GrainSiloEnthusiast

Couldn't have done it without y'all!!! 🤗

I am proud to announce... I have now gone an entire year without gaming! Reflections on this feat: > I didn't know how to live without video games before my first-ever detox (which had lasted 30 days) and after returning to moderate consumption, my relationship to games was permanently changed. An entire year without gaming has shown me that there is so much more to life beyond games, and I never have to go back to my old way of living! > This is my 3rd? detox. My first was 30 days, the second was 60+ (I was shooting for 90 and gave up some point along the way.) After reaching 90 days this third time around I decided to shoot for the moon and go a whole year. The success has left me wanting more, more and more time without gaming. > My recovery from drug addiction through Narcotics Anonymous is what allowed me to realize gaming was a problem in my life. Being clean from games feels a lot like being clean from drugs! It goes to show, it's not about what you use, but your reaction to it. I cannot game and have a stable life, in the exact same way that I cannot use mind altering substances recreationally and have a stable life. > Despite art-making being my biggest passion, when I game it's the first thing to go out the window. I only have so much time in a day, and especially now that I have a family, I have to be really mindful about how I allocate my time. > I'm a better partner and a better mom when I don't game. Gaming pulls me away from the people I love and makes me aggressive when I'm interrupted. When I'm gaming all I can think about is video games, so it distracts me even when I'm not playing too! > I thought winter would be harder. And yes I did watch a lot more TV and use my phone a lot more in the winter, but I didn't game. Previously that was unthinkable! Turns out, I actually love winter. I went into it with a mindset of hibernation, I allowed myself to slow down and prioritize rest. And when I did go outside and do things? Turns out I even enjoy the way the snow alters the landscape in every way, even influencing how I navigate my city! I paid a lot more attention to winter this year, and there is so much to enjoy about it that I previously wrote off. > I know there's a bunch of money that would have gone towards gaming that instead went to better things! We even sold our consoles, which meant more money in our pockets! Gaming is an expensive addiction!! > I've felt isolated when other people game around me. Rather than relapsing, I excused myself and went for a walk, and reflected on my thoughts and feelings. I don't drink even when people drink around me, and I don't game when people game around me, either! It can be hard, but it's worth it. > I still have relapse dreams. I still find myself nostalgic for games that I deeply loved. But the same is true for drugs, and I don't do either anymore. Thoughts aren't actions! The dreams are a wonderful reminder of why I don't do these things in waking life anyway, they always leave me feeling super relieved when I wake up! > Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. These things don't just keep me from using vices, they improve my quality of life all-around. I don't tell a bunch of little white lies anymore, I don't spare feelings just to spare feelings. Telling the truth is scary and sometimes difficult, but I've found it's far more satisfying. I used to be a people-pleasing compulsive liar, but very recently I've sworn to stop and it's already made a huge positive impact on my life. > I believe in myself more than I ever have before. I never thought I could do this. This is the longest I have ever gone without gaming IN MY ENTIRE LIFE since I started, and I started when I was like 5? or maybe even younger! I wonder how different my life would have been had I never started. But now I have a chance to make up some of that lost time, and I'm gonna hold tight to it.

My cats were a tuxedo, a tonkinese mix (same litter as the tux!!), And a dilute tortie. I say were because we rehomed the tuxedo recently. She is now my friend's emotional support cat!! The instrument I mainly play is the kalimba 🙂 ❤️

My average screen time the last 7 days has been 49 minutes! It had been 2.5 hours before I started my goal to not use my phone around my daughter. Even though a lot of that screen time had been reading, I'm trying to either listen to audiobooks or actually get paper books from the library.

78 days without Reddit! 6 days of avoiding using my phone around my toddler! And averaging about 1 hour of phone time total. I also have an unofficial goal to only watch 1 episode of TV a day, which I am flexible with because some days I don't watch any TV at all. I have definitely stopped binge watching, that's for sure. Last but not at all least... 11 months without gaming since May 1st!

