BooksandTrees

I think now that you recognize these emotions you might be able to be more successful next time as well. I tried the same thing with cookies in the past and failed every time, but now I'm not failing because I find more pleasure out of losing weight and getting a 6 pack. I think it's just whatever the body feels more rewarding. Good on you for recognizing the positives of today. I also want to reply to the other post you wrote that is longer, but haven't had time yet.

Your story sounds familiar to mine. I have like 60 pages in my journal so obviously you don't have to read it, but the first few pages highlight how I started quitting gaming. I had quit gaming from April 2018 to September 2018. I started my diary in July. I felt so much better about myself and I tried finding new hobbies finally. I started a podcast (maybe the 2nd or 3rd page of my diary if it's around September 2018) and I relapsed because I was so bored editing the podcast after recording it. I started playing RuneScape again to pass time and eventually quit the hobby to play RuneScape. So I quit both and moved on. I'm now 80 straight weeks without playing games and haven't had any cravings until last week due to loneliness from COVID19, but I'm dealing with that. Take some time to recognize your emotions from the months away from gaming and how you felt from a relapse. You're here for a reason. Embrace it and embrace learning. I always recommend people read my post about how I quit and linked it. I'll link it here as well. It's not for attention. It's just to maybe show how you might find success. Everyone's path is different though. Welcome to the forums! I recommend reading all or part of my post documenting over 500 days without gaming. You should do something similar to what I did where you write down why you play games, why you want to quit games, and what your triggers are. It can help you begin to identify your emotions along this long road you're embarking on. It's not necessary, but a lot of people have found it helpful. It's located here: https://forum.gamequitters.com/index.php?/topic/8392-almost-500-days-without-gaming/

I agree because you agreed with me. Just kidding, but in all seriousness I agree because I think this might be a good chance for you to identify your emotions better. You do this with your clients in therapy. Why not investigate what it is about her that's agitating you and learn about these triggers?

Welcome to the forums! I recommend reading all or part of my post documenting over 500 days without gaming. You should do something similar to what I did where you write down why you play games, why you want to quit games, and what your triggers are. It can help you begin to identify your emotions along this long road you're embarking on. It's not necessary, but a lot of people have found it helpful. It's located here: https://forum.gamequitters.com/index.php?/topic/8392-almost-500-days-without-gaming/ I highly recommend people read my post about dealing with addiction during covid19 located here: https://forum.gamequitters.com/index.php?/topic/8597-covid19-coronavirus-and-gaming-addiction/

Lol thanks for picking this up. I got annoyed nobody wrote in the last one and didn't make one for this month. I managed to lose 5 more lbs, end the month without watching porn, for the final days, and posted my first animation on YouTube and have 14 subscribers now.

Thanks for the support. I feel a lot better today to be honest. I stayed up late last night 3d modeling and learned a lot. I think I can finish my Gastly animation this weekend. I was kind of tired after work today and didn't feel like 3d modeling, but I wrote some ideas down and wrote the script for the animation I want to do later this summer. I'm basically going to do the Gastly using dream eater this weekend and post it. I'll then make Geodude and learn how to animate and rig his arms so i can get used to that. Then I want to make my Voltorb parody video by the end of July or August that's like 2 minutes long. I say that because I'll have to study again for my exam starting in August or July. That will be nice to have completed so hopefully I can get my raise and move on. I didn't have any video game cravings today. I exercised and ate healthy again. I also didn't hit snooze today. I just set my alarm clock to be 1 hour later than normal and felt better. I got almost all of my projects complete so i can start a new one tomorrow. I played hockey in my basement and listened to music as well. I was sad for about 1 hour but listened to some music and talked to some friends to get out of it. I also had a dream where I actually had sex in the dream. Not sure if this is a result of not watching porn for 9 days in a row. @Erik2.0 have you watched Hunter x Hunter? I'm starting to watch that now and absolutely love it so far. It reminds me of Pokemon mixed with Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. I decided to watch this instead of reality shows because I was getting very angry at some of the contestants who were purposely annoying. I might start stretching for 30 minutes a night before bed and listening to music while doing it. Today I'm grateful for my friends, food, apartment, my hockey equipment, music, myself for getting over my video game/social cravings and having real conversations with real friends instead, and my writing ideas.

