BooksandTrees

Do you think he picked a fight due to frustration over your grandfather falling?

Sounds like a good few days. I wouldn't worry about the masturbation thing. I've kind of gotten over the fact that I masturbate now. I don't know why. I just don't think it's killing me anymore.

Don't feel bad about feeling out of it. We're still going to have our ups and downs. I recommend you search your feelings for how games made you feel and see what you're currently missing and see if you can rationally incorporate it into your life.

I woke up very early again but I got more sleep than yesterday so I'm making progress. Once again I am meal prepping and made 4 meals of food. I now have 2 or 3 days of prepared food so I don't resort to ordering out. I also took some time to stretch this morning. I think this might lead to me doing yoga in the mornings. We'll see. I'm going to drum this morning and do a lesson. I also either plan on doing art or writing. I am going to shop today as well once the stores open. It's a challenge for me to be this awake so early. I don't like waking up sometimes because I'm not excited to do anything. Maybe this will get me to wake up with intention in the future. Edit 1: I actually did yoga and meditated this morning for about an hour. I feel really happy for once. It's strange and I appreciate it. Edit 2: I also did my first drum lesson for over an hour. It was a lot of fun but now my forearms are sore. It feels strange being this productive in the morning. I'm now going to relax before going out to the stores. Edit 3: I went to the stores and bank and got every one of my chores done. I got my DVD player and some DVDs that I enjoy. I traded in all my former games and consoles that I used as DVD players. I was getting some cravings because of holding the controllers. Now I don't have that issue. I'm pretty tired now. I still wonder if I should continue to try dating online or wait til the virus is over. I'm not super comfortable being around others yet. I think I'm just lonely. I don't know. I'd like to have some intimacy with a woman though.

This is something a lot of people who have quit for several months to years faces. Gaming gives you an identity. Your username, your in game character or persona, your role or rank in the particular game, e.t.c can give you a vicarious connection to this idea of purpose in life. Once you lose your gamer identity you're just yourself in a world with much less magic and honestly much less immediate purpose. In games you have immediate goals to beat the game or acquire exp, or beat other players and teams, or defeat monsters and solve quests. In real life you make 3 meals per day, work 40 hours per week, sleep 8 hours per day, and have hobbies to keep you occupied during periods of boredom. Which one is more monotonous and boring? The combination of boredom in real life and a former manifest destiny from gaming leads us to build a desire to be extremely purposeful in real life and do amazing things. Unfortunately, it's just not the same and it's so easy to feel lost because any hobbies we do or hangouts with friends don't translate to the same emotional reward that we had during our video games persona. I personally try to create scenarios where I have those purposes in real life. Instead of being a clan leader in game I picked up leadership skills at work, this website, and on adult sport leagues. Instead of being on a team mission to defeat another team I joined 3 sport leagues and go all out in them. I train my body to be better at them as well like training for a quest. For quests and experience points I treat every new project at work as a quest and lead my team to victory. It sounds dumb but that's my mindset and my reward is better friendship with colleagues and financial compensation. I wouldn't get hooked on the idea of your true destiny. I did that and quit my job to create cartoons and I had no expertise or education in animation. My current job satisfaction is good and it provides me the independence to practice hobbies like animation so I get better at them. My main point here is video games make you feel like the main character or hero of the story. Unfortunately, you'll never be that important in real life because you're not a war hero, national leader, astronaut discovering a planet, e.t.c. You're a unique person because you're you. But don't let this internal destiny drive you insane. I went insane. Scale these feelings backwards a bit. Just because you're looking for more passion in life doesn't mean a radical life transformation. You already made the radical transformation by quitting video games. Not everything has to hold that same weight. Take your time and build your hobbies and passions through the comfort of your current lifestyle unless your lifestyle is very toxic. Otherwise I'd change jobs if work is toxic. Just my perspective after going though much of what you mentioned. I don't mean to say you're not as important as others, but video games make you more important than you actually are in real life and that causes former addicts to be too drastic in their approaches to quitting games and leading different lives. I promote being patient.

Good luck on the MCAT

I couldn't fall back to sleep so I decided to wake up at 6 AM and just start my day and see what happens. I tried to sleep til 9 but kept waking up. I made a nice breakfast, cleaned my kitchen, did the dishes, and registered for that exam again. I also ordered my correct drum pedals because Amazon never sent me the ones I ordered and I haven't really been able to practice because of it. It turns out that most of the stores I wanted to visit aren't open until tomorrow so I will do my shopping on Saturday instead of today. I fell asleep for hours today. I was so tired. I think the stimulating activities I had been doing were exhausting me. I'm still very tired. Either that or I have narcolepsy or something stupid. I doubt that though. I woke up and watched a very good documentary and ate 2 meals before and after so I've eaten properly. I guess we will see what tomorrow brings. I feel kind of anxious without being able to do stimulating activities before bed, but this is showing that my mind is craving stimulation when it should be craving sleep and rest.

