Nate B

3/25/16 - Day Thirteen. Today was nice, with listening to some podcasts and cleaning up my room a bit, which included boxing up my Xbox 360. I still have to clean up my desktop, but I just might avoid it altogether until summer comes around. Honestly, it was tough seeing all of my gaming stuff and staying away from it, but I know it's for the best.

3/24/16 - Day Twelve. Today went well, I enjoyed my classes and spent the afternoon packing up for this weekend. After dinner, a buddy of mine from home and I took off. It's a decent drive between school and the road, and I just got home a little bit ago, so after some good conversations with my friend and my parents, I'm ready for bed. As for my reading goal, I've set out some books that I wanted to read over Spring break, but didn't get to. Each day, I'll try to tackle one of them while also trying to remember to enjoy my time home, but not with video games.

3/23/16 - Day Eleven. Classes went as normal, and then I spent most of the day off campus, which was pretty refreshing. I have plans to leave for break tomorrow night once classes are done and I get some things wrapped up on campus, so I'm excited to spend some time home and enjoy life. All without gaming, of course P.S. Sure thing Cam, my detox has gotten some of my friends curious, especially my gaming friends, so I'll try to show things around!

3/22/16 - Day Ten. Today went well. Classes were normal, I chipped away at some work, and I made it out to a senior violin recital on campus, which was a nice change of pace. I have also found some great resources for learning piano, and I think it's going to help immensely in getting started, so I'm really excited about that. I'm also much less nervous for break thanks to some ideas from Cam's videos, so we'll see how things go!

3/21/16 - Day Nine. Today was a good day, with classes going as normal, save for one being canceled, and the rest of the day has been spent fairly productively. Up to this point, I have forgotten to mention my involvement in a karate class on campus, which I have been enjoying a lot lately, not to mention helping me to stay somewhat fit. I was also supposed to start my Stronglifts 5x5 program today, but due to an event on Wednesday and either being home or traveling on Friday and Monday, I've decided to hold off on the workouts for now. My updated goal for Stronglift 5x5 is this: Complete 13/14 sessions by April 29th. As for going home for break, I am going to be ambitious and have a goal of reading through four or more books over break, and that's if I don't spend a good amount of time out of the house.

3/20/16 - Day Eight. Today was good, with a lot of relaxation and a decent amount of homework later on the day. So far this week has felt far more productive than past weeks, and I'm starting to learn what life is like without video games taking up huge chunks of my time. The next big thing to prepare for is next weekend, as I'm going to have a four day weekend for Easter, and I know it's going to be tough to be home and still ignore gaming. The thing is, most of my old systems and my "gaming rig" (an office computer with an expensive graphics card thrown into it) are there. This is because I didn't want to game too much while I was at school, but despite that, I still gamed or at least watched or read a lot of stuff about gaming while at school. I probably won't start to get rid of all those things until summer because it will be easier to handle selling them later on when I have more time, but I am concerned about this weekend. Hopefully, I can implement some of the ideas from Cam's "Holiday" video, but I'll have the rest of the week to prepare for all that.

3/19/16 - Day Seven. Today was pretty good, with a relaxing afternoon and some homework and reading done in the evening. I have spent today looking into a lot of future reading material, a mix of a lot of different stuff. I have also been looking into formal piano lessons, and chances are I won't pick them until over the summer, or even next school year to start them. For now, I'll just be looking to teach myself some of the basics. Plus, I'm going to be jumping back into my old workout routine this Monday, and it'll be interesting to see how I do after being away from it for a little over a year. One week in and so far, so good!

3/18/16 - Day Six. Today was pretty simple with classes, some homework, and a bit of reading. I also found Cam's videos about how to spend summer break, and so that has given me a few adventurous ideas for things to do, but that's still a ways off. As for this weekend, I'm planning on some homework, a decent amount of relaxing in the campus cafe, and a whole lot of reading, mostly for fun. So far so good! P.S. - Thanks to WorkInProgress for reminding me to not be a workaholic

3/17/16 - Day Five. Today has been fairly productive, with my classes going well. I'm getting caught up to speed with most of my classes, and I only have a few late assignments to catch up on, plus it helps that I don't seem to have an intense workload this weekend. Speaking of this weekend, my tentative plans are going to involve getting started on my novel idea and also trying to catch up to where I used to be with my Duolingo studies (currently working on Spanish, got to 33% fluency or so before I had to stop to focus on school last semester.) Other ideas include finally getting caught up with schoolwork and just hanging out and doing some reading in my campus coffee shop. I'm also beginning to look at what this summer is going to be like and start getting some goals together for then. Time is going to be way less structured then, and I feel like that will be the toughest point that I will have to face. At any rate, I'll keep you guys posted! P.S. - Special thanks to Falky for some ideas for how to spend my weekends, as well as his goal-setting post, and to Cam for asking the right questions to help guide me!

