dirac

Because the former was more of an introductory post, I feel like I want to make a post about today as well. I managed to stay away from gaming today very easily. Its always like that when I hit rock bottom and make a commitment to stay away from gaming. Sadly so far this always faded away after a few days. But still day 1 went well and I am happy. I already feel better than I did on the weekend. Tomorrow I have physical therapy and I will ask how and when I am allowed to go running again. That would already help me a lot mentally. I always wanted to do a triathlon at some point in my life but I never worked on it because I was always grappling and lifting and didnt have time to invest into that endeavour. But now that I wont be able to do martial arts till atleast august and cant really lift weights properly either I might get started on training for a triathlon. I know that I am allowed to run already but my shoulder still hurts a lot when moving and I wanna make sure its ok. I know that I have to wait 4 more weeks until I can go swimming and biking, so that will have to wait either way. I cant really say that this day was productive because I watched a lot of netflix but I dont care that much for now. At this moment not gaming is the main objective. But I am already working on replacing gaming with other activities. Hopefully running, then I have quite a few books I ordered over the past weeks I havent read and I might get into other things like coding/plants/whatever. I might make a list of activities that I want to go through. I also really need to buy clothing soon, because I havent bought any clothes since the pandemic started and most of my clothes look like a swiss cheese by now. I am still very scared of going to public places though, I hope my girlfriend will come with me and we can do it next week or the week after. That would also help me with going outside, because one reason why I feel so bad going outside in public places is because I am ashamed of my clothes. Kind of excited about tomorrow, I feel like I am in somewhat of an uphill trajectory right now

I already have a journal where I used to write in. However my last entry was over half a year ago and a lot has happened and I feel like its time for me to start a new journal. New journal new me so to say. One of the reasons why I stopped writing was because I was kind of alright with how the gaming was going to a certain extent. It was definitely going horrible in terms of how much I played, but I just didnt really care. Also with the pandemic and lockdowns there wasnt that much to do... atleast thats what I told myself. But in late january, two weeks into my masterthesis everything changed. I got a pretty bad shoulder injury from wrestling for which I had to undergo surgery and I am still recovering from it. I got thrown on my left shoulder while my partner landed on my right shoulder which dislocated my left shoulder such that all the ligaments that keep the collarbone inside the shoulder joint just ripped. My collarbone was floating around inside my shoulder and I was in quite some pain. One week later I had surgery. In that surgery a rope was attached to the collarbone and the shoulder joint. This rope was tightened so that the collarbone moved inside the shoulder joint, close enough for the ligaments to grow back together. They gave a little page saying that I have to wear a splint for 4 weeks, then after 6 weeks I am allowed to carry items up to 5kg and after 12 weeks I can go up to a maximum of 10kg. The full recovery is reached after 6 months (august). After the surgery I was wearing the splint for 4 weeks and I was struggling with basic things like taking a shower or putting on a shirt. I couldnt cook or wash the dishes. I was completely reliant on my girlfriend. In the beginning even walking hurt and doing anything productive was unthinkable. I bought some games that I could play with my mouse only and started gaming all day long. I quite enjoyed it because it helped me deal with the pain better than anything. The big problem came with the fact that this construct that keeps my collarbone in my shoulder is very fragile in the first 6 weeks so I was extremely scared to go outside. If someone would have bumped into me it might already have been enough to break it again. If I would have been in a bus which would come to a stop suddenly it could have ripped. I started to be very anxious of going outside and basically just hid inside my flat playing video games all day. I had to go to physical therapy three times a week which also kept me from completely spiraling mentally as those 30minute walks were my only time spent outside. But it did get pretty bad. After about 3 weeks of recovery I started working on my masterthesis again, but from home. I was still way to scared to take the bus. I never really managed to work more than a few hours per day because I just wanted to play video games so bad. Video games basically became my only hobby, now that sport and exercise werent possible and I was too scared to go out. I started to get really depressed also because I saw my body transforming. Without exercise I kept on losing muscle which I could see almost everytime when I looked in the mirror. This hit me hard, because my body was always something that gave me confidence as I developed it over the years of wrestling and lifting. Over the next few weeks I kept on underperforming in my thesis and just play a lot of video games. At the beginning of the injury I thought this time might be an amazing opportunity to get into reading and new interesting hobbies, but so far I just played video games and didnt do much else. Luckily I started a small kind of therapy which happens every two weeks and is sponsored from my university which helped deal with all of it. I also decided to quit video games about 5 weeks after the surgery but I only managed to do 8 days. Those were pretty cool days though. Then I continued to play video games because I thought I can handle it and I am injured and I feel lonely and I am too scared to leave the house anyways so its fine and blablabla... The next two weeks were the absolute worst, I played more video games than all the time before and barely did anything for my masterthesis except of the absolute minimum. I started to feel really guilty and depressed and hopeless. I did no longer have any fun doing anything and it all started to look real gray. It hit its absolute worst point two days ago were I was so full of anxiety that I didnt know what to do anymore and started getting really scared that I might fall into a hole I could not get out of again. A really deep, bad hole. So starting today I will not play video games anymore. I believe this is the only way out of this hole and even if I watch netflix all day, anything is better than what I did the past few weeks. I am ashamed of myself, ashamed of how I am wasting my life, ashamed of how much I relied on my girlfriend and kind of enjoying it, ashamed of how much I keep underperforming at university and ashamed of how poorly I dealt with this injury. All I had in me in the past weeks is fear. Fear of injury, fear of failure in university, fear of losing my girlfriend, fear of losing myself. And to remind myself of all this I will post daily on this forum. This is my accountability zone, here I am holding myself accountable for others to see. My goal for now is 90 days. That is three months. By then I will have almost completely recovered from the shoulder injury.

