BooksandTrees

Thank you!

Great job! You should be very proud of yourself for getting this far. Keep up the great work. You're inspiring many people.

Welcome to the forums! You've joined at a very interesting time in history with the pandemic. I've written about how to stay strong during the quarantine here if you have not read it yet: Quitting Games During COVID19 I've also written a post about how I've managed to quit games for over 500 days now. It might help you. Relapses are inevitable, but the self research and determination along with kindness can lead to lots of success: 500+ days without gaming Good luck!

I think you're experiencing something we've all experienced and most likely will experience again. I've struggled immensely with it. I used to be a pro gamer for almost a decade and now I'm just an average person. There are so many different things that lead us to passions. I think we can find passion through two methods (there are more, but I've found success with these two): Method 1: Finding an interest, slowly building it, being patient, finding enjoyment, building confidence, continue enjoying, find success, find passion. Method 2: Fueling a current passion through new outlets My two passions are comedy and hockey. I like art, but haven't been passionate about it because I don't like creating beautiful things. I like to create funny things. I tried learning how to paint, but it was expensive and stressful. I tried drawing, but that was boring for me. I'm great with software so I've been experimenting with 3d modeling. My Method 1: I liked modeling, but it stressed me out because all I did was tutorials. Tutorials are long, cumbersome, stressful, and not very fun to be honest. I lost all my motivation to 3d model. My new passion was gone before I did anything. I recently went back to 3d model and had success this week after 3 months off from it. I'm now getting fun ideas for it and I'm starting to develop a passion for it. I'm becoming confident and enjoying it. Once I'm comfortable with the software I'll be able to think of funny or creative ideas and just get to work on it instead of freaking out that I need to learn before doing. My Method 2: Hockey is canceled so I can't fuel my passion for it, but I know it's there. I enjoy rock climbing, but I'm not passionate about it yet because of my lack of confidence and I can't practice it with the pandemic. I am passionate about music, but don't play an instrument. I absolutely love listening to it though. I enjoy dancing, singing, headbanging, etc. I think playing the drums might fuel my passion. I might struggle with the drums while learning, but if I can play an instrument along with my favorite songs, it might heighten my passion for it. Engineering. I've always loved building things and designing them. I enjoy how structural engineering and physics work. It intrigues me and I want to create stuff. I became a structural engineer and now practice it a minimum of 8 hours a day at work. Yes, it's stressful as fuck, but I'm also designing bridges and buildings around the country so it's pretty exciting. Working has given me new opportunities to grow my passion for design and allowed me to be compensated for it. Good luck. It's different for all of us. My advice might be totally wrong for you, but right for me. Just like how you mentioned different people in your post. Just experiment, research yourself, and see what happens. I think you'll find some passions.

Today I'm 76 weeks free from gaming. I was a little stressed out this morning trying to find something to do. I made a great breakfast and then had no energy. I decided to do a workout for about 20 minutes and it got my body and mind awakened. I then started 3D modeling. I got some help from my friend because I was struggling to do a few components. The image looks very easy to make, but the eyes were pretty difficult because of some of the vertices I had to work with. I'm going to try and animate it with some lightning and post it on YouTube. The rest of today was pretty boring. I was exhausted and started to get some anxiety at night after dinner. It was only 7 PM and I still had 4-5 hours left to spend in the day. It's thoughts like this that make me anxious because it makes me feel about the days going by and stuff. I'm trying to get to a point where I'm not stressed out by hobbies and just choose to do them. I'm starting to get there with the modeling. It's just going to take some time.

Lol I just have no hobbies since quitting games I think. I'm just taking an interest in myself and improving myself. I think it's nice to try and see trends. I'm not sure what my body fat is. This BMI thing says 26%, but I think that's just based off of my height and weight and not using the calipers like trainers use for accurately recording body fat percentage. I know you can also do the submerged test where they put you in water to see the displacement.

