BooksandTrees

I'm now 46 weeks without gaming. I'm disappointed with how my dating adventure has gone so far because I don't think I'm ready to date. I'm disappointed that I even attempted it. I've only been out of my mother's house for 9 weeks and the thought of being tied down in a relationship disturbs me from the inside and I can't shake it. I spent a week talking to two women and got their numbers and arranged dates. I began to feel stressed out by communicating with them. Not only that, but my dating profile is not a good representation of me. A reason for this is because I'm just starting to discover myself. I have been rock climbing for about 2 months, boxing for 3 weeks, and writing my cartoon off and on for a few months. My hobbies are developing but my lifestyle is still torn. Even after 46 weeks I still struggle to piece together an identity that isn't a gamer. I don't have cravings to play at all. I don't feel the yearn to go back. I just kind of miss having an identity. I miss getting excited to do activities. I get excited to rock climb, but I'm iffy about boxing. I don't totally love it, I just like doing it sometimes. I want to do something more funny and be around other nerdy people. I don't want it to be a stupid memefest thought. I want that fine grey area between meme morons and regular people. I just want to create absurd art, host a funny podcast, make my cartoon, make a youtube video, and get excited to make things. I just haven't. I keep having to do wedding stuff for my friends or see family or do something stupid. I'm not actively planning things to do on weekends for myself. I want to plan a vacation or plan an activity for myself and not feel like I have obligations to do things with others. Even with the dating profile I felt trapped. This one girl messaged me non-stop for 2 days outside of work. I felt stressed out trying to respond. I then talked on the phone with her for a few hours and had a decent date tonight. I just didn't feel like I was attracted to her and felt repulsed when she went in for a kiss. She reminded me of my old roommate and of another friend who unfortunately passed away from cancer a few years back. I'm afraid to break her heart or let her down, but in reality I've only known her 4 days. She's just pouring a lot into me and I feel very overwhelmed. She's a good person I just think she's desperate in a way and I'm not ready to date in another way. This was the first weekend I've had to myself in 6 weeks and I blew it on a stupid date. She even wanted to go on another date with me tomorrow. I'm canceling it and saying I'm not ready. I can't do this right now. I'm going through too much transition. So frustrating. Now I have to get suited for a wedding tomorrow. This shit doesn't end. I'm just aggravated. I won't go back to video games right now, but I'm disappointed at how long this process has taken me to start to find a life I enjoy. I know it's because of the stress I undertook with my old roommates, my mom, and my job dilemma - mostly my mom during 7 months of the 10 months so far. I have to persevere. Like I said, I'm not craving gaming at all. I just feel defeated in a way. I don't want to game again because of how empty it made me feel. I just feel empty now as well with less brain fog and less depression.

It is important. Sometimes I get caught feeling guilty but I've gotten better. If I say no the people give me negative feedback, but if they say no to me nothing bad happens. So I just realized I can do that and not feel bad over minor things. I am enjoying the rock climbing and boxing. I met a girl climbing and I'm going to ask for her number. We get along well so I want to explore that. Thanks for the encouragement and I hope your relationships with these people don't hinder your development.

I wouldn't fully blame the phone or beat yourself up. Millions of people deal with the same thing you are in the mornings. Something I've done to combat this is schedule grocery shopping at like 7 or 8 in the morning on my first day off. It gets me out of the house fast. The second day I either plan outside activity early, or a slow cooker meal that takes hours ti finish by dinner so my morning starts early and I have reason to get up. Don't beat yourself up. It's worse for us because we're focusing on ourselves so much. One of the ways we move forward is just accepting some things as normal. Sometimes we are normal.

