BooksandTrees

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.

Does focusing on your posture seem to help? I never focus on mine and wonder if I should.

Perfect mindset.

Today was much better. I got all my tasks done at work, cleaned my apartment, meal prepped, and got rid of some stuff I don't really need anymore. I feel like I vindicated myself from yesterday.

Today sucked. I went to work and just had no interest at all. Extremely hard to focus. I left early and just did nothing for most of today. I did clean my house and throw out some stuff but I didn't read, barely played the drums and didn't draw or do puzzles. I just kind of lounged. I made a very nice dinner and cleared out some space in preparation for moving in with my girlfriend. I'm very, very excited for this. I'm very grateful. Tomorrow is a new day. I would like to just stay on task and find positive things to do if I can't focus.

It seems like you've been spiraling down a bit. I don't mean this in a malicious way, but even if you look back at the structure of your posts, they just become big blobs with no organization and a sense of panic. I think it's time to reset a bit and not let one bad decision spiral into another. If you get the bad sleep and feel bad the next day, try to do something that day to help you rather than say the day is gone anyways so I'll keep going with porn and games and YouTube. That's just gonna lead to a big avalanche. I tried doing the club life for a little after quitting video games because I thought I could socialize but it was similar habits of staying up late and escaping life. I don't think you enjoy these things. Try to look back at your journal and see what daily and weekly things really work for you. I think you thrive on structure more. When something goes bad try to do some exercise or yoga the next day when you can't sleep, or journaling etc. It seems boring but it will slow down your mind. If you notice in the posts on this website when you're not doing well you have no paragraph structure and it's one blob written very fast. This shows you need to slow down and be more in the moment during these times of panic. Meditation, yoga, exercise, stretching, journaling, or something like that can help. Even a bath or shower. You're doing fine, you haven't failed. You feel bad from poor sleep. Video games give dopamine. You feel drained after games, porn gives more dopamine than games. You're looking for the next big fix because dopamine won't be as strong the more tired you become. You're doing fine. Takes a pause and regroup.

I think these are great steps. It's nice that you wrote your own draft article simultaneously with doing collaboration with others. I think it helps you identify your working style and what you like or dislike in team members. Good learning experience for your future work. I'd say keep setting up dates but not make them formulaic on dates per month but rather formulaic on emotions and life feeling week to week. Sometimes things vary so instantaneously and change fast.

That's a great quote. I just think humans are more relatable than we think and it's so important to have a sense of community for so many reasons.

Welcome to the forums!

Good job! Just be patient, be yourself, and put your morals and goals for yourself and children first and you'll meet the right guy who lines up with those ideals.

Thanks! Yeah, I find that many of us share the same core qualities as humans so I've always tried to be extremely transparent in my findings and thoughts regarding recovery and stuff. Figure it might help me relate to others and vice versa. Merry Christmas and glad you're here!

I've been very drained this week. Work has been boring and I've been less involved. Most people are on vacation and I finished my work. I'm looking forward to the 3 day weekend and just resetting. I've been doing a lot of bad habits and being lazy. I just need some time to relax and get away from this environment. I've been binging junk food, sleeping poorly, etc. It's because I'm so bored during the day and have no drive that after the day ends I don't feel like being productive after 9 hours of non productive time. I think I need a new strategy for breaking up the day when that happens. Instead of trying to push through the boredom maybe I just break it into sections.

My biggest take away is the mental freedom from the pull of gaming. Not feeling like I need to play. I can enjoy the moment now and relax.

I read my book today and had a good therapy session. I'm gonna commit to my better diet tomorrow. I've just been consuming food a lot from stress and I'm going to direct that stress into something positive like exercise.

Sounds like you did some meal prepping! Great job.