TTT

Day 63 (thu): Full day at work. Good before and after. Time for bed, and right on time. Habit Tracker: Good habits: 213; Procrastination: -810; Addictions: -70; Other bad habits: -23; Identity total: -690

Day 62 (wed): Did a controlled scan through a gaming website for about five-ten minutes at work. Boring. Came back from work and went on to another addiction. Habit Tracker: Good habits: 192; Procrastination: -790; Addictions: -70; Other bad habits: -23; Identity total: -682

Day 60-61 (tue): No games. Still running away from a few things though. Picked a new thing/hobby/skill and it ate my time the last two days. Needs scaling down. I finally found a few things to be collecting money towards as well. Need to be plus a lot and instead it's a lot in the minus. Habit Tracker: Good habits: 192; Procrastination: -772; Addictions: -68; Other bad habits: -21; Identity total: -669

Day 59 (sun): No games still for second month. No erotic stuff. Nothing bad except going to bed slightly later than I should have. Habit Tracker: Good habits: 161; Procrastination: -731; Addictions: -68; Other bad habits: -21; Identity total: -659 Did one of the two things, today (mon) to do one or two more.

Day 58 (sat): Good effort for most things. No games. Some erotic stuff. Finally did one of the procrastinating things, went down to 22 a day. Tons of good stuff today, yet total falls still. I like the direction of things, though. Habit Tracker: Good habits: 132; Procrastination: -712; Addictions: -68; Other bad habits: -20; Identity total: -668 Tomorrow: Do two more of the procrastinating list.

Day 57 (fri): Habit Tracker: Good habits: 105; Procrastination: -690; Addictions: -57; Other bad habits: -19; Identity total: -661 To use the counter right away with ok/not ok.

Day 56 (thu): Habit Tracker: Good habits: 98; Procrastination: -665 (ticking, -25); Addictions: -41; Other bad habits: -19; Identity total: -627 Got candles.

Day 55 (wed): All good. Correction for things that I had actually done for the procrastination counter. I can reduce the rate of increase for this so easily within one day... Habit Tracker (correction for holiday period): Good habits: 91; Procrastination: -640 (ticking, -25); Addictions: -41; Other bad habits: -18; Identity total: -608

Day 54 (tue): No games, no erotic stuff for last 19 days. Some not great food, quite a bit of coffee, a couple of alcoholic drinks. Good sleep. Habit Tracker (not really used last 19 days): Good habits: 84 (15n); Procrastination: -822 (ticking...); Addictions: -41; Other bad habits: -16; Identity total: -795. Sleep time now.

About Wed/34, that's what happens with copy/pasta+ cider, thanks for the note :) As for games, I think for me it's imprinted in the brain as route to life success, funny as it sounds. Back in school good marks were annoying work but fairly straightforward, games were challenging and life-focusing. So as a teen I learned that to be good at life means to succeed at a certain game I loved to play. Oversimplified, but gets the idea. Mixed with erotic stimulation, two addictions in one. It's a deep hole. Games are easy to stop for me, erotic stuff, not so easy. I hope a new system with the help of Atomic Habits should be able to help over time. Anyway, I need to get up early tomorrow, something I need to do with people I love, and they'll be around for 2-3 weeks, so this thing goes somewhat on pause. Although, ironically, I'm sure that other than coffee and maybe some wine or not that perfect food, I'll be easily addiction-free for the period. Although I won't have time to do much serious stuff, either. Day 35 (thu): Wow, I just thought that friday had passed and started writing about it. My brain is fried. Time to sleep. Considered paysing the Procrastination counter to actually enjoy more fully human closeness, but life doesn't wait. Causes and results. If I want a problem to go away, I need to get it fixed. Habit Tracker: Good habits: 69; Procrastination: -176 (never ends); Addictions: -41; Other bad habits: -16; Identity total: -152.

