BooksandTrees

I've found most people with these committed lists never stick to it because it makes "living" feel like work. Maybe there's a new way for you to just enjoy your days and being more in the moment? Instead of holding yourself to these schedules you can be more present. Say it's 4 PM you can say ok, I'm kind of hungry, let's meal prep. Or it's 7 PM, I kind of want to do a new hobby. This also lets you relax. I think when you have too many things to monitor and plan you just look for the first chance to take a break. It starts with only having time to breathe around bed time, but then you stay up late because you finally have time to relax. We can't be productive all day. I think quitting games makes people think they need to be productive all day long. I've been successful for 2 years because I just sit there and do nothing for certain periods of the day and relax my brain. It can be annoying sometimes, but overall I feel less stressed and have no triggers to relapse.

Good luck with the interviews. I'm also relieved about the student loan forgiveness at the moment. I'm trying to take advantage of the zero interest since I've been fortunate enough to be working, but even if they did forgive $10k in loans I'd be very grateful.

I think it's important to realize that whole process of queueing and introducing new actions when you have those triggers to go on the phone. Work stress = something else instead of phone. Something like that overall.

Today I'm 117 weeks free from gaming. I've gotten into a bad habit the past few months where I just sleep as much as possible on Saturdays. I go to bed early, wake up late, lounge on the couch, and take a nap later. I can't tell what to think of this trend. On one hand I want to get angry at myself for not being productive today, but on the other hand I'm excited that I could finally rest after a long week. The past few weeks have been so busy for me and I just look forward to this rest. I think as the days have been darker I've trended into the direction of sleeping more and resting. Also, the past year has been so busy for me at work. So it makes sense that a simple 2 week vacation wouldn't fully recharge me in December. It's more of a sine wave function where I think I just have more energy from April to September and less from October to March and it just has certain amplitudes. All animals go through this and many animals hibernate in this time of year. I've decided not to be too upset. I still meal prepped 8 meals today, did laundry, had a video call with my mom, then had a virtual board game night and fun session with friends. So it's not like today was a failure or anything. I guess I still wish I could have spent maybe an hour studying, playing the drums, exercising, or doing some form of art or writing. I've had a very long series of discussions with my therapist about doing more things in moderation such as doing a hobby for 1 hour and switching to something else. I get stuck in a mindset of "do I want to do art for 8 hours? No? Then I'll just sleep and do nothing all day." That's really crushing me I think. As former gamers I think we struggle with doing anything for less than 1-2 hours and justifying its usefulness in our lives. We've binged games for 6-24+ hour periods of time on average for years and decades. It's so difficult to say "I had a lot of fun doing something for 30 minutes and then did something else" I find it funny how I'm over 2 years into quitting full time and I still struggle with time management. I hope if anyone is reading this that they can maybe find some comfort that I didn't just solve everything at once and find the magic potion to quitting games. I just deal with urges and persist on. Most days aren't a struggle anymore. I'm going to set reminders on my phone, like an alarm clock, where I just keep reminding myself that I can do an activity for a little bit or something. I also found something interesting: I've been making memes of my coworkers and posting them on our company website as a joke. They're not offensive memes or anything and are management approved. They're meant to boost morale in the office since we're working from home. I've learned more in Photoshop during the past 2 weeks of making memes than I did in downloading that huge class on Udemy because I actually have a desire to make something. If I want to do something that I can't do yet, I look up a tutorial online and remember it after. I'm going to start doing this for drums and animation. I'm just going to try and learn a song on the drums instead of learning everything perfectly for years. I want more fun and I'm smart enough to be efficient. In response to @Amphibian220, no I haven't even been doing anything active. I think being active would give me more energy in the mornings but I haven't been disciplined or even considered doing it more than 1 day per week. I'll try to address this soon with some yoga. And I apologize to people for not really being as active on the forums. I've just been doing a lot of thinking the past few weeks. Not about gaming or anything. I've just been thinking about how certain aspects of life make me feel and how to understand them. I consider this a form of spiritual thinking or active meditation with relationships to humans and activities. I've been studying how certain actions make me feel both good and bad. I've been learning a lot about myself and I think it will culminate into something that really binds energy and regulation into my life.

I use blender also for animations. It's great.

The world is a better place today.

