GrainSiloEnthusiast

When I have the time I think I will re-read this journal to see where I was at and how much has changed since I was last here. Clearly though I never did do a full year of no gaming as I had intended in that last post before I left...

Posted a reintroduction in the intro branch of the forum, I'm going to cross-post it here: Hello, my name is Ari, and I am a gaming addict. I've been here before, but I believe it's been at least two years since I last stepped foot here. I learned to moderate and game responsibly, but I've realized I just like my life better when I'm not gaming regularly. As summer started to come around I realized I craved another detox, and at the end of May 31st I committed myself to no gaming until at least September 1st. I'm not going to make any huge goals such as never gaming again under any circumstances, not right now anyway. But I do think I'd prefer to no longer game as a solo activity. I want my "me time" to be spent in better ways, such as drawing and coloring. Playing local multiplayer with my wife or a group of friends is such a different experience from the reclusive nature of my single player gaming. (I haven't played MMOs in years and have no intention on playing them again, they were never really my "drug of choice" anyway.) For at least the duration of this detox though, I will not be playing any video games at all. In the time between last using this site and now I have also given birth to a daughter, she is now 8 months old. I want more than anything to be a good example for her, and I want her relationship to video games to either be healthy or nonexistent. I have 19 full days of no gaming currently, working on day 20 today. I intend to get back to making journal entries on that side of the forum. It is a pleasure to meet you all, or perhaps see you again if we have met before! I wish you all the best of luck.

Hello, my name is Ari, and I am a gaming addict. I've been here before, but I believe it's been at least two years since I last stepped foot here. I learned to moderate and game responsibly, but I've realized I just like my life better when I'm not gaming regularly. As summer started to come around I realized I craved another detox, and at the end of May 31st I committed myself to no gaming until at least September 1st. I'm not going to make any huge goals such as never gaming again under any circumstances, not right now anyway. But I do think I'd prefer to no longer game as a solo activity. I want my "me time" to be spent in better ways, such as drawing and coloring. Playing local multiplayer with my wife or a group of friends is such a different experience from the reclusive nature of my single player gaming. (I haven't played MMOs in years and have no intention on playing them again, they were never really my "drug of choice" anyway.) For at least the duration of this detox though, I will not be playing any video games at all. In the time between last using this site and now I have also given birth to a daughter, she is now 8 months old. I want more than anything to be a good example for her, and I want her relationship to video games to either be healthy or nonexistent. I have 19 full days of no gaming currently, working on day 20 today. I intend to get back to making journal entries on that side of the forum. It is a pleasure to meet you all, or perhaps see you again if we have met before! I wish you all the best of luck.

More gaming dreams @__@

Today is day 78. Wow. I decided to aim for a whole year game-free. While I still have the intention to never play again, breaking it down into smaller chunks is more manageable. I bought a word search book from the dollar store. I feel like such a hipster, opting for a physical version of something very easy to get digitally and for free. But I knew I desperately needed more off-screen activities, and I missed doing word searches! Maybe I'll try crossword puzzles and sudoku too... I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks. I absorb the information better when listening to books as opposed to trying to read them myself, I have a lot of struggle trying to read big walls of text, and have a tendency to skim when I try to. I blame the ADHD, and the internet. But whatever works, works! I've read two addiction memoirs in the last week and one of them was particularly inspiring: A Piece Of Cake by Cupcake Brown. Thank god for the speed modification setting on Libby, I can listen much faster than people talk, and that book was a good 20something hours long. I was also able to get through The Shallows by Nicholas Carr in one night on 3x speed. Thought provoking stuff! While listening to audiobooks I tend to draw. Still mandalas usually. Every now and then I sketch out something from real life as to maintain my ability to do that. Even rarer than that, I'll sketch out something from my imagination, typically something I have drawn from reference before. I doodled a coffee to go cup on the cover of my sketchbook last night, just a light pencil sketch, and I'm going to personalize the cover eventually anyway so it'll likely be painted over. Oh yeah, and I made a website via WordPress. An art blog. I like WordPress a lot so far, much different than the microblogging social media platforms, a lot less pressure to be something I'm not. Love the url I snagged- arioctober.art.blog! That's a domain I would have forked money over for, but it was free! 🙂 Wife still plays Roblox and Minecraft with her nephews, but I don't mind. She doesn't have anything better to do and those boys really need the attention. It's fun having them on call, too. I get to be a part of the conversation and I don't even need to be gaming with them to do so. She doesn't let gaming get in the way of our relationship either, unlike me. I really wish those boys could come visit or we could visit them, so we could all get out of the house and into the real world together. Damn this COVID nonsense!!!

