BooksandTrees

I feel you with the desire for people to recognize your art. It's a reflection of our need to be recognized and loved by others, especially when we have a past issue loving ourselves. This journey to the outdoors for you could be your own path to recognizing and loving yourself more than before. I hope it helps. I find once we enjoy ourselves more we attract more people because they feel your warmth as a person.

Thank you for the kind post. I'm happy my words and journey have resonated with people on here. I really want to help others and be a beacon of hope. It makes me feel good to help others. I'm very fortunate to be in this community.

I think that was me talking about having a difficult time leaving bed unless I have priorities lol. Sometimes our energy changes and it's tough. We just gotta build new habits slowly so eventually we get up. That might be easier when if we start the day off with some rewarding activity maybe.

You are right and I really appreciate what you're saying. I think I'm slightly over thinking this whole thing. I know it's an oxymoron what I just wrote, but I think I'm reacting to the sadness and exhaustion I'm feeling. I've allowed myself to reminisce over moments in this apartment that I've shared with my roommates over the years. I was here for 3 years with the same roommates. I never really got over the fact that I had to leave and move on. I had some of my best video game memories here, best parties ever where I hosted over 70 people over 15 times, fun nights with friends just telling jokes, etc. Now it is empty. I never dealt with the pain and repercussions of both our friendships falling apart. I kind of just angrily wrote them off as I left. Now I have time to think and thinking has hurt. I'm deciding to just treat this like a relationship breakup. I had good times, but I had more bad times than good in the last half of the time together where I was treated unfairly and was upset most days and nights. I can look down the hall and remember seeing my roommate playing RuneScape and laughing out and smoking his vape pen. I walk around the corner and see my other roommate playing Overwatch and yelling at people online. It was just nice being around people who were enjoying themselves and I was honestly a huge player on both of those games to where I was excited to talk to both of them about it. Things took an angry turn when I quit games. Conversations stopped almost entirely after 4 months of quitting the first time back in April of 2018. We stopped talking entirely in May 2018 until November 2018. In November I found that letter from my other roommate's mom saying she'd help him find jobs so he can leave. I just felt like I wasn't either of their friends and it hurt my feelings. But I can't get upset over that. I get upset about it because I cherish friendships and relationships. Although I'm socially popular, personally I don't let people in. When I do it's a very deep connection I feel and it hurts. Ruminating thoughts are weights that hold us down when we have enough balloons to float somewhere better. Now that I've thought about this: I'm in a beautiful home without the risk of getting robbed or killed in my parking lot. Two people died where I lived in the 5 months I lived there. The commute now is 6 minutes each way instead of 45 minutes. I have 3,000 sq ft of space instead of 998 sq ft. I live on a lake with a deck I can relax on and a large yard instead of a parking lot with no outdoor space. I'm in a 15 minute radius drive of all of my close friends, yoga studio, rock climbing gym, my favorite restaurants, golf courses, tennis courts, outdoor trails, parks, etc. I love this area. I can finally breathe here and relax. I feel like I'm at home. I was angry because I had to move 3 times this year and that my friendships didn't work out. I'm moving in the right direction because of my will and hope, my belief, and my support from friends, family, and community here. Thank you and sorry for posting a lot recently. I've been rather volatile and desperate.

I'm painfully sad at the moment. I have no emotion really other than emptiness. I'm lonely beyond belief and that's why I relapsed with porn last night. It was terrible. I keep remembering the memories of the past 2 years as I walk the halls of my old apartment that I'm living in again. All gone. The move went well. I'm just sad about leaving again. It makes me so upset about how difficult life is. I have nothing left in the tank right now. I'm very empty. I wish for hope, love, and strength. I've used all of mine up this year. I feel so betrayed by friends and family. I feel betrayed by myself. I can't focus on work. I'm just fighting back tears and trying to be calm. I'm so embarrassed and lost. I'm such a loser. I feel like an ant.

I'm finally all moved in. I had a very stressful weekend and past few months. My issue now is my floor kind of vibrates here too with the heat. I don't remember it always doing this. It's not as bad as the place I just left. I think I might just be sensitive to it. It's making me think I've once again gone all in and moved for no reason. What's done is done though. My mom helped me out a lot today and I really enjoyed her company. It made me sad because I kind of wish I could always enjoy my time with her. Happiness always tends to bring me sadness in perspective. I'm here for 6 months and if I don't find a roommate I'll be gone again. I kind of just want to cry and have someone hold me for a night. I really want some affection and love. No kissing or anything. I just want a deep embrace and letting me know I'm ok. I have unfortunately watched porn again. Oh well. Tough year. I honestly don't think the floor here is vibrating. I've walked around a bunch all night. I think it's something in my head with the sounds of the fan I use. The other place I was in definitely shook. This one isn't shaking. I think it's a stress disorder I'm experiencing. I'm very upset from the past year. I honestly am excited to be back here, but I'm very sad. I just feel like i keep moving and now I'm in limbo again. I'm alone in another house. I miss having roommates. I'm so tired of not feeling confident in my residence and my life. It's this looming cloud of pure sadness knowing I'll never find happiness. I set my bedroom up the way it was before. It looks like I've never left. Like the year I just had never happened. But it did. My roommates both left now and I don't know what's going on. I've lost confidence in myself. It's hitting me extremely hard tonight. I'm absolutely miserable.