3/16/16 - Day Four. The main portion of the day so far has been spent on classes and reading a ton on how to improve my writing. I am still working on some ideas for how to be able to relax during weekends while also still being productive, but I have a feeling that I will want to get a good start on writing my novel this weekend, so I'm excited for that. Otherwise, I'll keep things up to date on here as best I can. Thanks for all the encouragement so far guys! It's meant a lot.

3/15/16 - Day Three. Today has been mainly spent on classwork, but also on reading about improving my fiction writing, as well as looking into how I'm going to slot out my time. Thanks to my habit of keeping classes and events on my Google calendar, I have started making time slots for each day once classes are done and have begun working on regulating my sleep schedule, as it has been all over the place until now. I have also been getting better at managing homework tasks thanks to Todoist, which is an app that was recommended by Thomas Frank, who I've mentioned before. Workouts: MWF, after classes until campus dinner time Reading/Piano: Tues/Thurs Afternoon after classes until campus dinner time (hopefully going to try to slot formal piano lessons sometime here after I check into them) Writing/HW: After dinner until night each weeknight. Weekends are still tentative for ideas, but I am going to try to sort out what those might look like as the week goes on. As for gaming, I haven't thought about it much lately, so things have been going well. I hope to keep up the progress as I get further into the detox.

3/14/16 - Day Two. Thanks for the warm welcome guys! So far, I'm working on some ideas for specific goals for each of my objectives, but I'm still open to refinement. I also had to laugh at the irony that my roommate brought a PS3 to school after he got back from break, so I walked in to that sitting on his desk next to the door last night, lol. Now for the potential goals: Study Goals: Have all B's or better by the end of the semester. (End of Semester is May 6th.) Fitness Goals: Complete at least 15/18 possible Stronglifts 5x5 sessions by April 29th. (3 days a week for 6 weeks, MWF, starting 3/21/16, taking the time to re-learn proper form first, it's been a year since my last workout in this program) Writing Goals: Complete a chapter of fantasy fiction work (from a concept that I shelved a while ago) or create structured layout for my comedy book idea by April 1st. Piano Goals: Memorize standard notes on the treble clef (C4-G5) & memorize what notes correspond to which keys on a piano by May 1st. Like I mentioned in the original post, if you guys know any resources that might be helpful, say for piano or writing specifically, feel free to let me know! Thanks!

3/13/16 - Day One. Trying to stay away from gaming, as well as gaming videos/news i.e. youtube, reddit, surrender@20, etc. Also, I need to look at dealing with the four principles that gaming fulfills that Cam mentioned and figuring out how each of these should play out outside of gaming: -a challenge -constant measurable growth -temporary escape -social aspect For myself, the next thing to focus on is setting goals for the following areas from my introduction and finding people/sites that will help me improve in these areas: 1. Improving my studies - Thomas Frank, TED talks 2. Improving my physical fitness - Stronglifts 5x5, NerdFitness? 3. Improving my writing skills - College courses 4. Learning piano - Campus lessons? If you guys have any people, sites, resources, or the like to offer in improving these areas, feel free to let me know!

Hello Game Quitters Community, My name is Nathan, and I am a 21-year old college student. Gaming has been a huge part of my life up to this point, but it has been interfering with school and otherwise distracting me from other, better life choices, and so I've only recently decided to take a stronger stance against gaming in my life. I would like to consider myself as somewhat of a modern renaissance man in terms of having a wide variety of interests, but have hardly followed through with any of them due to gaming and related media (youtube, reddit, etc.) taking up so much of my time and energy. Today I decided that I needed to start the detox and really begin to branch out more in my life. I would like to spend more time on my studies, improve my physical fitness, and focus on some new hobbies to replace gaming, such as writing and learning piano, among other things. This has been a fairly short introduction, but I do hope to interact more with the community as time goes on.