I would be interested in hearing more about your beliefs, I enjoy learning about other religions and cultures. Here or private message, either is fine, whatever you're most comfortable with! I'm very glad I didn't offend you because you are right that truly is not my intention, I just needed to get those things off my chest. It's always good to hear from you and I'm very grateful for your reply 🙂

Today is day 70. Despite everything, I still haven't gamed. I've considered it, then remembered that I will just get bored immediately. And if I don't, I'll just start spending all day gaming and not doing anything productive which will just make me feel worse. That's actually why I asked the question, what do mentally stable people do, because I realized all my go-to "coping" mechanisms for despair are all very unhealthy behaviors. I used to cut myself, hit myself, have meltdowns, game the days away, scroll the days away, binge watch the days away, spend money frivolously, use drugs or alcohol, essentially prostitute myself to get drugs and alcohol +an excuse to leave the house, fantasize about killing myself, fantasize about running away... I'm sure there's more but I'll leave it at that, that's plenty of examples. What the hell am I supposed to do when life gets this turbulent???? I don't want to do any of the things that normally make me feel good, and those things usually don't cut it when I feel this bad. All I want to do is lash out and be destructive. Warning, possibly offensive rant about spirituality and religion ahead! It really does not help that my "spiritual" beliefs (or lack thereof) cannot see "god" as a loving, caring thing. ""God"" is just everything that is, the thing that binds us all together, the giant supercomputer that is the collective consciousness of the omniverse. It doesn't care about me. It doesn't "love" me. It won't help me. My mom likes to say "there's a nice god out there, pray to that one!" But that's not how it works. I can't believe in faerie tales anymore. I can't be friendly with a god that killed my baby. That allowed several people close to me to be victims of human trafficking. And yes, god IS responsible for that. I fucking HATE when people say "god didn't do that (bad thing we don't like)" OH REALLY? THE OMNIPOTENT OMNIPRESENT ENTITY THAT LITERALLY MAKES UP ALL OF EXISTENCE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE? But you'll let it take credit for the good shit? Spare me your willfull ignorance. God lets us suffer. I know the way christianity is written makes it easy; god: good, satan: bad, but that shit is SO ridiculous on so many levels and I'm not really here to shatter people's worldviews (or just offend them, because belief is a powerful set of rose coloured glasses) so I'm not going to go any further into That mess. Plus that's just the most powerful religion, not the only one, but I don't connect to Anything. Judaism was working out okay but I didn't feel connected to the local community and my only other option was the Orthodox crowd. Not gonna happen, I'm a lesbian married to a goyishe woman lol. Plus all the mitzvot really ramped up my religious OCD! Which haha funny enough I STILL HAVE. Probably a large part of why I think god actively hates me rather than is just neutrally experiencing my life the same as it is with all other lives. The closest thing I can connect to is Buddhism, but Buddhism doesn't lie about the way things are, it magnifies those things even. Attachment leads to suffering? Amen to that.

A lot of things. My baby is uh still dead and that's still a fresh wound that was recently reopened because I only Just had my menstrual cycle again for the first time since the surgery to remove the pregnancy remnants. Constant arguments with my partner about seemingly everything. Relapsed on marijuana not too long ago, after 20 months of no drugs or alcohol at all, quit again immediately but its been trying to pull me back in. Nope, not even sure when that will be an option either. Therapists are pretty busy right now given Everyone is suffering and going stir crazy... And I'm picky. A bad therapist is worse than nothing in my case, learned the hard way. The guy I found that really worked for me moved to private practice and no longer takes my insurance :')

how do mentally healthy people cope with despair? i am not mentally healthy, my mind immediately wants to run away, kill myself, use drugs, spend excessively, ANYTHING to escape. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

I forgot to mention, I picked up a new hobby: bullet journaling. Well, kind of. I don't really use the "bullet" part (because bullet journaling actually refers to a method of journaling, it's not referring to the dotted notebooks most people use.) I have mostly just been doing the trackers and what not in a dotted journal. I have habit trackers, a daily memories log, and a gratitude log. I do also make a monthly calendar to track events and things I need to do on certain days, but I don't really use my journal like a weekly planner. I'm still figuring out what works for me, which is why it's good I started in the middle of July. a lot of people say that if you want a bullet journal just start immediately, starting in the middle of the month is a great opportunity to learn what you do and don't like. I know I don't need a weekly planner because I don't work or go to school, and for the most part I keep track of upcoming events in my phone and tablet. I do really like the trackers and the memories/gratitude lists. I am hoping that by the time I'm starting my August spreads, I will have a better idea of how to organize things. I have a sleep graph but I'm definitely just going to turn that into a sleep log next month. As cute as the graph is, it's just a little silly and complicated.

