BooksandTrees

7/26/2018 - Finding Control in Real Life Through Understanding I spoke with my therapist the other day about being sick of doing things I don't want to do and having an issue saying "No" to people. An example of this is I keep getting invited to generic cookouts where everyone asks the same things each time. "How's your summer going?" "What have you been up to?" "What are you doing now?" I'll also get invited to one-off events with people I might see between one and five times a year. This really pisses me off for a few reasons and I hadn't been able to isolate my reasoning for anger until now. There's a few themes coming together in this story and they are all things that bother me: I keep getting asked to attend things I don't care about. The people who ask me to attend are people I see between one and five times per year. All of the generic questions I get asked are questions regarding my activities and my time spent between the last time I've seen these friends. I have trouble saying "No" because I am lonely and want to see these friends. I'm left with an empty, sad, and eventually angry feeling of loneliness. It took me years to put together why these themes bother me so much, but if you just read them in this list format, you'll see it clear as day, and I'll be able to relate this with why video games are so appealing in the end. Understanding Me I'm angry because I'm lonely and want better friends. I don't have any friends who share the same interests as me and want to hang out with me often. I used to have a best friend who would always build, draw, watch anime, play video games, go on adventures, or just talk to. This person understood me completely and I miss having a deep connection like that with somebody. I'm also angry because I don't really do any activities I want. I ask friends if they want to go to concerts, hang out at a bar, work on hobbies, call them to talk, etc. and rarely any ever come. People are constantly doing things with their significant other or are busy with their own commitments. This makes me sad and I just sit around all day because sometimes, even though I'm a confident person most of the time, I lack the desire to do something by myself because it makes me sad to be lonely. I want to share my experiences with people when I do an activity. It depresses me and freezes me in place because I get very tired from work during the week that I can really only pursue hobbies on a weekend. Now that I don't play video games, I really want to pursue my passion for writing fantasy and comedy stories. I want to buckle down with a fresh mind and just explore my extremely active imagination. Understanding The Process I keep getting invited to attend a cookout, a birthday party, or some stupid event with a friend every weekend of the year with different people. There are so many people asking me to attend these events, that I have to balance the friends. I choose to equally see these people to keep everyone happy. By doing this, I am not developing deeper friendships with anyone specific, which leaves most of these encounters to be generic hangouts with the questions I quoted above. I attend these events because I am lonely. I want friends and to be around people. When I see people an equal amount of times to be fair to them, I'm not actually being fair to myself. Every weekend is just a repeat process of the same questions followed by "we should do this again sometime". Haven't we all heard this before? Most ironic statement of modern mankind. Seeing all of these people each weekend is doing a few bad things to me. The first is that I'm not doing many or any activities that I'm interested in doing. I'm seeing these people because I'm lonely and "it's good to get out and see people". So I see people each weekend to feel wanted and liked by others, but really it's just a placeholder or social masturbation. The second is that I'm not doing activities I want to do. I've found out that I'm worn out mentally during the week because of work. I go to the gym or yoga, eat food, and have 1-2 hours before bed where I usually watch TV, read, or zone out before bed. My weekends are all I have to write, create, explore life, and be myself. I'm holding that all hostage when I'm seeing these people and doing things I just don't really give a shit about. This is starting to destroy my soul. The third is that I'm not seeing certain friends more than others. This limits me from becoming closer with certain people and developing a deeper friendship that eventually makes that friend feel like family to me. I feel empty after seeing