it after a while. Less stress out here.

You're trending in the right direction. Great job.