I'm a little bored tonight. I'm burnt out after the week ended. I decided to stop working unpaid overtime because it's not worth the stress. I was getting 4 hours of sleep and I'm worried it will compromise my immune system. I've had some general anxiety, but who hasn't during this time? We're seeing such a rare and scary period of time. Who knows what a global recession will cause? Sometimes it causes nothing major like 2008 or sometimes it leads to The Great Depression and a world war. It's best not to worry about that because we're not world leaders and it's ultimately out of our control. I got 9 hours of sleep last night and feel good. I think tomorrow I'd like to continue my 3D modeling project. I want to logically think about how I'd design this Voltorb's eyes properly. I also want to create a little base and background for him. I'm then going to experiment making some inanimate objects and just try to continue becoming more comfortable using basic modeling tools so I can slowly become comfortable using more complicated methods. Feeling more comfortable with things encourages you to keep doing it because you're less likely to feel stressed out about doing that activity. I want to build confidence with it. I'm also going to study this weekend. I want to take advantage of my additional 7 months to study so I'll be studying for a few hours this weekend. I plan on studying each weekend to complete the online courses I took. This will take a few weeks...maybe 6. Then I can just work on problems from June to October so I'm comfortable with all of my references and any surprise problems. The next thing I'll do is probably continue researching my drum set components to make sure I'm buying the right stuff. We'll see. I'm also kind of interested in buying a tablet for drawing and sculpting. It isn't too expensive.

Great job. 30 days of videos vs 30 days of video games. Which feels better?

We've got your back through this and hope to give you strength during this journey. Beautiful picture much like your energy. Thank you for sharing. I hope I can help support you on your journey and when you post your blog.

Nice to see you're being productive. Hopefully it continues. Are you doing another monthly summary? I liked your idea so I focused a summary of mine for the month of March.

MARCH SUMMARY I wanted to do a summary of March. One of my goals has been monitoring my health. I've done this by tracking how often I watch porn, how healthy I eat, sleep hours, and what my weight is. I think this is very important for regulating things outside of stressors and such things that are out of our control. If we can control our environment then we'll generally be better off. Let's start with food. Below are Figure 1. Daily Calorie Intake and Figure 2. Daily Weight Log. My average caloric intake was 1,729 calories and my average weight was 178.4 lbs. My lowest recorded caloric intake was 1,223 on March 15th and my highest recorded caloric intake was 2,700 on both March 6th and March 16th. I started the month at 180.6 lbs, which was my maximum weight, and ended at 175.2 lbs, which was my minimum weight. I weighed myself every morning immediately after waking up and going to the bathroom and before drinking any water or getting breakfast. I weighed myself in underwear only. Figure 1. March, 2020 Calorie Intake Figure 2. March, 2020 Weight Log Some interesting notes to observe are my weight having a lag effect from caloric intake. It seems there is about a 2 day lag effect between eating more and gaining weight and eating less and losing weight. My diet changed to include more vegetables, less added sugar, less carbohydrates, more lean protein, and less dairy. Important control factors were 1,678 calories being required to lose 1lb per week and 1,550 calories to lose 1.5 lbs per week. Maintaining my current weight is listed at intaking 1,850 calories per day. The next area is porn based masturbation. This data was not completed as I decided to record the relapses on March 7th rather than March 1st. My average PMO was exactly 1.0 times per day. The most being 3 times per day for 3 days in a row and the fewest being 0 times per day for 9 days in a row and 11 times total. It's interesting to note I started my streak on March 16, which coincides with the weight loss and caloric intake control becoming healthier. Below is Figure 3. March, 2020 Porn Log. Figure 3. March, 2020 Porn Log The last bit of data is sleep. I record this with my FitBit. The maximum recorded hours of sleep was 9.8 hours on March 7th and the lowest was 4.5 hours recorded on March 9th. The average amount of sleep was 6.73 hours. Some days included naps. It turns out that any day over 6 hours of sleep had an additional nap between the lengths of 1 and 2 hours. Some naps came after PMO sessions, but not all naps. Below is Figure 4. March 2020, Sleep Log. Figure 4. March, 2020 Sleep Log The data presented summarizes my caloric intake, weight, pmo relapses, and sleep hours. March 16th holds an important date in this whole picture because it was when I began to regulate my porn usage and food intake. This date was the first Monday of the quarantine in the United States. I chose to start monitoring my health during this time because I was tired of saying I'd start eating healthier and not doing it. The virus scared me into taking more action and responsibilities for my actions and my health. The results were a steady loss in weight, better mood, less depression, and slightly higher sleep averages. My target weight is between 155 and 160 lbs. My current BMI is 26.2%, which is overweight. It's not muscle either. It's fat. I'll continue to post information like this at the end of each month and hope it inspires you to study yourself, implement strategies, and record your data. Maybe it will benefit you along the way.

