MrVercetti

I feel like I've come a long way in terms of expressing gratitude and being a grateful person. I don't always express it every day, but there's always a number of things that roll around in my head that I am grateful for..... 1) The fact I still have a steady job (have been unemployed twice in the last 10 years) 2) My GF's health (she's an epileptic and since mid September, has been having seizures on and off that she suspects are anxiety/stress related. For the past two weeks though, she's been seizure free) 3) My parents' health (getting older myself has made me more attuned to their aging and made me all the more thankful for the time I get to spend with them) 4) The fact I have a reliable car that runs well and is in one piece (before I got in a wreck and totaled my last one, it had suffered through numerous recalls and deer-related collisions) The one other activity besides gaming (that distracts me almost as well) is reading. I'm a big fan of the Star Trek "Vanguard" mini-series and have read through all of those numerous times. I'm also a big car guy and like to browse through old brochures and misc. blogs (like Curbside Classic), sometimes with some music going and/or a drink in hand. I'll be doing a bit of that today before I get around to some housework before the GF and I go over and see my parents (something I do every Sunday).

Hey all, MrVercetti here. You can read my introduction and a bit of my history with gaming here. In this journal (in this first post at least), I'll get more personal as I share the ups and downs of my journey. As far as addictions go, I never viewed my gaming as an addiction, I viewed it moreso as a crutch - an enjoyable activity that filled voids when I had nothing else going on/nothing to do during my periods of downtime (when I came home from work, before dinner & on Saturdays when I literally did nothing). On the flipside, being a bit socially awkward, not really having a solid track record with the ladies and being single well into my 30s here (when nearly all my other friends/acquaintences were married and/or popping out kids), drove me to Porn which I did become addicted to and which I've been clean from for close to 40 days now (thanks to the community at NoFap). The thing that really grates at me and which has led me here is that for me, quitting Porn has been easy, but gaming on the other hand is extremely hard and that doesn't compute in my mind. As abhorrent and destructive as Porn is, you figure quitting that would be hard, but no - I haven't had any cravings to watch it and the accompanying fantasies have gradually trailed off to nil. On the contrary, gaming--a comparatively harmless activity, which you would figure would be easy enough to quit--has been hard as hell for me to let go of. I should mention this is only temporary too. Right now, while I'm focused on paying off my car & other small bills, my PC & other stuff is back at my parents, while I (with a small MacBook Air here) am living with my GF of 6 months. By next August, I'll be debt free and am planning on buying a house (after which, I'll be able to build a new routine/habits and have some time to game). In the interim though, not having my favorite method of 'escape' (from the monotony of daily life) is driving me nuts and I've found myself here. Am pressed for time today (got stuff to do with the GF's family), so will do another entry Monday or so following some of the good formats/examples I've seen here so far.

Hey all - am a 34 y/o male who stumbled on this site and figured it was the best place to share my story. I've been a gamer for a long time. I built my first rig back in college, then my second right after I graduated (and still have it - made some upgrades about 2-3 yrs ago). Am not sure when things started getting serious/more entrenched--would have to check Steam--but I'm pretty sure it's right around the time I bought GTA V. I'm not a MP gamer by any means (the last time I even dabbled in it was 8yrs ago when I was going through a stretch of unemployment) and still don't like it. I prefer SP games w/stories that I can get into and despite the varied opinions out there, GTA V has one that I enjoy replaying over and over again (one of the things that helps is a trainer that allows one to using MP cars & such in SP). Living on my own, gaming used to be something that was a weekend (Saturday) only thing, Then somewhere a long the line, I decided to fire up GTA V on a weekday, after I got home from work, while I was just sitting around killing time before I got dinner ready. From there, oh boy, things really took off. On Saturdays, I traded GTA V and its free-wheeling, lightheartedness for titles that were slightly more serious - either Max Payne 3, LA Noire or CoD: Black Ops. My usual routine would have me wake up, make a pot of coffee, read and/or write a bit, then sometime around noon or so, start cracking open some beers and fire up the PC for some gaming (which I would usually do til about 3:30-4, when I'd scrounge up some dinner, then crash on the couch with a movie or two. .....and that was my routine. During the week, I'd get up, go to the gym, go to work, then come home, have a beer or two & play some GTA, make dinner, clean up and crash. Come Saturday, my routine would go exactly as described above. I'm not sure how long I did that--at least two years, possibly three--long enough for it to become an entrenched/ingrained thing. I never viewed it as a problem either - all that was a great release/escape from the monotony of my weekly routine and it gave me something to look forward to too on days when work wasn't going so well, or I didn't have anything going on the weekends. What caused me to come to this point though was a two-fold series of events, starting with the rent on my apartment causing me to have to move out at the beginning of July. It had risen 5 out of the 6yrs I was there and so this past March when my lease came up for renewal again, I told my landlord I had enough. Secondly, back in early June, I stumbled on into a relationship with a girl that is still going strong. Rather than stay with my parents (where my PC is set up and where most of my stuff will stay until I buy a house here in 9-10mos), I've been staying with her. Because her place is small and doesn't really have room for a desk, my PC stays at home and the only thing I have with my besides my phone, is my little 11" MacBook Air. There's been a time or two when I've gone back to my parents on a Sunday to get clothes and stuff, when my GF didn't come along and when I could kill some time gaming, but for the most part, it's been about 5 mos now since I was last in my 'routine' that I described above. I'm going to start a journal here and will explain more in my first post, but wanted to drop by and say 'hi' here first.