these friends because I didn't make our friendship deeper, I didn't do an activity I cared about, and I wasted my weekend and have to go back to work wishing I wrote a chapter of the book I'm writing. Understanding The Effect Anger. Emptiness. Jealousy. Pure unhappiness. Worst of all is regret. I end up regretting the whole weekend. I regret seeing these friends and doing activities I don't care about. It makes me feel like a sellout. I sold out my desires and dreams of writing in order to go to some stupid folk festival with people because "I should go out more and haven't seen people enough". Years of this compounding on itself has made me sick. I thought about life and death. If I died, would I actually feel like I lived a good life for myself? No. I spent almost two decades playing games for 2-16 hours a day, made no close friends, and didn't pursue my passions. That sucks. Understanding The Outcome I'm more determined than ever now to fix this process and fix my life. I have a great job right now and my life isn't terrible, but my soul is aching in ways I've never felt before. I have so many ideas for things to write, make videos, make animations, take pictures, travel, cook creative things, etc. Most of all, I want to connect with others and build a small community for myself to feel rooted. I don't want to feel lost anymore. I want passions and I want to share these passions with people. I want to talk to people and not have them ask me how I've been doing or what I've been up to. I want them to tell me how their projects are going, tell me jokes, and just shoot the shit naturally. I want live action friendship, not reminiscent friendships. You shouldn't have to reflect on the past with friends you've just met in the past two years. You should be living life with them and dominating life for the purpose of passion, adventure, and love for life. I want that conquest and I will make it happen and I will. Now that I am no longer playing video games and no longer saying yes out of loneliness, I will make time for myself to work on my hobbies and find my passions. Through this dedication I will find the friends that mean the most to me and build real friendships instead of acquaintances. Most importantly, I'll find myself and love myself. Something that I've wanted for my whole life. Understanding Why It's Related to Video Games I told you I'd bring it all back. Here's how: Video games, whether they're online or alone, offer you the ability to have full control. For me, online gaming allowed me to pursue my virtual interests with people interested in the same thing. It made our friendships seem live action and in the present. We'd tell jokes, always want to see each other, and always hang out online. It's very comforting and made me feel right. These games, online or not, allowed me to explore and live a life I wanted. I could achieve my goals and spend time doing it instead of spending time doing things I don't want to do. Unfortunately, this is superficial. You'll rarely meet these friends in real life. When you do, they're not always the way you had imagined because these friends you made online are created in your head. Their personalities online are theirs, but your vision of them, mentally, is your vision. It's different when you meet in person. It's not the same and it feels fake. Living your life in an online community is hollow. The game might die out and fade. You lose interest. When those friends you made play MMORPGs they don't switch games. Try getting a WoW, RuneScape, LoL, or Fortnite player to play something else. Good luck. You realize they only spend time with you because that game is their life. Games should not be your life. Understanding The Remedy The remedy is to understand all of this and put together a solution. The solution is to keep pursuing interests that make you happy. Make life happy. For those of you who are unhappy, if you are patient enough, put in the effort, and are a kind person to yourself and others who deserve kindness, then you will prevail. Make that effort to make yourself happy and I swear people will gravitate towards you. Your energy and warmth for your passions is like the sun. People gravitate towards heat and spread away from the cold. You'll attract friends and you'll learn to love yourself. Once you love yourself, you won't keep thinking about regret of playing games. You won't think about regret of having no real friends. You'll be thinking about tomorrow when you wake up in the morning and get the chance to do what you love and be with the people you love. Thank you for reading. Matt