I'm 45 weeks without gaming now. I think something I've noticed is that I have been saying "no" to things more often and it has made me feel better. But it's tough when you schedule new hobbies and activities. The boxing gym I attend makes me feel like I should spend 3 hours there doing a full workout. I don't really have time for it and I don't get there in time to do that anyways. I also don't want to do that every day of the week. Mindfulness is something that has been a developing cornerstone in my mental health improvement. I'm learning what comforts me when I'm mentally stressed or physically stressed. I'm learning whether I need to relax and listen to peaceful music (I love atmospheric drum and bass) or whether I need to do boxing or something like that. Mindfulness has also made me realize that once my mind is clear of clutter I want to be creative. I'm still not scheduling time for myself to write, draw, create 3d sculptures or even clay sculptures. I'm not learning to animate on the computer or anything. I'm not angry about this, though. For the past year I've complained in my diary that I want to be creative, but get so anxious and stressed about being perfect at it. This anxiety and perfectionism comes from my efficiency drive during the day. When you have a set amount of hours to meet deadlines at work your mind is in gear. You're in a state where you need to function perfectly and get the task completed. Hobbies and creativity isn't like that. You need to plan things out, investigate your feelings and just think. Thinking isn't efficient. Sometimes it's best to clear your mind and day dream a bit. Let your subconscious deliver things to your active thoughts that inspire you to create or plan something. When I get stressed I rant and do funny things that just come to me. I mix that with relaxing thoughts to music and my imagination takes off. I think of story plots, character development, artwork, podcast topics, everything. This is good and I need to take the next step. The next step is to dedicate time to these thoughts. This circles back to the issue I had with getting anxiety and not being able to work on the hobbies when I have time - I already answered that, though. I've learned how to de-stress. One of the things I've learned over the past year away from video games is how to relax. I just don't practice it. I like exercising, socializing, listening to relaxing music, stretching, mindfulness, etc. It's time to complete the routine. I've filled my schedule up with activities and that's been nice, but I want to structure my day to also allow me the mental levity to work on a hobby or watch TV and read. Mindfulness will help me decide which activity I want to do based off of my day and that will naturally turn into something where I know what hobby I want to do. The stuff I've been putting off is my cartoon, 3D sculpting in blender, acrylic color pouring, writing some of a book, a funny YouTube video, and maybe a podcast. Now calm down. I'm not going to do all of these. That's what's adding to the anxiety issue. It's going to take years to do these things. My cartoon will take another year for a pitch. The book will take 2-4 years. Sculpting takes years of practice, but I want to do it. Acrylic pouring will take some time to develop. So it's just practicing once in a while and eventually I'll decide that I don't want to do one or two of them. I might not want to write a book. I have no idea. But being mindful will help me approach those decisions. Practicing will direct the decisions.

Lol you are much less spiteful than I am at times. That is good. I'm trying to work on that.

You know what's strange? I think I'm one of the only gamers who never cared about sgdq or that community in general. I think I might actually hate the video game community and most stereotypical gamers in general. I think I stayed in it for too long and just used anger to get out of my addiction. So it may have left me with a sour disposition towards those specific gamers. Stay patient and enjoy your journey and keep learning.

This is too vague to give you an honest opinion. I would suggest performing a self-investigation and writing it in detail in private or online here for a more accurate response. Why are you blocking people in real life? Gaming is escapism from real life for most gamers. If you find yourself doing the same habits in gaming that you do in real life then you are not dealing with your problems in real life and online. Why do you game? I know you're blocking people, but did you game initially to find social life without the real life issues? Those same issues arise in games just as fast as real life. Is it for a hobby? Is home life difficult? Are you looking for competition in games that you don't get in life? Do you have social anxiety? If so, what is causing the social anxiety? Take some time to answer these questions and ask yourself more questions than what I'm asking you. Take some time after that to experiment and go on a learning journey here. The goal now is to better understand yourself so you can answer the question you initially asked.

I hear you. I had the endoscopy and it came back fine. They said I had minor inflammation in my esophagus and said they'd do a colonoscopy as a final check to get a good evaluation. They believe it's all stress causing this to me. It's something where I just need to keep eliminating stressful things from my life. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be amazing at my job, quit my job, create a cartoon, get my job back, meet a chick. get healthy, find friends, find the purpose of life, get my masters degree, get my bachelors degree, etc. I've done most of these now so it's just up to removing additional stressors and just relaxing more. Accepting that I can watch TV for an hour or two. Quitting games makes you think you need to be productive all of the time, but now I just appreciate down time. There's no downtime in gaming, but there is down time in TV and reading. Years of that stress has crippled me and I'm tired of it. I'm also a hypochondriac and it's terrible.