On May 1st it will be 11 months since I last touched a video game. I've really been missing building in The Sims and it's still something I go back and forth about doing once my year long detox is over. Even though there's a couple other games I miss, I know my life is better for not gaming. I don't like who I am when I game. There's so many other things I want to do and I won't have time for those things if I'm gaming. Because I can argue that using The Sims for house building, and Only for house building, is a creative and productive activity... I need to set boundaries so that it doesn't turn into a full blown relapse if I do decide to use it. I have decided that, as long as I work within the boundaries I am setting for myself, using The Sims to build will not count as a relapse for me personally. (Drawing comparisons is something I do that helps me make sense of things. The best comparison I can draw between this and my drug addiction recovery is: I am allowed to use medications, even if said medications do technically get me "high" under the right circumstances, correct dosages, with supervision. As long as I know I am using the substance responsibly, I do not consider it a relapse. I was on opiates for weeks after my C-section and I did not consider that a relapse. It did not Feel the way a relapse Feels. This is an example of using drugs as a tool, the healthiest way to use them.) Boundaries for using The Sims as a design tool: >No "live mode". Build mode only. >Only when daughter is at school or otherwise out of the house. >Partner gets first dibs at the computer, because it is her computer. >Still not allowed to consume Sims content for entertainment (streams/YouTube/etc.) >Have an idea or plan before starting. Don't use this as a way to muck about and waste time. Having fun is allowed but it needs to be a byproduct and not the goal itself. >Keep a written record of projects for accountability purposes. (...I'm actually having a hard time coming up with things? If anyone has any further ideas I'm up for hearing them.) If it still feels like a relapse even with all of these boundaries in place, I will have to remove The Sims completely from my life again and reset my clean time! Hopefully it won't be that way if I do decide to do this, but that's the risk I'm taking.

Have to admit, feeling quite triggered by being in the same room as my wife while she plays Stardew Valley (one of my favorite games) with her nephew. I try to remind myself that I barely have time to do the things I currently want to do, I have nowhere to fit gaming into my schedule without sacrificing the other things I want to be doing more.

31 days without Reddit! (Not to mention... Coming up on 11 months without video games!) I still need that site blocker for sure, I accidentally click on it ALL THE TIME. Leaving Reddit will likely be permanent, much like my choices to leave Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Now that I've been away from it this long I can see it's not necessary and hardly beneficial to my life. Patience for any sort of moving pictures with sound is quite thin these days, be it online videos, shows, or movies. Even music I can only listen to when I'm in precisely the right mood for it! Very different from how I used to be. I crave peace, slowness, quiet. My favorite activities are reading, writing, drawing, and simply observing the real world. No doubt this has to do with raising a toddler... Self explanatory really. But with the weather changing... I find myself with more energy and I'm craving activity. Recently I bought a cheap kick scooter at a thrift store, took that out once last week and it was a blast. We also stumbled across MOUNTAIN BIKES in the shed, they're DIL's but we can use them, so I really want to get back into biking as well! I really want to lose some weight too... I'm still breastfeeding though which makes that incredibly difficult. Currently sitting on the borderline between healthy and fat, and I've always been skinny before. They're not kidding, pregnancy changes everything. I'm hoping just making some healthy changes now will contribute to the end goal when it becomes more feasible!

Staying off Reddit has helped me diversify where I get information from when I need to get an answer to a question! I used to always default to adding "Reddit" as a search term on Google when I wanted more "human" answers. Now as an alternative I use "blog" or "forum" instead. This is for more personal stuff, IE maybe things like spirituality, not scientific or news stuff. And yes staying off of Reddit has given me back a lot of my time, because the rabbit holes would always suck my time away before! Even time spent on my phone feels more productive than before. I tend to default to reading an ebook or something, rather than reading a bunch of nonsense that isn't even relevant to my life lol! I've drastically cut down on my YouTube consumption as well recently. I've found my patience for that kind of media is incredibly thin. It feels very bombarding to my senses, how every video tries to pack as much as possible into 10 minutes or less. When I want to just veg out and watch something, I have to put on an actual show or movie... And I am PICKY! None of that ADHD-triggering crap. Pacing, editing, focus... Those things are incredibly important to me and I am very sensitive about it. Switching from short-form to long-form media is really helpful for regaining an attention span, even if what you're consuming is purely entertainment. It's better to watch one long good movie than several YouTube videos in the same amount of time. Part of this whole revolution going on in my relationship to tech is me honoring my autistic body. I am learning to quicker recognize when I am getting overstimulated, and when I do I respect myself and simply turn the damn thing off!