Thanks Phoenix. I agree. I'm just dedicating life to finding the right happiness and trying to remain patient.

7/22/2018 - Expectations on Hobbies, Lifestyle, and Happiness Today I struggle with high expectations on myself to use my time "correctly". It's a weekend and I'd love absolutely nothing more than to play video games for 12 hours today with my online friends and try to achieve goals with them in game to make me happy. I just can't. I can't do this because it hurts me in the long run. I can't do that because it hurts my soul. My dream is to find hobbies and a lifestyle that make me excited for now and the future. My only issue is how much every new hobby is a ton of work. After spending hours each day for 14 years playing games you could say I'm an expert at gaming. Think about it for a moment: When you see a job post somewhere and it says "Looking for Manager with 10-15 years experience". That's a crazy thought. I'm not even 30 and I have almost two decades of gaming experience where I would put in anywhere from 10 - 84 hours a week depending on what part of life I was at regarding free time. I'm used to being excellent at stuff and I've carved out a lifestyle with expectations, goals, the ability to get knowledge and work hard to make my talent beneficial to me and my online friends. I've made the decision to remove that from my life and it's a very hefty void. I really miss my online friends. I did the gaming for online activities for the most part. It's not that I don't have any friends in real life - I do. It's just that I don't get the same enjoyment sometimes because I'm not necessarily interested in the activities they want to do. I miss seeing close friends, while participating in an activity I so thoroughly enjoy. That's ok. I have to keep reminding myself to say it's ok to feel this way. I used to yell at myself, internally, for not being the best at a game. If I died in Halo or let in a goal in NHL i'd scrutinize the moment over and over again until I learned how to never have it happen again. Perfectionism. Now I try to find new hobbies to not just pass time, but enjoy my time. Enjoying my time does not include internally lamenting myself for not doing something correctly. Enjoying my time means I'm making progress in an activity or multiple activities that I'll soon find out if I actually enjoy. I've been learning how to write, draw, paint, build with my hands, read better books, watch tv shows, exercise, and more. It's a lot. I'm used to being so good at my video games because that's all I really did. When you dedicate thousands of hours into one activity of course you're going to be stellar at it. This means that during the first few months of trying new hobbies, it's ok to be bad or average at them. You're opening up new pathways in your brain to think differently than you have in years. I'm writing this entry because I was sitting at my desk very angry that I have a few spare hours and could be leveling up a character or winning a game. I chose that I did not want to do that anymore. Now I feel like I should either write, read, or something else. I'm not used to *wanting* to do this. It's like when you go to the gym and feel like it's a chore, but once you're there you actually enjoy how it makes you feel. I'm telling myself and I'm telling anyone who reads this to give themselves a break. It takes commitment, thought, and effort to get so good at something that you're able to take that hobby to the next level where your previous standard of gaming once was. I'm not a great writer, yet, but I will be if I decide that I like it after giving myself the chance to write. I've learned that I don't like doing woodworking projects after working on a few various projects. I thought I'd be super interested and I wasn't. I'm glad I gave myself the chance to learn. Activities I do enjoy are talking about hockey, writing, sports, performing comedy and making people laugh, yoga, the gym, cooking, helping others, watching anime/cartoons/shows/movies, and reading certain books without filler and have good pace. If you have any questions about activities you might want to try or how to deal with anxiety, feel free to post here and we can figure stuff out. Matt

7/21/2018 - Bedtime Anxiety I noticed that I'll start to get tired at night and get a little anxious. One of the hallmarks to gaming has always been staying up late at night with your friends. It feels unnatural to fall asleep at like 10 PM when you used to stay up until 5 AM. I was watching TV until about 9PM tonight and got very tired, but it almost seemed like a waste to fall asleep that early. I thought to myself "I should be doing something like a hobby or activity to keep me going. I have so many more hours to be productive." That's an interesting concept to think about. Through the years of gaming I've almost made it a routine to continuously stretch my mental capacity to be productive in the late hours of the night and into the early hours of day. That's not healthy. As I think about this concept, I start to remember the foggy brain feeling I'd get during the day when I wasn't gaming. The poor memory, the laziness, the lack of energy. I think this is related. Gamers often stretch and push their limits to gaming. it should be natural to fall asleep at a certain time and understand when your mind, body, and spirit are tired. I mention spirit because there are some days where you know you're healthy and mentally there, but your heart just isn't and you feel sad or spiritually drained. Yoga has really helped me with that issue. But back to the main topic of limitations and exhaustion. This isn't the case for all gamers, but I feel most gamers have this issue with anxiety at night where they are constantly thinking about the future, things they didn't do in real life, things they regret, things they need to do in the game, etc. I used to think that if I went to bed I wouldn't level up my character fast enough. That's not good. This should be a welcomed time to pause, reflect, cancel the mental noise, and just go to bed and heal. If you play up until you sleep, your mind is still processing thoughts from the game, in-game social interactions, and pretty much just keeping your mind stimulated. You might fall asleep, but it's not the same quality sleep you'd have if you were completely offline for a few weeks and could finally just clear your mind and be at peace. This is something that I've been learning to adjust to at night. That quiet. Gaming removes all the quiet from your life if you're really into online gaming. It's different now. I hear nothing and see nothing except for what I did that day and who I am right now. It makes me tired. I'm not really used to being this tired at night. I don't have time to constantly think about things and plan my routine while in bed. I kind of just fall asleep. I think that's how it is supposed to be. This isn't my most well written post because I am very tired, but I just wanted to get this thought on here because I had an hour before bed and just wanted to play a game or something to be efficient with time. Then I realized that's not a good idea. It's time to let my body recharge so tomorrow can be a great day. Matt

