BooksandTrees

I think I struggled with this for a year and a half. I still get that anxious feeling sometimes, but it's not as crippling as it used to be. I think this is key to reaching addiction recovery to be honest. I wanted to say that I think Girl A is a waste of time. I don't mean to be rude. It just seems so complicated just from your brief description that I'd just friendzone her. Does she initiate conversation at all or is it mostly you? I would just treat her as an acquaintance to avoid any stress. Girl T seems a little better, but nothing really means anything in the quarantine I feel. Just gotta see how things go and see what happens in a year or so lol. It's good that you're writing in your diary more about your emotions. I've noticed over the past year you've become more in tune with your emotions and can connect with them better.

I may have mentioned this before, but she probably hasn't made the mental connection that video games solve her problems or help her escape. She might also be well balanced and not need to escape from anything. Some people use video games (you) and some people use alcohol and drugs (others). She could use food, exercise, talking, sex, or other things for her stress relief/escapism. If it does become a problem I'd communicate with her. If these sessions are scheduled you could go for a walk or watch a movie in another room maybe? I think you're feeling unrest and want to do something productive, but since most of these activities could be newer and require more effort than just sitting and gaming, that there's apprehension. I mentioned this in my diary a few days ago about my fear of stress from hobbies. 3d animation is fun to me, but it's such a huge learning curve and I'm afraid of getting stressed out because my life is already stressful. The issue was I was avoiding the activities and got more stressed and relapsed with my other addictions. My suggestion to you is just pick something and jump right into it. That unrest causes a spark of energy within you. The fear of following through with the activity (not a panic, scary fear, but apprehension) causes a barrier. When your mind creates a barrier it causes depression and burnout to calm you down and rest as a self defense mechanism. I'd just get up and do one of the hobbies and force yourself. I've been forcing my hobbies and now I'm just doing them without that burnout or frustration feeling. I could be wrong, but hopefully this helps.

Keep scheduling things to occupy your mind like hobbies, conversations, activities with people, etc. You're doing great. These thoughts will go away, but you gotta help them go away by occupying yourself during the day and maintaining a good sleep schedule since a lot of relapses happen at night.

Don't hope. Just do. You're doing great. Keep it up.

Glad to see you followed your goal. Not many people on here do that.

I agree. It used to be so automatic to just play games, watch porn, or play a sport. Working on a constructive hobby like music, writing, animation, etc. takes thought and effort and there's some apprehension to it because of so many emotions like fear of failure, fear of stress, fear of work, etc. Maybe that feeling never goes away. Maybe it's something we need to adhere to and welcome. I remember having that thought whenever I was building with legos. I'd have all of the pieces in front of me and felt so stressed trying to get that initial idea. Once I started putting pieces together I found calmness and intrigue. After completing something I could play with it and I had no thoughts about it. I'd just rush home to play with my creations and observe them. It was no stress at all. Pure enjoyment. Sometimes I craved the excitement of building something. Maybe we just escaped these thoughts when we gamed or watched porn.

Today I'm 84 weeks free from quitting games and 86 weeks free from social media. I feel pretty drained after this past week. Searching for apartments really took a lot out of me and this work week did not help things. I took today pretty slowly. I had trouble waking up again so I stayed in bed until 10 instead of 7. I then made breakfast, paid my bills, set up accounts for billing at my new place, watched the Matrix Reloaded, watched some Pokemon, spoke to my dad, made more food, and then 3D modeled. I was going to avoid 3d modeling, but ended up doing it for 3 hours again and had a lot of fun. I set up my camera rigs and then the lighting for my scene. I'm now gathering sound effects for the scene and tomorrow I'll learn how to apply them. I'll then finish rendering my scene, play it, see if I like it, and then edit it. If I do like it right away I'm just gonna post it on YouTube and I'll share that on here. (feel free to subscribe lol) Just kidding. I'm learning a lot about 3d modeling and this was the first time I've modeled 3 days in a row. I've also not masturbated in 3 nights so this has been nice. I've been a little more calmer and relaxed. I did have urges today, but I really wanted to spend the weekend not doing it as well as a long period of time not doing it. I was going to do some work today, but realized the reason I didn't work as well last week was because I was burnt out from working too much and dealing with my move. This made me want to sleep a lot. So I'm just going to listen to my body and relax this weekend. I think it would be nice to just watch tv, cook, and see if I can finish my model if I'm in the mood for it, not because I feel rushed. This is my hobby and I can and must relax to achieve balance. Today I'm grateful for my friend, my software, and myself for sticking with a good restorative mindset.

There's a two part episode of south park that covers this really well where stan becomes an alcoholic and thinks everything is shit. You can watch it for free online.

Today was ok. I started off frustrated because my computer for work had an issue that needed fixing. This delayed my day. I was only productive for a few hours and got a lot done. I guess it's something. I want to work a little tomorrow to make up for this. Not the whole day, just maybe 2-4 hours of uninterrupted engineering time will do me wonders. I once again got bored after work and thought about 3d modeling and forced myself to do it. It wasn't as much of a force as yesterday. I just said I wanted to make his eyes glow a bit and change shape when he opens his mouth. So I made the final part of the dream eater attack. It's not fully rendered so you don't see the smoke around him or the background. This is just the model space: At this point he will have already used hypnosis and the music notes you saw before would have finished. Then he opens his mouth, eyes glowing, and then jumps at the camera to finish the video. Tomorrow I'm going to work on the camera rigs and lighting as well as lowering the speed of the music notes. I have other things on my list before finishing the animation, but I didn't want to do too much in one sitting. I think one little task at a time is keeping me from burning out and it's working. Today I'm grateful for my coworkers, my job, my friends, my tv shows, water, the community here, and myself for getting through a very demoralizing work day and finishing strong with animation progress.