20 days without Reddit! And it really has been as beneficial as I thought it would be.

I have to avoid YouTube and even Google search for the next few days, because I've been over-researching a personal thing and I'm finally going to talk to an authority on the issue on Thursday. This is gonna be hard for sure, wish me luck @__@

Today will be day 9 without Reddit!? This is turning out to be far easier than I expected it to be... Which really comes as a surprise. After the first few days I hardly even remember I ever used Reddit in the first place... I also try to stay away from sites like Quora, but I haven't banned it completely because that's not what I was compulsively checking. I actually have come to APPRECIATE the login-wall that comes up on Quora, where it forces you to sign in or leave? I don't currently have a Quora account and for the longest time the login-wall was so irritating to me... But now it stops me from easily going down a rabbit hole (which I did all the time when I had an account, just like Reddit.) It still tempts me with all of it's "related" links... But then the login-wall saves the day. How ironic is that? So far so good!

My wife has one, and after writing all that I asked if I could borrow it, she said yes! She hasn't been using it a lot lately 🙂 So I don't have to feel guilty for keeping it from her either haha

Today was day 3 without Reddit, and LeechBlock has saved my butt quite a few times already! I have clicked Reddit Google results without even realizing it's Reddit until the extension blocks it for me. (I read the blurb of the search results more than the titles, plus I skim very quickly and pick a result within seconds. Easy to miss what website something is on when I work in such a way! So far I have already noticed a general improvement in my well-being from avoiding just that one site. I'm still averaging 2-3 hours of screen time on my phone per day (which I want to work on decreasing) but that's actually way better than some of the days I was using Reddit... Nearly 6 hours one of the days last week! This is something I keep wrestling with. My Internet/ social media addiction is one I keep falling back into over and over again. I've been combatting this for YEARS! It doesn't help that those sites are literally designed to be addictive... I know though, that as the weather warms up, it will be easier and easier to get off my phone. I anticipated this struggle as winter approached and decided I'd go easy on myself since I am in the process of quitting gaming. I'm doing so awesome at that, 8 almost 9 months without gaming! My habits have changed significantly and I'm meeting way more of my goals. The only reason I don't make a screentime related goal is because I've been reading books a lot on my phone lately, and that can inflate the time a lot. I definitely don't want anything else holding me back from reading! I would be reading more paperbacks but with a toddler it's way more risky, phones can take a lot more of a beating than books can. I should see if my partner will let me borrow the e reader... Anyway I didn't intend for this to be so long, I just wanted to check in and let everyone know I'm doing okay with my new goal!

Announcing this here because... where else would I hold myself accountable? Feels relevant. I'm quitting Reddit, and this time I don't just mean deleting my account. I always still end up lurking and reading it, and it's better when I don't have an account, but I really need to completely remove myself from it now. I end up stumbling across things that make my blood boil, which sends me into fight or flight mode, which I get STUCK in sometimes for HOURS. This is so unhealthy! But it's also somewhat avoidable, so that's why I'm trying to quit. Something that I found to help me do this is the "LeechBlock" extension for Firefox, since it is available on Android that's what I'm going to be using to block the site entirely. I hardly ever use the computer anymore, and when I do it's for backing up or looking through photos. I'm also going to be using my Goal Tracker app to count the days I successfully stay off Reddit. Absolute bare minimum: 30 days. I know I can at least do that. Already been on Reddit a bunch today so I officially start tomorrow. If for some reason, the ONLY proper search result I need for something is on Reddit... I'm going to send it to my wife and ask her to give me a summary. Hopefully this won't happen that often. If I don't get on the site myself I won't count it against my goal, because if I don't get on the site myself I can't go down any rabbit holes (and I always do!) I've been able to successfully kick every other social media besides Reddit and YouTube. YouTube still has enough usefulness for me to not completely remove it from my life (at least not at the moment) but I have been actively cutting back on that as well lately. I just get tired of it, overstimulated, even when it's all wholesome and educational content. I'll let you all know how it goes ❤️

Welcome back, and best of luck!!! Yes you absolutely will feel better in a few days.