I think you're making a lot of mindful decisions now compared to what you were doing months ago. Planning creates a dependable routine and organization that prevents you from having to keep memorizing things and ending up forgetting something you had planned. The healthy eating and exercise is important to every facet in your life. Keep this up. As for the relationship. I think you should just move on. I seem to remember talking to you about it when I first starting reading your post a few months back. I think you're better without her and will find somebody else who supports your life in a good way and just loves you for you eventually. But I have no say. Just a thought.

I'm now past 44 weeks without gaming. I'm getting into that 11th month soon. I have been without stomach ailments for the past 3 or 4 days for the most part except for tonight unfortunately. I'm finding that it's mostly stress induced. If someone or some decision stresses me out I'm going to the bathroom. I think this is the result of years of stress coming to a point. I'm also torn about whether to get this colonoscopy in 2 days and I'm nervous about it. I've found that I really like boxing and rock climbing during the week. It's allowing me to move and be active. I have no goals with them either. It makes me question the hobbies I've wanted to do because I've tried to develop goals before doing a hobby and those goals crush me. I don't even want to do those hobbies at all. I want to, but I don't want to. I think I'll eventually go to them. I think that's why I enjoy boxing and rock climbing. I really enjoy just being myself, going there, forgetting my stresses in life, and being part of a nice community. I love it. I spend 3 hours there and can't believe the time went by that fast. I feel better, socialize more, and just enjoy how I feel so present in my day afterwards. I also wanted to say that I think I'm making good progress. All of these life goals I had took so long to incorporate. I started by just sleeping at the same time each night and waking at the same time each day. I then brushed my teeth each night and each morning. I then ate 3 meals a day. I then cleaned after myself in my apartment and took a multivitamin. I then signed up for boxing and did rock climbing once per week before that. I'm slowly adding all of these things into my life and I think it's just a slow snowball effect that just needs to take place. Once I get my routine for these exercises I'll then be more comfortable and be able to work on these other hobbies I want to do. This is just one of those things that I need to be patient with.

Nice job. It's really great when you feel proud of yourself after meeting a benchmark. Especially since this journey started with pain and resentment toward the benchmark you've now met and feel good about. Keep up the good work. After 43 weeks I can tell you there will always be ups and downs but the larger the number gets the more backbone you feel in your self esteem as you learn to stand taller.

I'm kind of tired of feeling sick. I have stomach issues every day with diarrhea each morning and sometimes twice per day. Lots of fatigue. A lot of people think it's stress. Idk. The only thing really stressing me out is that bachelor party I think. It really took a lot out of me.

I agree. The one thing I'm liking is that I'm not getting brutally depressed about all of this right now. For some reason I'm letting a lot of these stressors go and acknowledging that they're not my problems, my fault, or require me to care. I'm more positive and confident. For some reason this has really clicked with me this week. The idiot at work and my family isn't even bothering me either. I think the exercise, hobbies, and schedule I've created has really helped. I'm also trying to socialize less with the people I dislike. It's interesting that I'm now 3 weeks into this mindset and I usually change each week. It's making me wonder if I even need medication for depression.

I'm going to tell that guy tonight that I'm not being his best man. Fuck this. I am tired of doing things for the sake of others at my expense. Fuck that.

I found a few YouTubers have been helpful. I think Graham Stephen has been helpful. I don't think Ryan Scribener is helpful. They both desperately want attention, but Ryan is fake and Graham is more authentic. There are others online who can give decent advice. I wouldn't believe in any specific stocks they suggest because it could be a way for them to influence people to invest in their stocks.