It happens dude. At least you're honest about it and know you don't want to do it again. You're also taking a good perspective. You admit it happens, but also admit that you don't want to let it keep happening. You're showing the correct blend of accountability and honesty. Being in the office will be a great change for you and I think having a schedule again will be paramount.

Great perspective. Thank you. I look forward to testing these videos out tonight for meditation. Also, I agree 100% about the house hunting. I really think I did the right thing by renting another year and taking a solid 6 months to a year to plan where I want to buy a home and my methods for doing it. It's the most expensive purchase I'll ever make in my lifetime. If I research TVs for 2 weeks before buying one, then I should put more effort into the biggest event of my life. Common sense. I can't let time circumstances pressure me.

That's life and it's ok. The good thing is you noticed you had full energy and positive moments today. That's important you're not focusing on the bad only.

Welcome back. I was in a similar spot as you before going on my current 84 week stretch without games. You'll get it back. Good luck.

I'll try this next time. I really think meditation will help me. And thanks. I was really happy last night after animating.

This is great. I noticed I have a similar issue falling asleep after certain tv. If it's YouTube I can't sleep, but if it's a general tv show I'm all set. I think it's because I don't have to think about the tv show.

That's awesome progress. I made it 1 night without masturbation for the first time in weeks.

No problem. You can ask a moderator or just ignore it and it will phase out by ther end of today if people stop writing in it lol.

Sorry to be a pain, but you should only be posting your journal in this part of the forums. There is an ask the community portion of the forums where you'd typically post something like this.

I wanted to add that I did 2 hours of animation tonight. I thought about it and got apprehensive at first, but then just stopped thinking and went to 3d model and made some good progress on my gastly model. I want to stay in the mindset of no fear and just doing it because it makes me happy.

Congrats on day 30.

I still want to try getting out to walk. There's a new trail near my new apartment that I'll walk on after work each day for sure in the future.

I really hope I can do what you did. What keeps you going? How do you deal with cravings?

After going through my emotions last night and today I've found that I'm looking for something different than what I was originally looking for with some experiments about mindfulness. I think I'm honestly just going to meditate each night. After doing my porn analysis the way I analyzed myself with video games, I found that I want to watch porn for the following reasons: Stress relief Relaxation Anxiety relief Panic Attacks Loneliness Arousal Boredom Procrastination/escapism/avoiding work Mood boost/Depression Relief If you notice, the green colored font means I want to relax and calm down. I think meditation will help with this along with exercise and proper sleep. The orange font can be solved by planning more activities either with friends or with myself that I'm actually interested in. The purple font highlights trying to escape my problems. This can be solved by just directly working on my problems. The negative effects porn is having on me are: Depression Ruining my sleep schedule with too much stimulation at night or naps during the day Shame and disgust with myself Regret that maybe if I didn't watch porn so often I might have tried harder to get a girlfriend Loneliness Becoming lethargic after watching it and not wanting to do more challenging activities After watching porn I'll want to eat junk food and be lazy Potential neck/posture issues by watching in bed Instead of falling asleep I get energy at night out of excitement to watch porn Inability to concentrate for long periods of time Stress If you look at the orange fonts above, you'll actually notice that the negative effects highlighted are reasons I watch porn in the first place. They share common points in reasons I watch porn, negative effects from porn, and triggers that cause me to watch porn. So basically, porn is not helping my problems at all and actually adding more problems in my life. Triggers that cause me to watch porn: Stress Anxiety Depression Tiredness Boredom Meeting an attractive woman Knowing that I can find someone on a porn site that looks like someone I meet in real life A romantic event in a book or someone falling in love in a book Certain online advertisements Dating profiles/online dating The interesting thing I notice from triggers is that the blue text is stuff that is exacerbated by porn viewing, while the red font is just loneliness and looking for love. Finding a girlfriend during the quarantine is not the best idea as we all know, so that will be the biggest challenge. The blue highlights will go away. This comes to my conclusion. I've gone on many porn free streaks this past year and a half. I usually make it about 1-2 weeks and then I get lonely and aroused. Once I relapse from arousal, I re-introduce this stress of blue back into my life. I know online dating does not work for me. So I need to just surround myself with friends more often with the quarantine in effect. Maybe I can meet a girl eventually, but this isn't the best time for it. I've got to be strong here. If I can get my loneliness to only masturbate instead of watching porn then I'll feel better about myself. After that I'll try nofap entirely, but that's going to be difficult. The ideal goal will be to watch no porn, masturbate only once or twice a week until I meet a girlfriend and then become intimate with her. The issue is we all say oh, I'll masturbate once or twice a week. And even that turns into an every day affair. So I'll have to maybe see about doing hardcore nofap for a while and just not do anything for a bit. Today I'm grateful for my job, my friends, and myself for coming to a few strong realizations.

Probably going to try to change the way I masturbate to be honest. I do it as fast as possible as a stress relief. I think I'm going to change the mindset to take my time and enjoy the session and focus on mindfulness and not finding something online. If i change the reasons and then change the process i think i can win.

Glad to hear you both turned things around. Those are big steps indeed. Glad you're both in the community.