I think it's funny that I had a similar feeling that you have last night. I was thinking of how stressful this year has been and just wished I had someone understanding who could hug me for like 15 minutes lol. They need therapists who let you hug them for the last 10 minutes like how you meditate for the last 10 minutes of yoga.

Today has been interesting. I'm done packing. I took a shower to cleanse myself and just relax before tomorrow. I get sad about moving because I feel like I don't have a home and I'm just stressed. But my floor is shaking and my hallway smells terrible. There's ghetto people near my car and the people here aren't friendly. I know I'm making the right decision. Today was interesting because I didn't watch porn. I really wanted to want to watch porn, but I didn't want to watch it. I felt the emotional attachment to the urge to watch porn but I rejected it. It didn't even come across as appealing to me. Something has changed. Either that or I'm depressed again, but I'll bed hopeful and say I changed. I move in 12 hours. Sorry for the posts today. I posted often. Wish me luck.

Get well soon

It would be nice. I also found out from the landlord that he never told her about broken utilities in the house that occurred over the past 14 months so the washing machine and dish washer are broken lol. I'm just glad to be moving back. Hopefully these things get fixed. Thanks for the support.

Because I don't have peace inside of me. I have anguish.

Thanks. I agree. I just can't help but ruminate about it sometimes. Very frustrating. I feel like I now have to either find a new roommate or already think about moving to a new home and I haven't even moved yet. I've never had a home and just want a real home for once. I'm always on the move. It's been almost 20 years of moving.

I had kind of a frustrating morning. Nothing bad happened. I just kind of faced the fact that I have to pack up my things and move for the 3rd time this year. This angers me. I'm angry because of how stupid my journey has been. My 3rd roommate last year quit his job to play video games 18 hours a day and spent all of his money on rent. He moved out. I then found a letter from my 2nd roommate with his parents saying they'd help him find jobs in his home state so he could move out. This made me feel like I was going to be alone and needed to move on Thanksgiving of 2018 (4 weeks into quitting games). So I moved home with my mom to save up for a house. Little did I know she'd turn into a fucking cunt psychopathic piece of fucking shit and torture me for the entire 6 months of me living there to the point where I couldn't handle the stress from work and almost commit suicide as I quit my job and fell into a free fall. I managed to get a new apartment (2nd move) and get my job back. I spent months in therapy trying to heal and I never relapsed with gaming once. All of this and now I move again. I feel like I never made any hasty moves during this transition year. I made these moves for the right reasons. The reason I'm angry is that 2nd roommate is only moving out now. He said he was leaving at any month over the past 14 months. Yet, he was too afraid to quit his job and leave that he waited 14 months to leave. The other funny thing is he didn't even quit his job. He's just going to work from home! So I could have just lived in that original apartment for the 14 months and then made a move when I had an extra $5,000 saved from not moving and living with cheaper rent. He plays video games and watches anime 8 hours a day on weekdays and 16 hours a day on weekends, just like the 3rd roommate! What the fuck! This is what I mean by pathetic people who do not take action in life. They just hinder everyone around them. I'm a man of action and I'm tired of being around people who aren't. They fucking make me sick. Any time I think about this I just get so mad I want to smash everything around me and scream until I can't speak anymore. It's not just those two things. It's just everything I've been through. This is why I hate the gaming community. They're fucking larks who do nothing all day, but get in the way of other people trying to live. It's annoying. The worst cases of it are those fucking hikikomori's who are defined as people who don't leave their homes for a minimum of 6 months and just survive off of their parents or someone else. I'm sorry if these post makes you think I'm a hate monger. I'm really not. I'm just explaining that my dislike for these people has been a major fuel for me never relapsing with gaming. I want to be around people who live life and aren't a constant burden or disappointment to others. I've been around them my whole life and I used to be one. Not anymore. I'm exhausted. I know I don't have the most difficult life on this forum, but I don't care either. I'm allowed to be unhappy and want change. That's why we're alive. We make change for the better. I've made great strides this year to being excellent. I got my promotion, have better friends, have hobbies, and am almost 15 months without video games.

I hope your keyboard comes soon. That would be awesome. Good idea getting that humble bundle. I think dedicating some time to creative skills is really rewarding and takes lots of courage and determination.

