Ikar

Day 98: I dodged an entry yesterday. We drank quite a bit, but not enough to knock me out the whole next day. I was resting the whole morning though (and even masturbated twice - it was an odd morning). I took a walk, cooked, wrote some people, got back on Tinder and cleaned my room. I feel better after today, I feel like I broke the slump. I have tomorrow off too, so I will execute more of the ideas I had planned. I have my focus back.

We can still keep it there for a while! I could copy what NannerZ wrote. I can also agree 100% on your first paragraph from my perspective. I enjoy your analytic approach to your own issues and the issues of others. I also hope your gf can find the courage to smartly contend with all the free time that she has been given, much like we did when we started the detox! Well done and good luck!

Day 96: I feel tired and I have a hard time focusing after work. I got some stuff done back home, I have been dodging that for several days. This scenario I put myself into is interesting, because I know I am tired after work, but I also do not feel justified to waste the rest of the day and I know that is the correct attitude. I might need a full day or two to set myself straight, to meditate and think, because I feel I am doing stuff haphazardly. I want to review these days when I get back home.

Day 95: I went to a bank to set up my account for the salary. Nothing too special otherwise. I wrote a lot today. I was cooking with mutually destructive results, but I had fun doing that. I had a thought in the morning I can command and control myself the most effectively of all people. I will try hard to make it so in my future workplace as a freelancer. Other than that, I am in Iceland for a month and it feels like I came here yesterday. Time lingers really only when you want it to. I will make the monthly report tomorrow.

Day 94: Normal day at work, went outside aftetwards and replied to the girls. I just got the thought, after working some 50 hours a week three weeks in the row (while being unemployed from almost a year ago and working part-time for the last 4 months, excluding gaming), I feel dissatisfied with being tired after work to shirk whatever comes after or at least not being as efficient. I have some a few cool ideas I want to implement and concepts to explore (either myself or through conversation). On the other hand, I am trading my time for money, which is not horrible either and I am 3/9 weeks done. As always, I am trying to work out how much of this is genuine and how much of this is excuse!

I was looking for virtually anything, but she never consciously made any effort to respond in a way to hold a conversation. It kind of sucks, because I will always symphatize with her in the same way I symphatize with my past gamer-self and I think she will suffer somewhat stupidly as I did in the past. But I can control only myself and not her, so that is why I drew the line now.

Day 93: I hanged out with the Icelander after work, we had a nice chilled late afternoon. Otherwise I have been busy replying to people basically the rest of the day.

Thanks for the post, I will try to elaborate my situation more clearly. I will see what I can do about the sex-related stuff if I am by myself right now, but I will research on it a bit more once I am in a relationship again! As for my ex, I really slowly began conceptualizing her as a person in distress rather than dating material quite early into the detox, because I knew that if there was something this wrong with me, there had to be something that wrong with her, otherwise we would not be together. The letter was more or less the "personal constitution"/"personal mission statement" of sorts, something you would get by condensing my diary. It would briefly read as this: "Hey! I think I fucked up in my past. I have this plan how to live my life here, so it does not happen again. I know you know/knew me before. Could you please give me your feedback? Thanks!" I actually would not mind sharing it here, though I would have to translate it. As for other relationships, I think they also either got better or got cut. I can actually say I am happy for my family and mean it at least a bit. Before it felt like a phrase and now I know why.

Day 92: We worked until lunch today. I was writing with a few people, otherwise I am fairly tired now (so the next lines might be a bit weird). I got through a week without ejaculatory masturbation and that is the whole gripe I think I currently have with masturbation in general. I want to really train it as a skill that will help me in my sex life. What girl would like to have a boyfriend with no endurance anyway? It feels funny writing about it, but I will try to put it up there with meditating, working out and language learning. Slightly related to that, I am done with my ex. I got no response for about 48 hours. It makes me wonder why she replied to the letter in the first place, but it does not really matter. In a year from now, I imagine I will be in a place, where I will be able to see incompabilities with girls and confidently say "no" to some of them. I believe I and my ex entered the relationship out of desperation (FINALLY meeting someone who UNDERSTANDS), when really every human is the same. We all worry about our families, friends and jobs. Some just do it better than others.

Day 91: I spent most of my day going to Keilir and back, probably about 25 kilometers total. After that, I had a beer in the evening.

Day 89: I am aware of the fact I missed an entry yesterday. I drinked socially a bit yesterday, but aside from that I did nothing of importance. Day 90: Standard Icelandic day, how I enjoyed it the most so far. Relaxed after work, wrote both the girls and the day is over pretty much like that. I will continue this diary. I will also write a monthly report sometime soon.

Hey, good to hear you were doing better yesterday. I have been meaning to sub a while ago, but I felt like I had too many journals to keep up with. Also, sex is good. Just so I actually react to something in the post! ?

Day 88: I had a massive headache for a good part of the day. I basically skipped lunch. I somehow managed though and relaxed outside, as the weather is nice now. I ate more in the evening to catch up with energy. I will sleep today more too. As I am writing this, I am finalizing my thoughts on the "poke". I think I want to establish a "mundane" conversation with her first, without doing anything too crazy. The mundane is, after all, that what matters the most, as you spend the most time doing it; family, work/school, free time. It should be taken seriously and that is what I will do.