What are the benefits you experienced through quitting? I want to quit again and I would love some inspiration or motivational stories

Sadly today didnt go as well as I planned. I woke up early and started my day by reading for about an hour which was really nice. Then I watched some netflix during breakfast and got a little stuck on that, so I watched for like 1 1/2 hours. After that my girlfriend and I cleaned our flat which was really nice. Then my girlfriend had some appointments so I was alone and continued to watch netflix because I didnt really knew what else to do with myself. Eventually I thought that what I am doing doesnt make any sense, watching netflix all day is no better than playing video games. Then I justified gaming even more by thinking that its sunday and it makes more sense to start no gaming on a round day like monday. So all in all quite unsuccessful today. But I am still motivated so I will try my best to stay game free tomorrow. To make sure I dont watch netflix all day either I will make myself a to do list and schedule to make sure I stay on track and know what to do with myself.

Funny to see my last post was in may hehe. Well I am ready to post again I guess. There have been good and bad times since may and recently the gaming has gone to a bad place again. It started with my first covid vaccination, which was fine but I already planned to feel bad for a couple of days so I thougt I would just game then. When I got the jab I felt quite tired for like 2 or 3 days so I decided, as I planned, that I will jsut game all day. But then I fell into a bit of a hole and continued to play the entire day for about a week which made me feel horrible. Then I got a grip on it again but the same thing happened after my second vaccination, just played video games for a week straight. Then after my exam in august, same thing. And now I had a cold last week and again I just played video games for a week and I am still struggling to get out of this hole. Then yesterday and today I had a bit of an epiphany. Im doing a laboratory project at the moment and we have a cool supervisor. Yesterday we went by his house because he wanted to show us his 3d printer and explain some things around it. I then saw his weekly schedule taped to the wall next to his desk and it was very impressive. He gets up around 6, does a morning workout, breakfast and than he has 2 three hour blocks either work or some productive hobby like playing guitar, doing programming or reading. He then has dinner and spends his evening with his wife and goes to bed at 11pm. I was quite impressed by this and later I made a comment about video games to which he responded that he hasnt played a video game since 10 years because when he was 17 he played counter strike all day and realised that its wasted time hes never getting back. This of course made me think about my life a bit because I have 2000 hours in dota alone and I played a lot of other games. Today I also found out he is a year younger than me which really made me feel horrible. Not only because hes so much further in career than I am, because I am used to that as I started studying physics when I was 22/23 so rather late. But what was the worst part for me is that he just knows so much, its incredible. He can explain basically everything connected to electronics and computers and programming and I have basically no clue about anything. I just thought if I had invested atleast a fraction of the time I played video games in studying more I could know so much, but I didnt which is the reason why I know nothing. also today I read this steam review for dota 2 and it hit right into this nerve. I have been feeling a bit depressed lately anyways because I played so much and after today and yesterday I am again motivated to quit gaming again. Today is day 0 because I still played some dota after work but tomorrow I will make sure to stay strong. I will use my time productively and this time I also asked my girlfriend to help me and make me stay on track. I want to do 90 days so bad, I dont think I have ever made it longer than 2 weeks.