I agree. I may have spoken out of anger for most of my posts this weekend regarding socializing and personality types. Just unfortunate that I was surrounded by these people and I'm trying to actively remove them from my life. I like where my life is at for the time. I like boxing, rock climbing, and working on my cartoon. It's nice. I like socializing with a few people and I'm learning I don't want to date right now. I've been pretty happy for the past 2 weeks. I also generally only post on people's threads who post on mine. I used to actively post on multiple threads but I don't think many people share the same interest in helping you as you do in helping them. But I appreciate the journaling process in monitoring my progress.

Thanks for replying. I also find this website to be kind of hollow as well with support. I've become more and more detached from it recently. I don't think we should feel bad for leaving people behind who are complete shut ins. I don't think they offer us a quality of life that is worthy of anything at all. I've just found myself to be so alone and I'm tired of it. I am beginning to hate my introvert friends because they don't appear to care about me or know how to communicate and I'm tired of being the one who digs for reasons, trying to understand them and why they can't communicate, and always having empathy for them with those reasons. I just want some people to care about me and make me feel important rather than a punch line of my own stupid story that I've been experiencing the past few years. I'm tired of just complaining about stupid things in my life and people just laugh instead of understand the pain behind my jokes. I tell the jokes to make myself feel better.

I'm 43 weeks free of gaming and I feel like it has really opened my eyes about people, life, lifestyles, and purpose. One of the issues I'd like to highlight this week is that I've constantly been complaining about fake people. I think I have multiple "friends" who put zero effort into any friendships. These people are the introverted, meek, shut ins who do not socialize with others, don't talk to others about their problems, and don't talk to you about yours. Zero effort and pathetic altogether. I have so many friends who are addicted to video games who just work 8 hours a day, play video games 8-10 hours a day, and sleep the remainder. They make no effort to socialize, mate, or improve their lives or fix their problems. They just escape into this cesspool called the internet where they can hide from everything instead of face their problems. I'm fucking tired of being involved with people who have no social skills whatsoever. Just garbage. I'm going to highlight an example of this. I accepted being the best man at my acquaintance's wedding this November. I want to highlight that I used the word "acquaintance" and not "friend". I have known this person for 9 years now. We have had 10 phone conversations this year, 0 in 2018, 0 in 2017, 3 in 2016, less than 5 from 2013-2015. We only hang out at giant barbecues and holiday parties myself or friends have thrown and hosted. He doesn't communicate or put any effort into his other friends either. Nobody talks to him. He makes no effort to reach out and doesn't tell you anything in his life. The consequences of this is that he hasn't received any acceptance RSVPs for the wedding. Only 3 people accepted. His own cousin, who he wanted in his groom party, asked me if I was a real person because the groom "has no friends and he didn't believe we were real". Who says that? Who does that? This weekend was a disaster because my other friend and I were stuck planning his bachelor party. We planned an amazing 4 day spread. We camp on Thursday night, morning hike to see the sunrise on a beautiful and easily hike-able mountain, brewery tour on a tour bus for 4 breweries including dinner at a top notch restaurant, sky diving, camping, nice restaurant, a harbor cruise at sunset, dinner at a 5 star restaurant in the city overlooking the skyline, and ending with a nice toast to a future. The weekend was ruined. He and his sister canceled the hike, the harbor cruise, the camping, the eating at restaurants, and the skydiving was canceled due to inclement weather. All we did was a fantastic brewery tour that my friend organized, a shitty indoor skydiving trip, and lunch at the wrong restaurant. And the funny thing was that the other people in the wedding party kept asking "What are we doing next?". HAAHAHAAHA.........!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are doing nothing because they were fucking canceled! I don't want to be the best man anymore. I did it out of pity because he has no friends. On top of that, his wife to be is A FUCKING FAT CUNT. Complete piece of shit. She forced him to move almost 1,000 miles away from home. He settled with her and she's just a trash heap. Controlling personality, a bully to him to get what she wants, and has cheated on him. He has given up and won't try dating anyone because he can't communicate. I'm tired of being associated with meek losers who hide behind the computer and can't communicate. These people who don't care about making friends or living life. Just what their guild, character, gaming community, favorite streamer, or subreddit is up to. Nothing else. Stop fucking hiding and live your fucking life no matter how hard or easy it is. I've had to deal with this revelation that most of the people I met from college are these personality types. My goal over the next couple years is finding the handful of real friends who listen to you, share their life with you, and value you. Social media and the internet have turned friendship into a numbers game and not a valued service. People care about followers, likes, friends list sizes, and influence. This has resulted into people becoming selfish and unaware of how to communicate with others. Friendship has diminished and I'm tired of being around it. I now have to wrestle with the decision of canceling my role as best man for someone I've talked to less than 30 times in the past 5 years. Should be a no brainer, but is it? His life is miserable and he's lost. A real friend would help him through it. That's the struggle. I also don't want to hear about someone being offended that I criticized them for being a reddit and gaming lark.