Sports as a stress relief sounds great. Boxing is great for the off-chance if would get useful and for confidence but I personally hate the idea of accumulating brain damage due to all the punches in the head. Have you considered any kind of acting? I do improv and it's a great opportunity to act absolutely ridiculous, funny, shout every now and then, and expend energy. Could be stressful though, but I like to think that this type of stress ends up building character. "they get offended and think I'm mad at them or something, which causes drama" - A possible answer: "Sorry dude, but I can't listen right now, I'm crazy about rock climbing. I'm in a selfish period, ok, I need my time for me." They start drama, you ignore it as you're full on focused on climbing (headphones, podcasts, etc), whatever they are pissed off about (being unable to leech your attention) is their problem. Not easy to do, but maybe possible. Seems like things are getting a bit better though, keep it up :)

Day 33 (wed): Addictive stuff: Three alcoholic drinks, but had with good reason, not regretting them. Coffee as well, which was quite useful. Erotic stuff yet again. Busy day, considering the set-up, but the things that I need to do aren't going away. Going deeper and deeper. WIth the stuff I need to do in the coming days, it will get silly in the minus, unless I manage to deal with the pending issues. Habit Tracker: Good habits: 69; Procrastination: -142; Addictions: -40; Other bad habits: -15; Identity total: -124.

Not really sure how to help with that. A thought though: somebody who wants to be helped will take weeks, months or years to deal with an issue (character flaw or misunderstanding of the world that brought them a problem). You have a finite number of years in your life. If you spend all your life tyring to help strangers (or pretend-friends) by listening as a friend and trying to help, investing all of your available energy and time, you will probably be able to help only a few people with a few things. Change is difficult for people who want to change and it is impossible for people who don't want to change. By listening to everyone's proplems, you are wasting your energy and time on countless things, on pleople who are not important to you, on people who probably don't even want to change. Instead, you could find a few important people in your life and spending your time and energy on them. Then your sustained efforts might actually achieve something over the long run. Even then, you need boundaries. A person's problem is their own also in a sense that if they solve it, they have something to be pround about. They achieve success and build their character. If you solve someone's problem, you deprive them of the opportunity to solve it themselves, of the opportunity to feel pround and grow. In short, with too much empathy, you waste time and effort which could be better used in a different way, and also you hurt a person's growth. Common sense required of course. If somebody has a cut, help find a plaster/doctor rather than ignore them and let them grow :)

Find one or two that don't. The others probably like the group, not you. It's not about luck. If you let people emotionally manipulate you, people who emotionally manipulate will sense that in you and use that. Like friends who get angry for not being invited, like colleagues that are upset if you don't listen to their chatter. Thus manipulating you to invite or listen. If they are cross, it's teir problem, not yours.

Day 33 (tue): Addictive stuff: Nasty carb overload. A cup of wine. Watching on youtube comedy stuff I've already seen. Got a paleo bar as a reward for doing something I've been postponing. Ended up having six of these. I missed breakfast, lunch and dinner (late getting up, busy all day) and had to go on "healthy" carb bars and a bottle of smoothie. Ended up with stomach pain. I wasn't going to do the procrastination, as the day was very busy, but it would have been an empty excuse. I found the time to watch comedy but didn't find the time to do the important stuff. Habit Tracker: Good habits: 58; Procrastination: -108; Addictions: -40; Other bad habits: -15; Identity total: -105.

You have a list of what you'd like to do instead of games, right? Pick the one that looks the least dull and the most accessible/easy and do that right away. To quote a bit from The Art of Not Giving a Fu**: "Action isn't just the effect of motivation, it's also the cause of it." If you do something, you'll automatically get into it a tiny bit and as you progress you'll like progressing, so it will start feeling better. Just do something from your list, anything. It's like with push-ups. Any time you think about them it's just an annoying thought, but if you midlessly (out of necessity, to ignore any mental compalints) go on the ground regardless and start doing the first one, you'll feel very motivated to keep going till you drop and you'll feel great for having done it after. As for writing, you can try finding a writing community and post little snippets of something, even if it's not the novel. I have a friend who is writing a book and his motivation goes up a lot when he posts small side stuff on reddit and the like.

Do stuff with your friends, that's what holidays are for. Get together and go for a hike, explore the small towns around, find some locals that speak english, ask how's life there and so on. Imagine you're 15 and explore :) Be enthusiastic and smile a lot and the the locals will like you and you will like them, works everywhere!

Day 32 (mon): Addictive stuff: A movie. Very little erotic stuff. Some carbs but not too bad. Habit Tracker: Good habits: 46; Procrastination: -74; Addictions: -35; Other bad habits: -15; Identity total: -78. A good numeric representaion of how I've been feeling for quite a while. Old stuff I haven't taken care of are dragging me down and any progress I make is drowned in that. Didn't manage to do almost anything at all because of the coffee yesterday, which made me unable to sleep until 6am, after which I didn't manage to wake up till late afternoon.