So its been 1 week since I completely quit gaming and I have never been this unmotivated to basically do anything ever before. Before I quit I usually just played between 1-3 hours a couple of evenings per night and a little more on weekends and was doing pretty well motivation wise with university and my job. Now that I quit gaming I am basically struggling to get out of bed in the morning and can hardly motivate myself to do the bare minimum in terms of studying. This has been on the same level for the past week now and I am seriously considering going back to gaming because I dont know what else to do. Has anyone else made this experience ? Will it get better?

Today was good. I was productive and had a nice long run. It was the first time I did 2 runs in 3 days. Because I usually do other workouts instead, but it was definitely nice. I am starting to enjoy running quite a bit. Tomorrow is the last day of uni before I am visiting my friend, so I will have to do as much work as I can tomorrow, to make up for the weekend. I feel like I am coming again short on my job as a research assistant. Even though I learned so much at this job and I am very grateful for it, it makes me feel like shit most of the time because I feel like I am constantly underperforming which really takes a toll on my self confidence. I am doing ok in my courses and the presentation was really good but I just dont seem to be able to do well at this job. And that is not necessarily because its very hard, its just that I dont manage to work my agreed upon hours every week. Also I am quite a bit behind in some of my courses so that part is also not optimal. I will use this weekend (where I am visiting a friend) as mini holiday, and afterwards I will give it my all till the end of the semester. I will make sure to never underperform in my job again and catch up in all my courses so hard. I can definitely do it because I am just a little bit behind but it will still require quite some effort. Effort that I am willing to put it. But first comes tomorrow!

Today was already much better. I wasnt super productive but atleast I was quite a bit productive. I also had a really nice hard workout which felt really good. I feel like I am on the right track right now. I just have to make sure I get some work done tomorrow otherwise it will get a bit tight with the long weekend. Im really looking forward to the weekend though, also because some restaurants already reopened where my friend lives. And of course I can see my friend too haha. Good thing I handed in my conference proceeding so this chapter is basically over. However, the professor said if its not perfect he will tell me what I should improve to get a better grade, which I will do of course. But maybe I am lucky and its fine the way it is. Tomorrow I have to go to uni for something work related and it doesnt really fit me that well but theres nothing I can do about it. Tomorrow will be really hard in general because I really have to get a couple of hours of work in and I also want to go for a run.

Today was a pretty interesting day. I basically just watched netflix and gamed all day even though I wanted to be productive. I think its because of how I have my mind made up. Because I will visit a friend on the coming weekend from friday to monday (public holiday). So its basically a mini vacation. And this week I still have to do something for the seminar where I did my presentation. So I kind of feel like that after this week the semester "gets serious" because Im done with the seminar that took so much time and effort and I also had a mini vacation. So I feel like I am kind of allowed to slack off until then. Of course this is pretty dumb and I will stop falling into this from now on. Tomorrow I will have to do a lot anyways because I have to hand in a so called conference proceeding for that seminar and I was waiting for some feedback of the professor who assisted me with my presentation, but so far he has not answered me. And tomorrow is the deadline, so I will finish up everything so I could basically send it in in the morning and then wait till the afternoon in case the professor still sends me some feedback I can implement. I had planned to work out today but I felt super unmotivated. I just wanted to sit in front of computer and game but I ended up taking a break and going on a short walk with my girlfriend. When we came back we both spontaneously decided to go for a run together. But because my girlfriend is not as fit as I am she turned around after a while. I went my long round and after like 3/4 it started raining like crazy. I was basically completely drenched after 2 minutes and continued to run for another 15 minutes in the rain. It was so amazing this was literaly my best run ever. I felt so much power and joy running through the rain like that. It made me realize that since the pandemic I basically have not been in uncomfortable situations anymore. Before covid I was a big believer in getting out of your comfort zone for personal growth and I would often try to push myself towards it. But since covid I failed to seek and or find those situations of discomfort and this run made me realize that I have to make this a more integral part of my life again. I just have to see what I can do for it. I thougt about things like working out outside when the weather is bad, getting up earlier, just working harder, taking more/longer cold showers. I have to think about what else I could do but I think seeking discomfort might be an interesting path to follow for a while. Lets see what I can do tomorrow