Hi Everyone, I'm here to write about my thoughts, struggles, achievements, and any major things. I don't think this will be a daily updated piece, but I do think I'll take the time to investigate my thoughts when events happen. I'll be titling the entries by thoughts so if you have a specific thing you're struggling with then maybe I wrote about it. My story is located here: My Gaming Addiction Story

Hey Sin, I think we have pretty similar stories. I really agreed with what you said about the recognition of gaming addiction. You're a normal human with a good life, friends, a career, and a family. But yes, it's shocking that you're in this predicament. You have an issue with gaming and other people might not have one at all or just fail to recognize it. I think it's amazing how much backlash we get with other gamers who disagree with how we feel. That ignorance is not going to make them friends for long, but there will be people who support you. I also wanted to say that although you are 31, you still have the chance to do other things. Gamers are great at planning, multi tasking, and achieving their goals. I think with training your mind to think like that with real life achievements, career goals, and life goals, you can become as dominant in life as you were as a gamer, but be able to enjoy the rewards on such a more tangible level.

Hey Sin, Thanks for the kind words. It's such a hard transition in life to get through everything. I'll check out your story tomorrow when I get a chance to read it. I've been a lot happier and I can't stress how important exercise is for your mental health. If I play a game again I'll get very depressed and feel so off for days. Exercise really makes me feel more grounded, relaxed, and free of anxiety. I think with games I just feel lost and I start to beat myself up for playing them again after putting in the hard work of not playing. The gym kind of takes away that guilt and frustration as well as making me feel better in the three big areas: socially, mentally, and physically. You got this.

Great story and welcome! I think you've got a great chance in front of you to find the path of recovery and spiritual peacefulness. I look forward to seeing your journey.

Cam, I totally needed that video. I came out and told my friends I was struggling with my gaming a few weeks back and most of them got offended and tried coming up with reasons that I was having issues other than gaming. It's crazy. I did have a good amount who supported me, though. It was very nice to hear support after I put myself out there like that.

When I have negative energy I do a few things. I note down what is causing the negative energy and discuss it with my therapist. I try to understand what might be the root of my frustration. I go to the gym or do yoga because the quick transitions help me forget about what is on my mind and I can release that way. I also grab a few friends and turn my complaints into a pseudo-standup comedy routine. I just try to make light of a situation through aggressive comedy to put myself in a better mood. I will go for a drive and turn the music up loud and sing very loud with it, while slamming my head around to go nuts.

Hi Cam, Thank you and thank you for the article. I agree. I feel that even if I play a game for an instance then my mind feels warped and I'm just "lost" again. It's almost as if I have to rediscover how to be happy through actual physical, spiritual, and mental rewards. The life I want to live is having my personality shine through my own life. I want to make funny videos, cartoons, explore towns, do interesting things, and be part of a real life community that is healthy. It will take time, but I know I can do it. I am glad you created this community since I know there will be days I need help and days where I know I can help others.