Today was annoying. I hit snooze for over an hour like an asshole, wasn't motivated at work and barely got anything done, had a good lunch, attended a few meetings, and had a long therapy session. I made it over 7 days without porn again. I haven't wanted to watch it at all really unless I purposefully think about it. It's similar to video games now. If I intently think about gaming I'll get cravings. If I think about other stuff then I'm fine. I'm not aroused at all. I'm going to save any masturbation for arousal only and really work on diverting stress towards other outlets like exercise or music or something. My dad asked me to call him at 7 PM tonight to talk about his surgery tomorrow morning. He just wanted me to tell him jokes, but I was in a bad mood and didn't want to joke around. Plus, his jokes aren't the same as normal jokes. He wants me to make fun of people, which I stopped doing years ago. I was just being a supportive son and he didn't want anything of it. So I began telling him about some stuff that had been bothering me and he said he had to go after 5 minutes lol. It's just a little sad when both of your parents don't love you or care about you. I think I was born to keep them both company and idolize them. Unfortunately for them that's not my purpose in life. I dislike them both and believe my purpose in life is to improve the lives of others who need help, fix our infrastructure with engineering, and make the world a better place by working hard and making changes to impact others. I've just been a little lonely because of COVID19 and it's just painful when both of your parents don't care about you and never have. I talked to my therapist about this today. But it's already a well established fact of my life where I'm not really important to anyone in my life. But that is ok. I am important to some of my friends, some people on this website, myself, and my coworkers. One of the reasons I used to play games so much was to feel important. I wanted their attention and adoration. It wasn't a healthy way, but because of childhood and adulthood emotional neglect I found myself drawn to the communities. I asked my therapist if he thought I could handle playing NHL in moderation again. I told him I'm afraid that if I played it could potentially act as a gateway back into other games so I could feel less lonely and I'd be looking inward for attention instead of outward towards real people. He said there are some drug addicts who can drink alcohol in moderation and that suits them, but there are some drug addicts who do anything intoxicating and downward spiral heavily. I think I just want company, friendship, love, and attention. That's the only reason I want to play games again. I'm so lonely sometimes. My friends never understand. Sometimes when I get sad and lonely I just want other people to tell me they love me. I am competitive for people's attention, praise, adoration, and more because I never had it in my life. I've been so alone and sad for so long. Neither of my parents have ever loved me and it's just a shame. But that's something I can't bring into life. I can't really tell my coworkers and management to kiss my ass so I feel better. Talking to both of them makes me feel so upset about myself. I am thinking of cutting communication with both of them because I always feel bad after talking to them. It just makes me sad that I'm so alone. I guess a lot of us on this website are alone. We loved gaming for making us feel so included and have purpose in life. But what gaming addiction does is further separate you from reality. Hiding from pain instead of solving the pain and finding solutions. I miss having friends around me and joking around. I think we all are. I'm just happy some of my friends are still talking to me during the pandemic. I'm going to try and animate the smoke on my Gastly tonight. We'll see how it goes. I find hope and happiness in this hobby because I can express my desires with it. Although it's frustrating, I really find light with art that I can create. It compels me, completes me for a period of time, and gives me love. I watched the first episode of Hunter x Hunter tonight and it was great. I think I'll watch that show and maybe JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. I'm tired of watching reality shows. They stress me out now. Today I'm grateful for my therapist, my friends, my job, my coworkers, my food (I made a great dinner), my aunt, and myself for resisting games again and again as well as porn. I also didn't eat junk food or anything bad to deal with stress. I love myself and appreciate myself.

Don't avoid the housemate. I made that mistake with my former roommates and it created untold animosity and we almost fought. Just find ways to deal with the interaction and move on. It sounds like she's not attacking you like your sister was either. Drawing outside is a good idea. Have you tried finding any podcasts to listen to? I've found that to be a chill hobby.

Welcome to the forums. Have you detailed out your addiction history, triggers, and feelings that gaming causes you to feel? Those can be quite helpful. Be patient with yourself and feel free to read around. Good luck!

Just like a building. Easy to collapse and lots of planning, design, effort, and cost to build. Stay strong and I hope you're feeling well.

Thanks. I think it will be healthy for me to practice it for 4-10 hours per week so I can keep going with it. I get so many ideas that I just want to keep going. Chill hobbies might just come back after the quarantine. Who knows.

Today was very interesting. I woke up after almost 9 hours of sleep and realized I slept right through my alarm clock. I felt so wonderful. Not a care in the world. Work was easy, I ate well, had some ice cream since I was only at 1150 calories after 3 meals for some reason, and then animated some more. I made the Gastly move around for 15 seconds so that will be interesting. I'll start adding the smoke effect tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm then going to do the hypnosis and dream eater moves to end the video. So the whole thing will be around 30 seconds. My longest video ever. I think I might be able to do a second animation this month so I'm excited about that. My next project will be a Geodude so I can practice making arms and rigging those. It will be a comedy video for sure. I'm slowly going to be building my skills up towards making this 3-5 minute animation of a Pokemon comedy spoof. After that I'll probably start working on original content. I just want to stick with things I enjoy for right now so i can continue to develop the hobby. It's much more rewarding than video games already.