Great job with this. I, along with multiple people in our situations, have the same issues with anxiety, depression, and hypochondria. Anxiety causes all of it. Gamers have high anxiety because of how demanding it is and how it can bombard our minds while doing real life issues. Most gamers are tricked because they relax and feel they escape their stress in games, but that turns to toxicity after a while because if the game goes bad on top of real life then that's two worlds destroyed for them. I'm also seeing a doctor next weekend regarding medication. Although I've been boxing, rock climbing, and socializing more and my stress has gone down big time. I haven't felt depressed in weeks after reaching my lowest point 3 weeks ago. I've also been able to work on hobbies and give myself a break when needed. Take your time, try not to worry. Live your life and through living you'll begin to crave activities. I saw a boxing studio and felt the need to exercise because of stress. I'm now training 2 hours a day there. It's amazing.

Hope you feel better soon and find an answer. Deal with your issues 1 by 1 and don't put the world on your shoulders regarding finishing these goals and fixing yourself right away. Be patient and know this is your journey now. You're also allowed to enjoy life in different ways on the journey when available. You got this.

Thanks for sharing. The awkward moment at work happens to all of us. My strong advice is to never date at work. You never know if they'll say something behind your back, rumors spread, they try to get you in trouble with human resources, etc. Plus, you never know if your coworker is an impulsive and immature moron. It could create lots of office drama that poorly affects your work. Based off of experience, even if she asks you out on a date, don't do it. It's tempting because you are lonely, but the mental stress from it is crippling sometimes and can create a great deal of anxiety. You're not a fool for putting love first. The reason humans are alive is to reproduce and create more humans. Technically your priorities are good lol. All of us on this website are struggling with new goals because they're new, hard, and challenge our former beliefs in life. Take a deep breath and try to appreciate all of the effort you've put into yourself and your goals. Find some activites to take your mind of them as well. I've been trying to fix myself less and schedule more activites to bolster the change I wanted to make.

Could you elaborate on things that are not in order, how they fell apart, and what you can do to put them back in order or create a better order with safe-fails to prevent the same mistakes from happening?

Today is 42 weeks game free for me. I got over the workplace drama that I'd been going through and thankfully feel a lot better about it. I then went and played tennis with my two friends. I want to ask this girl out on a date. I think we're very compatible and I get along with her family as well. We'll see what happens with it. I spent today working with my friend on the cartoon we've been creating. We spent 8 hours writing and drawing and it felt great. I really enjoyed it. I then spent a few hours complaining with my friend about this stupid bachelor party we've been planning. It's next weekend and has been a complete disaster, but I'm not letting that affect the weekend I've had so far. I'm very happy with the progress I've made with socializing and hobbies along with my progress moving on with the work stuff. I also had a good time rock climbing as well.

Dude, that's awesome. I've been about 42 weeks clean this Saturday. It's amazing how much your life changes. Good luck with everything.

Thank you. I've had some friends tell me how their lives have improved from medication and I just know I'm not improving right now. I'm no longer addicted to games, but I'm so destroyed mentally and have no outlet. I'm gonna try boxing, but I don't even have the heart to go there.