No worries! Thank you.

Washington state peaked at the nursing homes that got infected, but you didn't see an outbreak in Seattle yet. So I'd say you're not at a peak. It just got hit badly at a nursing home where most people died. If you look at the data, only new York is close to a peak. Most states are 2 to 3 weeks behind them and some midwestern states are 5 weeks behind. You won't see long peaks til mid summer.

I lost 5 pounds last month through counting calories. I'm not trying a new diet. I'm just using math. If I'm hungry, but only have about 100 calories I'm finding that I'll actually make a healthier snack. I don't really snack anymore though. I'll post the details in my diary. I also 3d modeled without tutorials and went a full 9 days without watching porn.

Hi Everyone, We've hit some dark times over the course of this year, but we can't let that derail us. It's important to focus on some of the good things in life. The rules are similar to last month. Write a brief paragraph or two, or even a statement about something you're proud of yourself doing last month or a milestone you reached!

This has a happier tone than normal to it. Good to see.

Today was annoying because I had many doctors appointments and team calls/ meetings. I got frustrated and went grocery shopping to get away from it. Nobody was at the store and I got about 4 additional weeks of food to hold me at 6 weeks of food and supplies through the virus peak, if it hits. Realistically, certain states like new York will peak before other states. Europe is getting hit all at once. Some parts of the United states haven't really been hit so I fear we're going to be the epicenter this fall when it returns. But since new York hit first and Louisiana is 2 weeks behind I think you might see other states 2 weeks behind them, e.t.c. I worked later at night to make up for today. Got a lot done, but not doing it again. My therapist thinks the drums would be a good idea. I can play acoustic drums and techno with electronic dnb.

Today was frustrating because I kept getting called into meetings and barely got any work done. I was going to work late to combat it, but we're not allowed to work overtime during COVID19 so i said fuck it and turned the computer off. I worked on Saturday for free and got nothing out of it and nobody cared. So after work i was going to watch porn and binge watch tv, but I downloaded this app called home workout and did the first day of it. I felt more energized and happy because of it. I took a shower and instantly started working on...... yup...3d modeling. It's fucking tough without the tutorials. It took me 2 hours to create part of it. I'll share it in a couple weeks when I'm done. It will seem underwhelming, but the project is a good beginner project and it's also not porn. Thinking about creating something has got my creative juices going and I'm excited and frustrated to problem solve. I stayed up too late tonight, but I finished the day very strong so I'm happy.

That's why I don't talk to my family. Family is fake from what I've gathered. Just a way for people to create their own hierarchy outside of government. Try to logically disinfect everything and see what happens. If not, good luck and I'm sorry that happened.

It's painful and stupid. They just want attention.

It's so irritating. I'm very happy to be independent is all I can say lol.

I don't think it's bad. I just don't like it because my dad used to tell me a funny story, then tell my mom, then call his friends up and tell them, then everywhere we'd go he'd tell them and look at me and make me laugh to help his effect and random people would say how funny he is. It made me so angry. Just a fake. Reminds me of bad times. I'm not trying to turn this journal into a research panel. After reading my posts I'm sure you know I study myself and experiment with how I feel for weeks and months at a time to see what works and what doesn't. I tend to agree with my therapist and the neurologists I've spoken to over the past 3 years that have helped me quit gaming and overcome major depression. I see your point because a lot of people spew bull shit information out there. I'm not an expert, but I don't fabricate things. I share what I've learned from experts that I've spoken with in person regarding my depression and addiction. It's helped me quit for over 75 weeks now and I'm not suicidal anymore. It works for me.

How are you holding up?

I lived with my mom last year and it's well documented in the first third of my diary how terrible it went. I don't blame you. Just be patient and see this thing through. I think having an office space is great and you can always move stuff if he comes back. Be careful with the gaming. I'm glad you didn't binge it, but don't let that give you confidence into playing in moderation. It never works. Good luck.

Dude, I agree. I would have sat there ridiculing her in the most diminutive way possible for as long as possible until we broke up. I think I'm too evil for a relationship. I give maybe 1 chance tops and then I'm so ruthless. It's something I'm working on. I'm avoiding relationships until then.