Hey all,
I am Third Degree, and I am going to start updating a journal here to help in my path to stay away from video games. This isn't my first attempt at staying away from gaming. I've made a couple month long absences but always come back. Recently, since graduating college, I've been playing a lot of video games when not in work, resulting in frustration from my partner in not prioritizing her and the cleanliness of our apartment over video games. My video game life goes back to when I was five years old, and playing video games has been an avenue of rage, escape, competitive outlet, social experience, and meter of personal improvement for me ever since. It's always been something that I can easily pay attention to and spend hours doing. 18 hour binges over weeks has not been out of the question for me, so in my worst throws of binges, I become a zombie. The most frustrating part of my experience with video games is my inability to fully understand what video games mean to me, like broadly understanding both the positives and negatives of my life surrounding them. I try and understand this better to replicate the things I love about video games in things that I can moderate better. Currently, I'm very tempted to continue watching twitch streams of people playing the games I like while I stay away from playing them, but I know that won't help me at all. Today, my first day without video games this current streak, I watched the anime Attack On Titan and have started reading a sci-fi Hugo-award winning book called Hyperion. I also cleaned the kitchen and have spent a lot of time with my pets. So, it has been a decent first day. I want to explore physical hobbies, like boxing and weight lifting. I used to weight lift regularly but have been away from it for a very long time lol. Anyways, that's my first day update. Will check in soon and hopefully start making some friends!