Today is day 52. I've been hanging in there. I don't really have any desire to play games. When my detox is up I do plan on installing a mahjong app, but as I've said before I don't really count digital versions of games that have physical real life counterparts as video games. (Not to say they can't cause problems, there are people addicted to online chess. But they have never been a problem for me personally, and I don't really feel like buying a real life mahjong set hahaha.) I sent my clean date for drugs on July 5th. I only smoked on June 30th and July 1st but the brain fog continued for several days after I decided to quit, when I woke up on July 5th I finally felt clean again, so that's the day I chose. My relapse has actually shown me how much the people in narcotics anonymous genuinely care about me. Before my relapse I thought everyone would be disappointed in me, but that was not at all the case. Of course they felt bad for me, but they were very sympathetic. Everyone tells me they appreciate my blunt honesty. I am not the only person for whom relapse is part of their story. I've always told people coming back in that relapsing does not magically dissolve all the clean time they had before that. Despite the fact that they have now broken their streak and must start over, all the time they have clean cumulatively still counts for something. Any time you spend clean headed and free of drugs is time that you are living in the real world and learning and growing. Even during our relapses we learned valuable lessons. Even the worst of things are opportunities for learning and growing. These things are also applicable to video games. Even if you slip up and go back to your old behavior, you can always quit again. All the cumulative time you spend without gaming is valuable time, no matter how frequently you break your streaks. Think of all the productive things you've done without games and remember that those things would never have happened if you did not stop gaming for that period of time. Every little good thing counts, please always remember that. It is much like something I heard a zero-waste vlogger say, "you can't do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good you can do."

We, my wife and I, relapsed. Not on video games. We smoked weed. Yesterday, first time, was fine. Good even. Today, as I expected would happen soon or later, I took it too far and got too high and freaked out. I had that rock-bottom spiritual awakening my mom warned me comes not when everything is fine and dandy but when we've lost everything. I'm still in the process of coming down and I feel shaken to the core. I finally remember why I quit in the first place. "god" picked me up by the shoulders and shook me, showed me exactly what I'm messing with. As terrifying as this night has been, I do not regret what I did. I needed a big fat dose of reality, which surprisingly came in the form of unreality. May I never forget what this night has taught me.

I'm having a dark night of the soul. I don't know if this forum helps me at all either...

We made the choice to let go. I'm going to log out of here for a while.

My wife and I are strongly considering giving up on trying to have a child. We both want a child intensely, but we're not sure we want to go through everything again. There's also undeniable freedoms that come with not having children... Everything sucks and everything is difficult. I want to disappear. Still don't want to game though, silver lining i guess lol...

Hard agree. Been there done that, long distance sucks. Trust me, you don't really know the person until you've met them in person. Some people have made it work, good for them. But I would argue that the majority of the time it's not a good idea. Long-distance friendship sure, keep it platonic until you can actually spend a significant amount of time with them in person.

I recommend something like taking up an instrument or drawing, some sort of creative endeavor that doesn't involve screens. I know that creating a documentary is a creative endeavor, but I know a lot of it involves computers and stuff. Now, don't be afraid that you don't have "talent", talent doesn't matter. Some people are naturally gifted, but it doesn't matter how gifted you are if you don't work. I know from personal experience. Once I stop being better than all the other kids, I let that get to me and I stopped drawing. I had to work really hard just to get back to being average. Playing instruments, drawing, painting... Stuff like that... It's primarily skill and basically anyone can learn. People without arms have learned to paint with their feet. So don't be making up excuses! #MAKEBADART. Without bad art there would be no good art. Mistakes lead to success. When you frame it right mistakes can be a part of success! Some of my favorite pieces have aspects of them that were originally mistakes. The Art of Mistakes by Melanie Rothschild is an excellent book on this topic. I highly recommend any sort of craft that keeps your hands busy. Not just playing music or drawing or painting, those are the first things that come to mind because those are what I do, but things like crochet as well... Origami, scrapbooking, you name it! Get busy with your hands. Keeping your hands busy is so integral to fighting addictions, and dealing with things like depression and anxiety. Gaming kept our hands busy, but now we can't game. For me personally, playing the kalimba is a really good replacement for gaming. I hold it in my hands much like a controller, and get instant satisfying sensory feedback when I pluck the notes. Kalimba is also a great instrument for beginners, and is relatively cheap. Sorry for writing a novel in your journal but I hope that you might find this helpful in some way!