Order a coloring book on Amazon? Sometimes conversation with people you don't like really crushes you. I got depressed after talking to my parents on Saturday and felt better on Sunday. I hope you turn the page on that one and feel better tomorrow.

Thank you! I loved Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar. I think Pokemon are a great resource for me to practice animation. So expect to see more all year.

That's awesome. I was going to record my animation in Unity one day since I could make my models into characters and just move them around for certain things. It's a useful software for sure. Good luck. I'm gonna hire you for sound for my cartoon one day lol.

We're almost there. I got hooked on 3d modeling today (check out my post), but I remembered to set limits. When I gamed, I never ate food or drank water and I'd get sick. I would be afraid to lose my friends because I was gaming in groups. So this time around I told my friend I had to go after 2 hours and grabbed lunch. I then relaxed outside again and listened to a podcast and watched my show. I then modeled for another 2 hours or 3 hours and made sure to eat dinner again. It felt very good. I hope you can be at that stage as well. We're all kind of on that line of becoming balanced I feel. We're understanding that if we don't have self control then we'll end up where we were before. It's an interesting feeling for sure. I felt like I wanted to keep modeling, but after I got off I realized I was stressed out and I lit a candle and watched TV. Did you feel stressed after doing statistics? I'm curious.

I'm pretty proud of myself today. I went to bed late last night after being disappointed in how I spent yesterday. I shouldn't have spoken to my parents. It's clearly noted they both anger me and having both in one day was frustrating beyond belief. Even when I took time to relax, it did not sink in. Today I woke up and made some breakfast, relaxed, and then wanted to 3D model. I got angry because I wanted to 3D model yesterday, but I didn't feel like it after being so upset. Today I made it my goal and enjoyed it. It was fulfulling, but not restorative. I've mentioned that I still lack those restorative hobbies, but I felt very accomplished. I mentioned to you guys that I was making another Pokemon, Gastly. So I took some screenshots of my progression. Before you say anything or read below, it's not done yet obviously. I researched a very cool smoke effect to give it a very dynamic animation so it looks gaseous at all times. I also learned how to animate the eyes and mouth and positioning of it. So that will come in the next week or two. At the end of the project I plan on having a 30 second animation at the very least. It took about 6 or 7 hours to make this. It's actually quite challenging to get curvature onto a sphere. But now that I know how to do it I can probably make this in an hour or less. So I'm very proud of myself and thankful to my friend for helping me

I'm glad you enjoyed the post. I just think the end goal of most of my hobbies has been money and public attention and not fun. It just means I'm lonely and not expressing my feelings with people properly so they know I need attention. Unfortunately, that's going to come from me because nobody will read my mind and say oh I gotta call him. I just need to be fortunate I have friends to call and not feel angry they're not calling me.

It's easy. If I watched porn I just write it down. My Fitbit tracks my sleep, I record my calories for 5 minutes a day, and I weigh myself once in the morning before eating and after going to the bathroom. I then just compare patterns with the graphs and remember how I felt during the week it occurred and find the issue. I think we all lost sense of moderation and balance at some point because of self control and lack of awareness of what certain activities did. I want to eat healthy most of the week and be able to enjoy a meal or dessert or a beer with coworkers once a week. That way I'm not controlled by good or bad food and recognize that healthier food keeps my body and mind happier, but the small indulgence is truly appreciated sometimes as an indulgence and not a stress relief or reward. If we're abusing indulgences from stress we're basically rewarding ourself for being in a bad position. Terrible psychology there. My hope is to one day be able to enjoy activities with restraint. It won't ever be video games meant to create addiction like runescape, or porn, or social media. I'm hoping to enjoy tv once in a while, creative hobbies a few hours per week, social hobbies more than the creative ones, and maybe be able to play an offline video game one day. That's not the ultimate goal, but it's like junk food in the house. I bought ice cream and cookies at the grocery store last week and haven't eaten them yet. No cravings. I enjoy my new diet more and don't stress eat. Can I one day do that with an offline video game? I don't know. I'm curious, but I don't want curiosity to stem from a dark addiction looking to give myself excuses to play again. I'd want it to be a once a week for 2 hours on a Saturday because it's the end of the day and I want to unwind.

I'm trying to moderate my life as well and starting to figure out how it all works. You got this dude. We're basically in long term therapy and finding our balance.

Are you going to do a monthly summary this month?

Dude, this is great coloring! You can tell that your technique and stroke is getting better.The coloring has purpose instead of just filling in the lines with color. Keep it up.