Today I'm 59 weeks free from video games, 61 weeks free from social media, and 1 week free from porn. This was a long winded post, but not full of complaints. It's just stories. I woke up today feeling pretty sad because my dream last night was so interesting. I was just on these incredible, fake adventures with friends and then random people. The weirdest things happen in my dreams. I start on an island at night with abandoned buildings where I'm supposed to play hide and seek with others, but the people seeking you are hooded demonic figures who we have to also kill. Such an adventure trying to hide and destroy the others. From there it goes to a city around Christmas time where I'm on a mission to get a few objects with friends and take out my enemy. We roam around for hours and search this mall for a while. But there's lots of people around - it's not empty. It's just a relaxing scene, but we're all moving with purpose and doing something interesting I guess. It then goes to a fiesta type city on the coast that floods during the day because of rising sea levels from climate change. I spend several scenes walking around the city with a friend talking about the city, climate change, and then different activities we want to do. I watch a hockey game with friends and we go to a bar. The bar was this old wooden bar that was poorly lit along the brisk weather coast of new england. There's not many tables here and it's very uneven. It actually reminds me of the bar I go to with my friends near work, but instead of a street corner it's on the edge of a cliff in a city on the ocean. These attractive women are talking to me at the bar and I'm able to choose every word I want to say. I sat at a bar table with 2 friends and a few attractive women. I was trying to flirt with them. My dad showed up and I met his girlfriend. I helped them set up a table. I talked to one of my bosses who was there for some reason and was being nice to me. We left that bar to go to another bar for some reason. I get very angry going to another bar after being at one already. It's a pain in the ass to keep hopping around and you just drink the same drink. I think bar hopping is ideally for men and women to meet different men and women at other bars and for women to get free drinks from different guys. I hear from a lot of my friends and other women that they go to different clubs to find rich guys to give them free drinks and then they leave. That kind of leaves a sour taste in my mouth and unfortunately fuels my perception of being used and untrusting of women I meet at bars. I have to be weary of it, but realize not all women do this. Anyways, we walked around that city for a while, walking through buildings to take shortcuts through city blocks. I got pissed because we got separated and I had to find a place to park. For some reason my car turned into a giant truck and it was impossible to park with street parking. I got pissed and reset the dream. I went back to the first bar. The attractive women weren't there this time. It was just me, a random girl, and a girl from work. I tried going to the second bar with her and we still managed to get split up as we walked around the flooded city. I got annoyed and woke up. I had slept for 10 hours without waking up according to my FitBit sleep tracker. I always find it fascinating that I can change a dream completely without waking up. I've trained myself well. The only issue is I wake up exhausted and sometimes, like today, very depressed. I get annoyed because I want to have fun with friends and meet women. I also feel like my dreams are so much more exciting than my real life. It's painful to wake up sometimes. I dream in extreme detail every night and always have. I love it. I try to learn from my dreams. They explicitly show me what I'm missing in my life. Every dream has the same pattern that I described above with very different settings and missions. To boil them down to a few themes: I want to meet women and have sex. It's been 9 years without any sex and I've been hiding it through porn and video games. I also want to go on adventures with purpose. I don't want to just book a flight to California and roam around the countryside. I want to go on a mission in a group and be the leader and most trusted member of that group. I've been trying to live that dream through being a clan leader and team captain in every video game I play. I also want to be surrounded by friends. I used to have clan chats, voice chats, and discord servers where I was surrounded by anywhere from 5-100 friends at once and I was almost always the central figure. I think I've done a good job and being surrounded by friends. I see at least 2-3 friends each weekend and sometimes 1-15 after work during the week (rock climbing groups and board game groups). I have to give myself a reality check here because I'm actually being much more social than the average person. I've even shifted these get-togethers into more engaging activities like I mentioned before. I had previously mentioned I get tired of just having a drink at a bar and talking. I go rock climbing, play board games, creating a podcast, and creating an animated cartoon. These have majorly transitioned to spending time with people in an engaging and manner of intention. It makes me happy. The two things I'm missing now is dating and adventure. I think adventure will come from through building stronger friendships and eventually traveling with them to do fun stuff. The girlfriend will come when I'm ready. I unfortunately still have a porn based mindset towards new women I meet when trying to date. I think I'm still approaching dating where I'm scanning to see if I want to have sex with the woman based on looks alone. If I don't want to have sex with her I instantly friendzone her/acquaintance her without a question or getting to know her. That's unfair to her and unfair to me. Please Note: This does not impact my work life or friendly approach to women in social settings. This is only regarding dating outside of my work and social circles. I don't want people thinking I do this to every person I meet in any situation. This is only regarding dating with complete strangers. Thank you. Since I've been attempting to quit porn over the past two years I've been much more attracted to personalities. I've found that women who are naturally funny (not just quoting memes and recycling used jokes), don't dominate a conversation, provide real advice that I respect and think is useful and not blanket statements of hollow kindness, have hobbies and independence, aren't loud and obnoxious, respect me, and actually ask about my life with genuine intent are more appealing to me and make me happier. I feel much better about it. Thanks