Today is day 34. Today I bought a new sketchbook. Although I have another sketchbook already, it is a mixed media sketchbook that I will primarily use alcohol markers and watercolors with... Therefore it's not great for art on the go, and I needed something for on the go. So we went to Hobby Lobby and I picked up a cheap 5.5''x5.5'' (~14cm x 14cm) sketchbook that fits nicely in my little backpack and it doesn't feel "precious" at all so I'm less afraid of "ruining" it (with my "shitty" art lol.) Right now my only goal on my goal tracker app is for my detox. I'm not ready to jump into another commitment to draw every day right now... But hopefully I'll still end up drawing consistently anyway. I have been genuinely enjoying doing it, so that helps. I can't think of any other goals I want to set either... I don't want to put too much on my plate. I'm still pretty fragile emotionally and I've been feeling particularly overwhelmed the last few days.

Thank you so much! Yes indeed they are reminiscent of fractals aren't they? Fractals are super cool 😄

That means a lot to me actually, thank you so much!

Here are some samples of what I did over the last couple days, 5 of which are from today. Apologies for the not so lovely photo quality, I typically edit my art photos in Snapseed so they look more professional but I just didn't feel like it, especially considering I took all the pictures today and I was busy. Needless to say they all look better in real life lol.

Today is day 33. Nice. Today I set an intention to finally finish up this sketchbook. There is now only one page left, and with how I've been banging stuff out I know that won't be a problem at all. I've already filled 5 pages today. I have been mainly doing lazy mandalas and sketch pages. Anything is better than nothing imo. Not everything has to be a perfect finished piece, and I mean it is literally a sketchbook. Enjoying the process is the most important thing to me. EDIT: It's done. I finally did it! It technically took me over a year, I officially started this sketchbook on March 3rd 2019, but about 4/5ths of it was filled between May 17th 2020 and today, June 23 2020. Procrastination sure is a bitch lol.

Today is day 32. I'm writing this from my new (to me, used) tablet. I decided I would experiment with keeping the web browser. I did get the tablet in order to replace my need for the desktop computer in most situations, so keeping the web browser only makes sense. If the googling gets out of control again, I will have to reconsider. I will continue to only have utilitarian apps on my phone though, which means when I am out and about I will have no choice but to be in the real world. Luckily we spend a lot of time out and about lately, we've been going on a lot of drives to stave off the cabin fever from quarantine. We've had some pretty cool adventures. I just realized I need to install my screen time app... And some sort of blue light filter... Off to do that I guess. EDIT: One huge benefit to using the tablet over the computer is being able to actually quantify my total screen time. As of right now there aren't any PC apps that track screen time the same way as the app I like to use for my phone and now tablet. Tracking it helps me to minimize it.

Nope, that's what my brother is doing though! I'd have plenty of advice for getting started if I ever needed it 😄

Today was day 30. Already past midnight, so it's technically day 31, but I just realized I got 30 days! I'm 1/3 of the way through the first 90 days! My first detox was a 30 day mini detox. I wonder how many days free of gaming I would be had I quit for good back then... We live and we learn. I don't really regret even the time spent wasted because of the valuable lessons I can take away from it. My cravings to game are relatively infrequent and I am able to escort them out quite quickly. They happen most often when I am bored and restless. I don't miss gaming at all. The benefits far outweigh the few good things I reminisce about. Today I filled 9 pages in my sketchbook with lazy mandalas. Lazy mandalas are a lot more than I'd be doing if I was wasting my time gaming. I'm trying to do quantity over quality for now, I've noticed that when I try to bang them out real fast it frees me up and lets me just enjoy the process. I have realized I've been trying too hard to make my works something special, when what really matters is that I'm having a good time creating. Even though I do want to make a career out of my art, it's not like my life depends on it or anything, I am so privileged to have this flexibility. My days are too numbered to turn my passion into a chore. I have to remember why I started drawing in the first place, because I loved to do it.