Hi Everyone, I'm here today because I'm addicted to video games. I'm here today because I want to be a part of a community who understands my struggle with gaming and won't try to convince me that I need moderation or need to be less hard on myself. I recently opened up to my friends about gaming and its effect on my life and received mixed feedback. Some supported me 100%, while others were almost offended that I'd even mix gaming with addiction, life issues, and sickness. It's something people dedicate their lives to and not everyone can do that. I'm one of them. My story begins as an 8 year old and the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 1 had just come out. Everyone was getting them and oh man, I needed both. I'd beg my parents. I didn't even understand the concept of what gaming was. All I used to do was play hockey and build legos. Christmas came along and I got the Nintendo 64. A few years later I got the PS1. I found myself playing the EA NHL games all night long. They were soothing. I could escape any troubles at home and play all the time. I got so good at NHL 99 and NHL 01 that I'd be scoring almost 100 goals a game and never lost to anyone. I then got an Xbox and started playing Halo, Halo 2, and the NHL 2k games. I wasn't addicted, though. I could do other things. The issue was when I got online games. In April of 2004 I started playing RuneScape. My friends got me into it during science class and we all played. I fell in love with the game instantly. I loved being able to control someone and level them up. I loved that I could work on skills that weren't related to fighting. I could just spend my afternoons mining with people I'd meet online and become friends with them. The draw to this game for me was that I could have friends. I had friends in school, but I wasn't really allowed to bring anyone over my house. I had issues with my dad and I didn't want to bring anyone over. I was so depressed and I lost a lot of friends because I never was able to visit them or bring anyone over my house. RuneScape allowed me to make friends whenever I wanted and see them all day and night. The issue with RuneScape was how rewarding it was. Over the next 6 years I would become extremely high leveled in the game, become the owner of a clan of over 200 people, lead clan wars, and other events. I was looked up to as a leader, a friend, and someone who could help others. I loved that kids my age would tell me their problems with their parents, school, family, or drug issues they were facing and trust me with it. They could confide in me and I could help them. I remember we'd be mining in the mining guild and we'd be tutoring a few clan members in calculus and history. Kids from France would help me on my French homework. We had one thing in common and that was we needed each other. We were lonely, hurting, and struggling with different issues, but all respected one another. My grades dropped big time. I am a very smart person. I don't mean to say this in a pompous light, but I have a photographic memory and love to learn. I was one of the top students in my school without having any study habits. When I play RuneScape or other online games, it prohibits me from being able to reach that top level of knowledge in my brain. I actually can't sustain a photographic memory or care enough to try and do something. I felt like any major concept wasn't worth putting mental effort into because it wasn't as rewarding as RuneScape. This was when my natural rewards system became tarnished by gaming. I no longer saw satisfaction in life. I only felt committed to the game and just wasn't absorbing anything in real life. in 2010 I received a letter from my university that said I was on academic probation. I managed to receive a 1.1 GPA after my first year of college. This happened because I played RuneScape for 12 hours a day. I had a fake girlfriend on the game who was catfishing me, a clan of over 200 people, and I wanted to max my stats. I crashed real hard. I beat myself up and got uncontrollably depressed. I dumped the catfish and got rid of my membership to the game. I took a week off from everything and just felt terrible. My dad made me get my first job ever after that week. He said being a part of society, having responsibility, and interacting with others would make me a better person. He was right. I became a cashier and made some incredible friends. I was so angry at first, but I made it my goal to speak to every customer in line and try to make their day better. I wanted to know about them, tell them a new joke every time, and listen to their life issues. I was the only male cashier and was the best cashier for 2 years there. This didn't end my gaming issues. I started playing RuneScape again and it crushed my grades again. During my first semester back I dropped 3 out of 5 classes because I was failing. I felt like such an asshole. I quit RuneScape immediately and just felt lost. I got my grades back together and managed to get a B- and a C in the two classes I was still registered in. I started playing Halo 3 online. This was a bad idea. I got xbox live membership and would spend hours playing team slayer. I then got hooked into Minecraft. The second semester finished and the same thing happened. I dropped my major, dropped 3 more classes and only passed 2 classes again. I had officially spent 2 years in college and passed maybe 7 classes. I decided to quit gaming and just watched anime all summer that year. I went through a major hardship with my father and decided I'd never speak to him again. I moved out of the house and played no games at all, but I also did not replace them with anything healthy or make new friends. I just sat and did nothing, but watch TV. My junior year started and I picked up Halo Reach. I couldn't put it down. I became one of the best