I went to bed before new year's and got about 3 hours of sleep before waking up. I had a full dream and everything. I was very thirsty and remembered I ate a lot of pancakes before bed. This made me start recording my diet again and I'm noticing I'm eating lots of simple carbs, sugars, sodium, and not much protein and complex carbs and healthy fats. I have those in my house but I'm avoiding them out of laziness. I think the plan tomorrow will be to cook more balanced meals again like I did before October. I'm also going to limit the sodium and drink more water. The diet retooling will provide me with more energy and more food variety. I'm hoping this positively impacts my sleep and daily wellbeing. The rest of my goals this weekend will consist of shopping, going to the bank, doing 1 drum lesson, and spending 1 hour on animation. The remainder will be for rest. Happy new year everyone.

I think this is becoming a theme for people. Just keep slowly working on it and don't get discouraged with how long it takes to sleep at a normal time again. Do not dwell.

I wonder about that and think I want to let off the gas because I worked so hard to reach a goal. But maybe I exhausted my fuel to reach a goal instead of refueling along the way. I went to bed at 9 am today so realistically I'll sleep around 4 or 5 today. It will take time to fix. I'm committed though.

I jinxed myself on sleep

Today is the first day in 3 weeks I'll go to bed before midnight. I feel a tremendous weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.

I had a really good therapy session yesterday and realized two things: 1. I'm setting myself up for failure with my decisions. 2. I'm correlating pain with pain from the past. Discussing Number 1: I do things that will most likely lead to poor decisions over smart ones. I think there are times where I feel lonely and sit on a dating app vs just reaching out to a friend or family member and calling. The United States is just not safe to date right now. Too many idiots are out there spreading the virus. I also think most women on the dating sites are just lonely and bored and want someone to talk to with no intention of meeting a man in person. I'm sorry if this statement offends you, but it seems to be something I've noticed and I'm not wasting my time on it anymore. I'm staying up too late at night doing stimulating activities that are deterring my sleep schedule. The poor sleep is making me lethargic most of the next day. Then I want to do easy things, such as mindless, stimulating activities until late at night and repeating the cycle. I deleted my discord account and traded in my old video games. I was tempted to relapse recently and had to hold back. Most of my old friends were still talking to me on discord. I couldn't handle it anymore. I made a new account to talk to one friend from this website who doesn't use this website anymore and that is it. I sold my old consoles and bought a dvd/bluray player so I can watch my dvds without the temptation to game again. I would rather watch porn for 10-20 minutes per week than have these long sessions of meditative masturbation that take up hours. The time-sync is killing my spirit and I'm not happy with the results. That is also leading to an addiction of its own and it's not a healthy one. I have not been meal prepping and it has lead me to ordering food again and I have gained weight because it's unhealthy. I have been reaching out to people who I know can't help me solve my problems and getting frustrated that they never say the right things. I need to be the engineer I am and just talk to people who specifically know what to help me with. I have chosen to finally abandon all people from my video gaming past. I was holding on to about 20 people from the past 2 decades but felt like they weren't serving me any positives in my life. I made these decisions to let go of issues bothering me because I think I'm tearing myself two ways here. I want to recover and lead a new life, but I still hold onto the past. I think I've recovered from video game addiction obviously, but I haven't made a leap towards a new life. I may have started with rock climbing and stuff before the virus, but I've been struggling with the virus to be honest. Most of us have. Isolation is crushing me. It has made me lonely and want to game again. I need to be creative and find other ways to socialize. I want to let go of these anchors. I want to be patient. Discussing Number 2: Just because I face rejection or pain in my current life doesn't mean I need to directly relate it to my childhood and associate my current misery with past misery. People have been good and bad since the start of mankind. This is nothing new. I can't have tons of great experiences with coworkers and stuff and have a bad day and just start revisiting my childhood and confirming life is terrible and that nothing has changed. As @DaBest stated earlier, I have changed a tremendous amount and accomplished more in the past 30 years than most people have in their lives. It is time to make that an affirmation instead of constantly trying to affirm life's negatives. Closure: I want to take my time and get back to where I was a few months ago. I basically want to have a stable work-life balance again, do a few hobbies a few hours per week, socialize with friends and family safely, meal prep again, and exercise. I find that I'm not balanced at all. It's impacting my work and mental health in a bad way. I'm overthinking the steps of life and where they're taking me. In a nutshell, I would like to just slowly study for this exam in April, do my work when I am supposed to work, exercise a bit, do hobbies that I feel like doing, find a competitive hobby to get that craving dealt with (maybe fantasy hockey again), and outdoor sports once the weather is better. I've really been suffering the past few months and it finally came out this vacation. I need to be better to myself because I want to be better to myself.