Well I was going to use that 3ds as a drawing tablet as I said... But I hardly touched it since that last entry and decided my partner needs the money more for fishkeeping. So we're selling both, and I'm letting her keep all the money in exchange for doing the labor of selling. I'm excited that my partner has recently got into fishkeeping and 3d printing. She also invested in an e-ink e-reader. Her antidepressants seem to be working and she is making use of it, she has been productive lately and her hobbies are a lot healthier than they used to be. Not to mention, her Betta is the cutest lil dude ever. Think I might be a fish person. My goal is still an entire year without video games, and I'm already more than halfway through that year. After that year is over (on June 1st) I will reevaluate my goals and intentions. The ONLY games I TRULY miss are The Sims 4, specifically the building aspect, and House Flipper. I'm sure I could theoretically moderate these games, and because they are creative outlets they never felt as much of a waste of time as other games. But regardless I am waiting until June to worry about that. I did play one round of a rhythm arcade game with my partner at the mall some time around the winter holiday. I don't consider that a relapse and it didn't damage my recovery, I had absolutely no cravings afterwards. I did approach the situation cautiously but decided to give myself a break and have a YOLO moment, and I'm glad I did. YMMV so don't take this as a free pass to mess with your own path. The house project has been underway for about a month now! Turns out DIL's ex-gf was a hoarder. They did a lot of the work for us by bagging up a lot of trash and donations thankfully... but we've already brought 1400lbs of TRASH to the dump (two very full truck loads.) As well as 4 truck loads of donations to thrift stores and charities! We still have work to do, but our bedrooms (yes, my partner and I get separate rooms!!!) and the main living areas are good to go! Recently I decided to take my art off the internet for at least a year. My only exception is the WetCanvas forum for critique, I'm not allowed to post in the name of trying to build a following anywhere. My reasoning for this is that I need time out of the public eye just for learning and growing. Unfortunately I suffer from people-pleasing tendencies and that causes me to fear making mistakes. But in the art world, mistakes are the most valuable tool for learning. That's why critique is such a big thing. Unless you take risks and just let yourself make bad, ugly art, you're never gonna get to the good stuff. I'm relating what I'm doing to going offline while entering art school in order to stay focused. Except I can't afford art school and frankly I'm too disabled so I don't have the energy for traditional schooling. I will essentially be homeschooling myself, though I might consider taking a few local classes that aren't super intensive. My silence on the forums isn't indictive of a backslide... It's because I'm out there in the real world living my life! I wish the same for all of you someday ❤️

As someone who also doesn't completely agree with the whole 12 step thing but still attends meetings... Yeah what I do is just reinterpret everything (even if it's a stretch lol) into something that makes sense to me. Like powerlessness? For me I interpret that as "I can't change the fact (I'm powerless over) that I'm already an addict, therefore I am unlikely to be able to return to the things I was addicted to without ruining my life." Basically, there are things in life I can't control, and myself around gaming (and drugs and alcohol etc...) Is one of them! But I do have the power to change. I believe in a "higher power" of sorts but not a sky daddy kind, and I feel like the most it can do is point me in the right direction. I have to do the work myself.

I feel you on that ice cream! It's just too good.