My stomach is bothering me a lot tonight. I ate like shit all weekend with pizza, ice cream, and not healthy Chinese food. I know there is healthy Chinese food, but the kind I ate was not healthy. Not doing a race thing here, please calm down. I ate vegetables, healthy grains, low fat food, and lean meats today and my body is just dying. It's strange because I used to eat this all last year when I lost 30 lbs. I've been eating a lot of junk food the past few weeks due to stress. I ate a whole buffalo chicken pizza Saturday and Sunday and then a whole pint of ice cream after. I didn't go to the bathroom for a whole day after that. I think it's just a reaction from the poor diet the past few days. Work has been very stressful and I have to start studying again soon. I also don't really look forward to doing anything after work. I left work early today because I started early and I just sat there for a while. THere was nothing I wanted to do. I didn't want to do anything creative. I ended up texting friends and family and felt better after. I think I just needed to cool off. But right now I am just annoyed because my mid section keeps having hot flashes of cold and then burning hot. It's like acid reflux is back or something. IDK. I've also felt little motivation to post on this website the past few weeks. I'm sorry for not posting more or in people's journals. I just feel a little run down of late. I'll try to rest more and treat myself healthier and see what happens. Therapy tonight fortunately.

Today I'm 116 weeks free from gaming and 118 weeks free from social media. Well, technically yesterday, but I was busy yesterday lol. I've been working a lot on a difficult project at work that stressed me out but I've been making sure to charge overtime and dealing with it. I get annoyed with a few things going on but I'm just going to roll with it. Life is too short to beat myself up over worrying about little things out of my control. I was thrown into a dumb situation and I'm just gonna move on. I don't like poor communication. I don't like how things go from positive and negative so fast. I keep getting mixed signals from whether I've done good or bad and I strongly dislike feeling like I'm in an indecisive position. We'll see what happens. Otherwise I'm looking to just relax today and enjoy free time for once.

I just started tracking calories again like I did last year and threw away my junk food. Also more water.

Keep it up!

I'm feeling a little better. I need to be better tomorrow and make up for lost productivity. It's a big week and I need to deliver.

I ate a lot of ice cream today and feel terrible. I don't know why I did it. I can't even work. So stupid.

It seems you're missing the camaraderie of being with your brothers and doing an activity. Keep searching for why you're relapsing.

I did the same thing when I quit runescape. I gave my clan away. It helps.

Take your time and have some compassion for yourself. It takes everyone a different amount of time.

I tried quitting ever since 2008 and couldn't do it. It took until 2018. That's a long time. I get urges sometimes but I just change the conversation, calm down and realize the day will end and tomorrow is a new day, and try to force myself into a different mindset. Enough pain is enough.

Stay strong and keep journaling your thoughts here. When we're stressed we trigger a queuing process of turning towards bad habits to deal with stress. I've written in my blog 10 times in 1 day before. Look how many comments are in it. Most are me complaining. It helps to lean on your thoughts rather than a game that's just gonna hurt you. Keep writing.

Today I'm 115 weeks free from gaming and 117 weeks free from social media. I've been waking up early every day this week and feel so much better. I'm finally getting 6-7 hours of consecutive sleep each night. I'm dominating at work and I'm doing my hobbies etc. I feel a lot better. I finished a difficult project this week at work and I took some time to just randomly play the drums because I like the noise. I wasn't trying to play a certain song or anything. It was fun. I've also been doing some yoga in the mornings and watching my tv shows at night. I've simplified life a bit and feel better. Also did some virtual chats with friends. I wanted to talk about what happened in Washington this week, but I want to uphold the rules Cam set forth on this website and not discuss politics. I just hope everyone is safe and doing what they can to maintain mental sanity during this time. Having that drama on top of the coronavirus stress is not very good for our health. Hopefully positivity will come soon. I have strong opinions about it, but once again will not discuss as per Cam. I also don't want anyone talking about it on my forum. Thank you.

Welcome to the forums. Thanks for sharing a bit about yourself. Hopefully you can discover ways to deal with stress here and write about the journey. Good luck.

I just don't think it's meant for men to succeed on it unless they're extremely attractive and show no desire for commitment. I'm still an advocate for meeting naturally in person but that's tough right now.

I think you need to get it in the open with people you work with that you need open lines of communication and let them know you need more guidance and explanation on your tasks or else you're going to stress yourself out, start dreading work, and look for escapism again.

I went to bed at 930 being naturally tired and woke up at 4 without an alarm clock. It's the most sleep I've gotten in one sitting in weeks I feel. I relaxed til 5 and got my day started again. I'm feeling better overall about being an early bird out of nowhere. I also resolved a major family issue that was causing me a great deal of stress. I confronted both parents and defended myself and resolved the issue. I think it's important to always defend yourself and understand the situation from both sides of the spectrum.

I like that you're sticking to one diary now. Gaming on weekends crushes your energy going into the next week. I used to only game Friday through Sunday before quitting and I'd probably play 16 hours a day and be exhausted til Wednesday.

I actually enjoy waking up this early. Half my work day is over, I do yoga in the mornings, less tired at lunch, and I'm getting more energy after work.

I could have sworn I woke up at 7 but it's 5. I actually got 6 straight hours though which hasn't happened. Usually I sleep from 11 to 2 and try to sleep but can't.