Today I'm 80 weeks free from video games. I woke up and had to talk to my mom and it really stressed me out. It went really well and I was about to get off the phone and then she purposely said something to get me angry and I completely blew up on her. I could have just ignored it, but she spent time and did a favor with someone who has emotionally abused her for years and it showed great weakness. It also showed that she was not social distancing and being ignorant. I didn't swear at her or verbally abuse her. I am proud of that. I held back and was able to just say how she hurt my feelings by talking about this guy. I tell her all the time about not bringing this guy up and she brings him up every fucking time I talk to him. I told her she doesn't respect me at all because she doesn't care that it hurts my feelings. Just a complete fucking loser in my opinion and doesn't care about my feelings. Instead of freaking out and watching porn I saw it was beautiful out and I hung up on her. I found a really great interview on my favorite podcast and sat outside for 2 hours and listened to it. I really enjoyed being out in the sun today. I got a little sunburn, but I just relaxed out there. I cooked lunch and ate outside and relaxed some more. I then had to talk to my dad for an hour or so but I ended the conversation because he's also a frustrating person to speak to because most of the time he does not give a shit what I have to say and just wants to talk to me about his issues. Same exact thing my mom does. I told my mom I had issues with gaming cravings this week and all she talked about were her problems. I limit talking to them to once a week or once every two weeks and it's never a plus. I'll eventually cut them both out of my life if they don't heed my warnings. I'm so jealous of people who enjoy their families sometimes. But jealousy is a bad thing. So I've accepted they are trash and that others get good families. That's just life. You can't choose your parents, but you can be grateful and appreciative of other things in life. So I've chosen to just accept that they're shit and limit contact for the most part. My dad was "OK" today, but you can tell he just says "yeah" and waits for me to stop talking. I'm just glad I have friends who listen to me and care. So I wrapped up my April summary. I lost another 6 lbs last month and already 1 lb in the first 2 days of May (residual from the week ending with April and May sharing the same week). The caloric intake was very uniform this month with not many skewed days of 2000 calories here or 1300 calories there. It was all pretty much in the 1400-1650 range. Sleep was a mixed bag this month. I struggled to find consistency due to stress. I was exercising infrequently, staying up later due to stress from work, staying up late from watching porn before bed, or other factors. I struggled a lot with porn this month. I averaged only 1 porn session per day for the month, but spent many days watching 3 times a day. I was not enjoying the porn either. I just forced myself to PMO so I could feel better and deal with stress. That wasn't correct to do. I haven't watched porn all week this week and you can notice my sleep log start to regulate around 6.5 hours a night once I stop watching porn. At this point I honestly think porn is way more detrimental to my mental health than video games ever were. Video games were time consuming and made me sick, that's for sure, but porn really sends me into a tailspin that can't be compared. I'm very done with porn and perhaps masturbation, but we'll see. I think you can see how I try to give up porn, then do it in moderation, then just get out of control within 1-2 weeks. All of those major spikes in porn usage are on weekends. So my strategy to spend my weekends has changed. I'm finding more relaxing hobbies and only doing the 3d modeling if I actually feel like it. Although I enjoy it, it's not relaxing or restorative and I find it very stressful. It's something I can only do for 1-2 hours at a time if I really feel up to it right now. That might change eventually, but I find the fun to work ratio is not there. I think with social media, porn, gaming, junk food, and drugs/alcohol can give you too much fun for little work and it fucks you over. As recovering addicts, we get angry at ourselves and try to take on these arduous tasks to find balance. I think we eventually get to where I'm getting where we just want to do something for 1-2 hours and feel good afterwards and not take on these 100-1000 hour projects that are unattainable and unrestorative. This realization came to me through being grateful, finding more forgiveness for myself, and self love. I don't have to torture myself to make these amazing things in my spare time. I'm already working in a career that I enjoy 80% of the time and am financially stable and independent. My career is essential and still open during the pandemic and I'm very fortunate for that. I think I've just accepted myself. I keep trying to have dreams of being famous or getting attention, but that isn't a life I'd enjoy. Realistically, I just want to work, enjoy it most of the time, see friends and talk to them during the week, meet a woman and fall in love, enjoy my spare time and enjoy life. Maybe I play tennis, hockey, and rock climb with them. Maybe I bike ride with them. (Them) being friends, family, and a girlfriend or wife one day. I cook what I want, eat balanced meals and don't turn to food for stress relief. I find comedy to be my biggest stress relief and I enjoy just voicing my opinion often in a funny way. I used to want to be famous off of it, but most of the time that's not necessary. There are going to be weekends like this weekend where I want to relax and do nothing. There will be weekends like in the past where I wanted to make that 3d animation. And you know what? I have the choice to do either of them. That's more than a lot of people have. Some people need to work 2 jobs. I don't. I have the choice.

Thanks. I hope you're doing well. I just find that nothing I'm doing is really restorative or fun. It's exhausting and a burden.

I don't think there is one. I just got angry that I couldn't do anything except game or watch porn.