I feel a little better. I watched a feel good movie and am relaxing. It is ok.

I'm just gonna be honest with people here. I'm really fucking pissed off beyond words. I don't really know how to conceive my thoughts and translate them onto this stupid fucking diary. I'm a hate-filled tyrant of my own monopoly. I think most people in my life are fucking useless and a waste of space. I could give a fuck less about them. Sometimes I think I played video games just to escape my own brooding thoughts of hatred and pain. I think that's truthful. I'm tired. My family abused and neglected me growing up. I never had friends until college. Most of my college friends are just shut-in fucking introverted gamers who don't know how to reach out to people unless facebook says it's their birthday or they get an invite to something. Everyone else just keeps to themselves. Covid is an interesting world. I rarely leave my home. I feel no different than before the virus. My whole social life is work. I enjoy them at least. Nobody understands me at all. Nobody ever has. I was tortured as a child. Absolutely tortured. The only thing that kept me alive was thinking about my hatred towards those who abused me. It gave me the strength to keep pushing through. No matter how much therapy I attend or hobbies I pick up, I'll never escape the torment that covers me like a wet blanket on a freezing night. Everyone I meet lets me down. It's disappointing. It's even worse when I let myself down. I enjoy sitting in my living room and doing nothing because I've given up. I hate that I only rely on anger and hate to push me forward. I have not been happy in years. I remember sometimes as a child I'd wake up with pure happiness. Like I looked forward to the day because I could play with my toys, or maybe see my only friend. If I don't have to wake up for work, I don't wake up. I just sit there in my bed and keep sleeping. I love my dreams. My dreams are filled with magic and wonder. I have friends in my dreams. I go on adventures in my dreams. I see the world in my dreams. I never stop dreaming. I purposely go back to sleep multiple times each day so I can escape life and just see something truly beautiful. Maybe I should just write my dreams down. Sometimes I think the only thing that understands my thoughts are certain songs. I wish I had something to pour my hatred into. Maybe I'll create a way to do it. Fuck the useless. Fuck them all.

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Thanks for the support. I actually found out she deleted her dating profile. I blocked her number anyways. I didn't find out from her. I did research based on the app and the information shown. Basically, she said she loved talking to me and was just bored looking for attention. I caught on to it and didn't message her for 3 days because I didn't want to waste time and she never responded. I caught on.

She unmatched with me on the site about 1 hour ago and said nothing. See, I'm glad I didn't keep trying. I didn't message her for 3 days after I initiated contact for a week straight.

I agree. I think that we need things to be equal and I have cut out a lot of friends from my life for that very reason. If I'm putting too much into it I won't message you.

I asked her to meet and she was hesitant because of the virus so I don't see any issue there. Gotta respect health first.

Thanks guys. I appreciate the support. I just see myself having to start the conversation almost 10 days in a row and I've scheduled all 4 dates as well as initiated exchanging numbers. I have had women start the conversation every day. I want some balance where we both take turns. I don't want her getting on a pedestal etc. There's a movie called "Overboard" with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell that shows an interesting dynamic where Goldie was very rich and got attention all of the time. She gets amnesia and meets Kurt and they have a normal relationship where they both are poor/lower class people and have to take turns working for things. She likes that a lot better. I agreed with it as well. It made sense to me.

I think it's important to realize what you're here for. Are you gaming for hours and having it prevent you from doing activities, working, seeing family, and bathing yourself/eating? If gaming is not interfering with your life in a detrimental way then it's not an addiction and maybe you're just upset you're not doing something more productive. Either way, give that some thought.

Being with family is exhausting. I also got mad at myself for sleeping a lot this vacation but I then welcomed it. Sometimes we gotta listen to our bodies a bit.

Right, but I think I need to do this. I don't want her expecting me to message her every day. It's going to make her feel privileged. Although she's been nice to me, she doesn't deserve that right now. People like her are very beautiful and always getting attention. I don't want her expecting my attention. I want her to work for my attention. After all, I'm very desirable and should be chased as well. I don't want to set the standard that I always message her. I want her wondering if I'll message her. I want to create uncertainty. Could I not be interested? She's also a very ambitious person and ambitious people want what they can't have or don't have already to an extent. If I make this too easy and predictable then she'll lose interest. I also don't want to be the only person chasing. That's for Simps and people with no self value. Although she's great, I'm a much more valuable person right now and I want people to know it.

I decided not to text that girl today because I noticed I was initiating most of the conversations over the past week. I'll let her message me next and if she doesn't message within 5 days I'll end communication. I want someone who wants me. This is just a test to see what happens.