Grifball players in the world and would get killionaires each game, unfriggenbelievables (40 kills without dying) and just had a blast. I then switched to Swat and played it all day. I started dropping out of classes again. This time I was able to pass just 3 classes. Spring semester I picked up NHL 12 and this was the end of things. I started a team on there and learned how to play goalie. I only passed 2 classes that spring as I became one of the best goalies in the world. I was utterly dominant. Fall semester came and NHL 13 came out. That year I continued to only take 2 classes a semester, while living on campus. I became the best goalie in the world. I was and still am on youtube and the hockey community remembers me still. I shutout every good team, lead the WORLD in shutouts, games played in 6 v 6, goals against average, save %, and most importantly, time played. I took a leap of faith and asked my mom if she'd let me stay in an apartment. I thought if I could have more responsibility I wouldn't game as much and I could just do school work. It worked. I stopped all my video games and after a couple months I actually managed a 4.0 GPA for 2 straight years to get my cumulative GPA to above a 3.0 so I'd get accepted into the Master's Program. I got a job and created a new life for myself after failing for a decade. I'm here today because I started gaming again. On and off for the past 3 years I've been gaming, while doing my Master's degree and working full time. I've been doing great at work and graduated with a 3.9 GPA for my Master's degree, but I was still gaming. I'd game on the weekends only because I didn't want to ruin my work week. Work means the world to me and I didn't want to ruin it. I mostly played NHL or Halo on the weekends. This was fine until Overwatch came out. Holy shit. I couldn't put the game down. It was too addicting. I needed to be great at all of the characters and every map. It was like Halo and League of Legends put into one game with the competition I loved in NHL. Oh man it was bad. I'd play each night for 6 hours and was a zombie at work. I only cared about the game. After a year of this I got so angry at Overwatch because the community is full of assholes. They are bad at the game, toxic to you and your teammates, and just ruin your day. I'd find myself yelling at the computer for hours and I wasn't happy anymore. This made me wish I could just relax on a video game. This made me think back to the one game that was always peaceful to me: RuneScape. So I started again, from scratch on the Old School servers. I was 13 again. I loved every second of it. The unfortunate side effect was that I wasn't able to learn very well anymore. I'd need to stop playing for weeks at a time if I had an exam coming because I knew it would hurt my learning. But it also kind of made me not learn very well at work. Any success I had was based off of prior knowledge I'd learned while not gaming. I realized I needed to quit this past December. I had a clan of 50 people again, a full discord channel, and was only playing the game. I also started playing Overwatch again in January. Both of those games combined really burned me out. I started to get sick. I'd get these depression headaches where I didn't feel pain, but I felt sensations in my head that wouldn't go away. I'd almost want to hit myself in the head to make them stop, but they wouldn't. I'd stop playing games at 6 AM and just lay in bed suffering. I hadn't eaten a regular meal in half a day or more, barely any water, no movement, nothing. I'd sit there in bed for hours with anxiety and my body just screaming for nutrients, sleep, and some sort of normalcy. I'd cry myself to sleep because of the mental anguish I was going through. I knew this was a big issue and I needed to end it immediately. In May I quit both games and decided to dedicate my life to living in the real world. After 2 weeks of being free from gaming I had my mind back. I had clarity. I don't know if you guys feel this, but that mental fog effect from gaming that prohibits you from taking that next step to learning, thought processes, and intellect was gone. I started to excel at work to a point I'd never done before. I was dominating everything, except outside of work. I was trying new hobbies, but I started to feel like if I wasn't doing something amazing each night then I was a failure. So I started to be afraid of starting new hobbies or just relaxing. I'd yell at myself for just watching TV or reading. I needed to do something great. This past week I went through a really stressful event and got very upset. I got so upset that I signed up for RuneScape again and just started playing. What a mistake that was. I played for only 2 days (2 hours each day) and the mental fog was back. I couldn't think again. My mind was so clouded with doubt, anxiety, the inability to think at a high level anymore. It was all gone. I got very depressed. I asked my mom the last time I felt this way and she said the first week of May. It was a sign. I had been talking to my therapist about this for a year or so and he said he believes I am addicted to gaming. My happiness production was solely based on gaming. I would just lose my ability to be happy about anything or want to learn. I quit the game again and signed up on this website. I think I have the self control to stay away from games, but I really wanted to be a part of this game quitters community because I really need help sometimes. My roommates still play games. They never prompt me to play or rub it in my face, they are really nice about it. I just get jealous that they can play games without issues that I know of. I just know that gaming is not right for me, and the only way I've been happy and not depressed in the past 15 years is when I'm not gaming and just living life. Thank you for reading, Matt