I am glad people follow my journal and it is fine if they do not write, I also prefer to lurk (or be lazy to write anything sensible). I am not taking sides on the grudge between you and Matt. But I know I always get bummed when I follow someone's journal, come to a new post and then find out it was edited out completely, when the entire point of journaling is to track the progress, to not start seemingly completely anew every single day. It is fine to write literally whatever into your journal. It is also completely fine to leave something out if it is too personal or you do not want others to comment on your thoughts just yet, as unsolicited advice generally does not make friends. But do not edit out whole posts on a regular basis. It means you feel ashamed of yourself on a regular basis. Someone types faster than they think and that is fine, though it is better to avoid that (see "emotional vomit" by Mark Manson). Someone is trying to change their relationship with their ex and that is fine as well, though they have a bloody rough time doing that. We are all screwed up a bit differently. But be responsible for what you write. Own it. Accept it. Even if it is horrible. It is something and it is yours. And that is WAY better than having nothing. Perhaps you will laugh at it a few years from now, maybe it will remind you how lost you were and that you are better off now. But if you have no past, you have no future either.

Thanks! If you think you left out something crucial in that old post, feel free to post it now. As for my specific matters, I will post my plans here, as I already do and write about the results. Day 87: The work was fine, though I have the suspicion I feel a bit down the last few days. The weather outside strangely enough corresponds with that, it has been raining quite a lot. I wrote down a few more relationship thoughts. I responded to the girl and hanged out with an Icelander I met a week ago nearby. I just got back.

Day 86: I had an odd day at work, it felt a bit weird after the weekend. A new worker arrived, so I spent some time with him, introducing him to the site. He seems like a cool dude, though he cannot speak a Slavic language. I felt a bit out of focus afterwards and that made it harder to meditate and pay attention. I still got some stuff done and fell asleep outside for an hour or so. Not a bad day all things considered.

I would even say there is no "reward" per se, generally just less pain, but it is true the beginnings are the toughest.

Day 85: I started the day off by waking up, and well, masturbating. It kind of snuck back into my days. I cannot feel good about doing it, unless I do it long and consciously. It feels like one of those things I want to actually plan. I will commit myself to a fap-free week and see what happens then. I had the day off, so I visited a sight in the morning and walked about 10 kilometers. In the afternoon, we went to a swimming pool, so it was nice to hang out there as well. I translated a bit of Icelandic and took a personality test. I read and thought a lot today again and threw in the occassional chore for variety. I am trying to conceptualize what do I want from my future romantic partner and even read an old post by @Ambassador here on the topic. Oddly enough, I keep coming up with lot of ideas that can be refined. I might be a bit too obsessive about it, but as long as I am not hopeless and depressed about it, I think it is alright. I am in a good mood.

Day 84: We worked only till lunch today and I cooked soup afterwars. Therefore that gave me a lot of time to read and think. I went outside for a good hour too. Lately, I had the thought I have been shirking the diary. Today, I will try to probe my thoughts in a monologue rather than a dialogue. I have had a few moments of anxiety today, but I snapped out of it fairly quickly, reminding myself of the fact that things can always be worse or by quickly thinking of something useful that could be done. I think that especially today, I was trying to doubt my beliefs, actions and motivations. Oddly enough, I felt bad afterwards, as I could not punch a hole in my beliefs successfully. Motivations and actions were easier to doubt though. This obviously concerned the reason I contacted my ex. I came to the conclusion that my May letter was too rash, riddled with unsoliticited advice, even if it was sent with good intentions and good ideas. My plan is to poke her a bit the next week (90 days done by that point too), if she thought about the letter (which is really something as my personal constitution nowadays), because I spent about two weeks writing it myself and she already replied that she got it. I will try to primarily establish trust with her, see what is up with her and decide what to do. I hope I learnt my lesson. The chat with the Hungarian girl with the awfully similar experience is ongoing as well. It has been fun writing with her thus far. I find this "dating/relationship" plan is good as any, because I still have at least 6 weeks of Iceland, basically without a chance to see a girl. If any of the two aforementioned are reading this by some chance, all I have to say is this: Related to helping and connecting people in general, I decided to send my brother a postcard for his birthday. The other one was to invite everyone reading this to send me a PM, whenever they feel down, up, neutral or think I am an idiot, because GQ is about the community!

Day 83: I realized I missed a day earlier when I arrived to Iceland scrolling through the previous page. I meditated after work, cleaned my room and thought and wrote. I felt good today, enjoying the progress of my challenges rather than caring about the end results.

Day 81: I was tired after work, so I spent about two hours showering, cooking and eating pasta. I meditated outside for a while and finalized my reply to ex, as I try to be concise in my speech/writing. I spend a lot of time thinking and writing these days, so I will try to chop it up a bit tomorrow with some cooking and cleaning of my room.

Day 80: There has been nothing special happening at work today, except the fact that I got to ride on a tractor. I have been writing and thinking basically the rest of the day. My ex wrote me in response to my letter. Trying to get feedback on my life experience from two women at the same time is a new situation for me, even if there are no plans to see any of them now. I have to be vigilant.

Day 79: I put the phone across the room and got up as planned and used it to have time for some more morning activities. As I thought, I got better at vaccinating. I give it my best shot, admit my mistakes and move on. I am somewhat grateful for the fact I can already act independently, take responsibility for my actions and put in some good work, even if I am doing this for just a week. We always start off badly and improve on the go. I have also experienced gratitude for being responsible for myself. After work, I went for a walk and zoned out for a while. I also read some articles, but I feel like I should act more on them after I am done reading them, so I will keep it in mind and not browse them during breaks at work. I am currently working on the response to the girl.

Day 78: I woke up on time, but did not manage to do anything than to just lay down again. I will try to be an SOB and put the phone across the room. I got to vaccinate piglets today which was somewhat stressful and difficult, as they screak very loudly and it is not easy to hold an animal with a few kilos still with just one hand. I somehow managed in the end and I will get better and faster the next time. The girl wrote, so I think I spent two hours thinking and writing to reply her back. There is a lot of ground to cover. I am happy to have the diary around too for evidence for myself that I am genuine and consistent about my beliefs and actions. After that, I took a walk and I am just finishing some translation.

Nicely done on 90! Sure enough you feel a bit better about your life now ?