Today was moderate I would say. I had quite a bit of headache in the morning which made it a little hard to get out of bed and get going. I managed to have a more or less productive morning and was able to advance a bit in my reasearch assistant job. I also worked on an exercise sheet with a friend which was nice as well. But I really wasnt motivated today and I struggled especially with the exercise sheet. The rest of the day I spend mostly gaming and watching netflix because I just didnt really feel good and I did the most important things I wanted to do. Feels kind of like I wasted half the day which sucks. Because I also didnt really enjoy watching netflix/gaming. Today I watched a video of someones daily routine and he always starts his day reading through his rules, goals, mantras, values and I got really inspired by that idea. To write something down and look at it every morning that keeps me focussed and motivated and puts my mind in the right place. I will do that tomorrow morning.

Today was pretty amazing. I was very productive and managed to finish something that I feared might take me till monday. This makes the rest of the week way more chill and I might actually be able to do everything I want to. Tomorrow is a national holiday so I dont have lectures but I can finally catch up and do some work for my job as a research assistant. I will also go for a run tomorrow. Today I trained with the guy I find so hard to deal with but this time it was really nice, I feel like its also connected to how I interact with him, when I am nicer and a little more open he also seems to be easier deal with. Well the training was amazing either way. Yeah great day all in all.

Today was also a pretty good day! I was quite productive but felt a little bit overwhelmed with everything I still have to do this week. I guess I will just keep pushing and do one thing after the other. I think I will be able to do everything especially because thursday is a national holiday so I wont have any lectures which gives me some extra time. I recently have been thinking about one of my training partners in grappling. Hes the one who can teach me by far the most at my gym but I just find it so difficult to interact with him. I find him to be quite unpleasant as a person so I am constantly struggling between just enduring it for the sake of progress I am making in the sport or just asking someone else (if I could even find someone that would train with me this regularly and teach me even half of what he teaches me). This is also the first time in my life I am dealing with someone that I consider very difficult to be around. The worst part is that I think he is actually kind of a nice person deep down but he is so cynical and always complains about stuff and puts me down. This might sound like he is an asshole but if you look at what he is actually doing he seems to care. I just dont know what to make of this person and its really bothering me. I think about this basically every week, sometimes its better sometimes worse. For example yesterday I trained with someone that I get along with very well and I had so much fun. But I definitely didnt learn a lot during it. Well I guess I will just keep going for now until I get too pissed off or something. Because of covid we dont have any official training so I can only meet with 1 person to train, but maybe the whole covid thing will go back soon due to the vaccines. Today I also felt like that my days are just too short. I wish I could work for 10 hours then workout for 2 hours and read for 1 hour and spend time on my hobbies for 2-3 hours and spend time with girlfriend but sadly thats impossible because I also have to eat, sleep, buy groceries, cook shower and go to the bathroom. I find it hard to deal with the fact that I dont have time for nearly anything but I guess thats life. I think if I would spend my evenings a little more efficiently I might be able to make some time. Well gonna do my best tomorrow!

Today was really great. I was super productive and didnt waste any time. I am really happy with myself. I worked out and did a lot for uni. I will do my best to continue strong tomorrow 🙂 I dont really have much to say mostly because of how good it went.

Today was really nice. It was my uni free day and I was able to do some things here and there and mostly rest and recover. I took a nice walk with my girlfriend, in the evening we also watched a movie together. I also got a nice workout in and did some exercises for my lower back so the pain will stay away. I am really proud that I didnt game. I actually downloaded a game again because I didnt really know what else to do but I didnt even play because I realised I dont even want to game. Its definitely not easy but I will do my best to stay strong. I feel like this weekend really allowed me to get back on my feet. I feel motivated and ready to conquer the next week!

Today was really great I have to say. It was by far the best day this week. I was really productive the entire day and felt really good about it. I also went on a long run (for me atleast) and pushed myself more than usual. I also read something related to university in the evening which is also really cool. At the moment I am searching for something kind of entertaining to watch while eating but its difficult. Because a real tv show is first of all a waste of time and second if it is any good I will want to watch more which is bad. I wish there was something that would be entertaining but also useful and would last about 30 minutes. Iam sure it exists I just have to find it. I am thinking about watching some coding videos or something but first I would have to find a nice channel that has lots of videos. I am excited for tomorrow as it is my uni free day and I can spend it on whatever I want (but not gaming!). Lets see what I will spend my time on 🙂