Hey everybody, sorry it's been so long. Back with an awesome update! 6 months free of gaming since the 1st, and we finally sold the Switch and all it's games and accessories today. Went to a girl around our age (twenties) who I think will really enjoy it (hopefully responsibly!) Got a nice chunk of cash for it, which we might be using to buy an e-reader! My partner and I both have been reading a lot lately, it'd be a good investment. I had previously actually sold the Switch to my partner (we don't share finances and probably never will, this works for us) so all the money was hers. She still gave me $20 cause I did all the footwork of selling it 🙂 We still have two 3ds's though. Since they're hacked we can't take them to the game shop or pawn shop. So we'd have to do another round of Craigslist. It's a bit stressful for us to do because we both have social anxiety, so we're not going to rush that. I actually got on mine and uninstalled everything that isn't an art related app. I figured, it's just a little computer, just like my phone is. How I use it is what matters. I have so many fond memories of drawing for hours on Colors3D (which is a drawing program and nothing but) and learning to paint on Art Academy (which truly is just an interactive virtual art class, it's not very "gamey" in any of the problematic ways.) So I'm going to try using my 3ds like a drawing tablet and see if that works. I don't have any game cartridges anymore and reinstalling games takes effort, I think I'll be fine. Just having a gaming system is not going to cause me to relapse since I literally still use the same smartphone and PC I used to game on. Besides, I like my new hobbies way more anyway. Still drawing and painting plenty traditionally. I even started using DeviantArt again haha. Recently we bought the bare minimum tools to start linocutting (stamp making) and both my partner and I have had a ton of fun doing that! My partner hasn't gamed in forever either, just happenstance. Well, she loaded up Minecraft today, we'll see if that becomes anything. We've definitely been spending a lot more time doing analog activities and spending time together as a family, and I'm happy about that. And finally... Dad-in-law broke up with his girlfriend. She and her three kids are moving out, so we get to move upstairs out of the basement in disrepair!! We're really excited about that. They leave at the start of January, and then we get to look through everything they left behind, declutter a bunch of crap, and then move our own stuff! I might be a weirdo but I actually love moving. Not that I've done it that many times in my life, that might be why. I'll check in on your journals soon. Hope you all are well!

Oh, something I've been meaning to share but keep forgetting to do so: I actually completed all 31 days of Inktober this year, which marks my first time ever. I used the JelArts' alternative prompt list, Jeltober, because the prompts just spoke to me more. Here is a link to my art blog post about it, which includes pictures of my 5 favorite illustrations from the challenge, as well as a Google Drive link to see the rest if you're curious. I absolutely could not have done this if I were still gaming. It was already extremely difficult to complete given all my other responsibilities, I know there's absolutely no way I would have been able to fit both gaming and such a time consuming art challenge. Knowing my tendency to take the path of least resistance, I would have quit within the first week and then filled all that other free time I carved out for Inktober with gaming. It is so, so, so incredibly worth it to trade your gaming time for passion project time!!! Go learn that skill you always find yourself lamenting not having, you will not regret it!!!

I ended my Art Supply No Buy early. I still got through most of the year and it taught me a lot, so I'm proud of that. But I found that allowing myself to buy art supplies again (and not nilly willy, I make intentional purchases now unlike before) has really helped get rid of my gaming cravings. All I want to do is arts and crafts!

I have already set up boundaries for my gaming in case of a relapse. Damage control. I was moderating before I did this detox so I know I can do it. 1) Only while daughter is at school or under someone else's care, 2) Only games that let me be creative, 3) Still no consuming gaming content on YouTube etc, 4) Must continue to make time for other hobbies/interests, 5) chores must still get done. This way even if I relapse I don't have to completely fuck up my life. But with all that being said, I don't want to relapse. My intention is to get through an entire year without gaming and then I will reevaluate my goals at that time. 1 year would end on June 1st 2023.

Genuinely worried I won't make it through the winter. Already definitely on my phone WAY more. My game plan is: Books, art, crafts, being more lax about screentime such as YouTube, spend as much time outside as I can tolerate... Will it be enough???

We're trying to save money to visit extended family in Texas, because our daughter's aunts and uncles and grandma on other mom's side have only met her through video call. Luckily they all live relatively close together down there. This gives us a really good reason to sell the consoles. I would absolutely rather go on that trip than game. Traveling is one of my top priorities in life, and considering how poor I am it's not something I get to do often! Just selling the consoles alone should buy us at least one of our plane tickets. Luckily our daughter flies free since she is still so little. We already know we can stay with her grandma, we just need the airfare and to know if grandpa can watch our cats while we're gone. This will probably work best if we wait until after he finally retires in December. Otherwise it's the "cat hotel" which is $60 a night per cat. We have 3 but one is currently dying, so we definitely need to wait until she passes. We want to be there for her when she leaves us. Funny how these things end up so interconnected. This plan really reminded me of my priorities.