Day 31 (sun): Addictive stuff: A coffee before a performance. Erotic/artistic stuff again. Started a Habits Scorecard. Expanded the habit tracker. Anything somewhat important that I've been postponing goes in with a -3 per day and -10 per day for the most important thing (work/education related). Ended up with -34 for today. Habit tracker (+1 for good habit, -1 for bad, bigger numbers for more important things): Good habits: 40; Procrastination: -40 (-34 new); Addictions: -32 (-8 new); Other bad habits: -11; Identity total: -44.

Day 30 (sat): Addictive stuff: Ages on an erotic comic. Felt like playing but easily ignored it. Also, too much fruit again (grapes, cherries), to a degree that messed up my health temporarily. The erotic stuff is just as bad as the gaming. I've started a habit tracker, adding +1 to each good habit I do and today I went to the negatives because of a -24 (due bad habit duration). Did a lot of stuff I'd needed to do, so managed to bounce up. Then back down, as I added -3 to each of two important things I've been procrastinating for ages about. So that will be -6 daily, until I do them. Won't get to a number to cover bike insurance anytime soon, unless these are taken care of. Got up on time, to bed - so-so. Up again tomorrow from first time. Find a way to fix being groggy for hours - cool shower?

Day 29 (fri): Addictive stuff: A dcoffee, tea, two bites of dark chocolate, a bit of erotic stories. Got up well, to do the same tomorrow. +3 again. To do the habits thing, first iteration.

You concentrating on "not to play" is like keeping a your favourite type of cake in front of you with a spoon in your hand, staring at it and trying not to eat it. It is a lot easier if you turn around and start doing anything else, like reading a book or learning something you like (history, a language, building robots, drawing, playing darts, etc) and completly forget about any cake. The struggle ends because you're doing something else. Walking in a park is easy and helps recharge some energy and makes you forget the cake, if you need an easy suggestion. Also, check out the signature of @fawn_xoxo, particularly the Atomic Habits, I started reading it and it's great. fawn_xoxo, thanks for that! :)

Day 27-28 (thu): Addictive stuff: Took way too long to get up in the morning. A small red wine yesterday, didn't even enjoy it. Next one is soda with lime, no ice, to keep sharper. Choice made now. A chocolate 90% cacao, not even tasty, which made it good choice for shitty food. Will have this one for a while. More erotic stuff. Started an account to add +1 every time I actuate a good habit, -1 (or more, depending) on any failure. Couldn't think of anything I want to buy, but I'll need insurance for the bike, so this needs to get accumulated. Shouldn't be difficult to to a lot of easy stuff to get me going at a good and positive pace. Getting up on time tomorrow, first timeb, is +3. Everything on the list I've been postponing, +1.

Day 25-26 (tue): Addictive stuff: No games but erotic stuff. Also, a dcoffee and a small glass of wine. And a small jar of crappy non-shitty food I shouldn't have gotten. Why did I get that? Up to now I managed to keep off most things. Unfortunately, this includes most positive things as well. Reading a book now on building and breaking habits, to approach it more systmatically. Tried a couple of things and they seem useful.

Days 16-24: Addictive stuff: Huge cravings for dopamine. No games (except for 15 minutes checking news one time today) but binged movies one day (~10 hours) and erotic stuff on a few occasions last few days. A couple of dcoffees over the period, a glass of wine or two, no shitty food (very difficult on a few occasions). Looks like demand for dopamine has kicked in fairly hard, although it could be much worse. I couldn't stop myself anyway. I feel strong aversion to doing the stuff I would like to be doing. They don't bring any dopamine right now. In a weird way it seems like I've associated avoiding them with feeling shitty, so I avoid them even more. Doesn't make sense. I tried doing some of the things I wanted to, but failed to execute them (gave up because it was more difficult than expected). One thing that seemed annoyingly cumbersome now takes no time at all. I need to do the same thing with anything that feels difficult. Solution: split tasks on even smaller (easier) tasks and go for those. Difficult -> execute multiple times -> Easy To post every day this week.