ceponatia

Not excited to do stuff after work at all today but I know I will. Kind of a busy day at work and my back is acting up despite going to the chiropractor yesterday. That makes sense though because it's been months since I've stuck to a routine with my appointments and you have to go at least once a month consistently to keep up the benefits. I'll be back on track moving forward and I have a massage scheduled with the good masseuse (everyone in that establishment sucks except for one person I have to book her way in advance) on Monday. I didn't end up writing last night but it was a conscious choice rather than forgetfulness. I just wasn't inspired by anything and was drawing a blank. I've found if you can't write at your scheduled time there's no point in sitting there for 30 minutes staring at the computer. Instead I did some cleaning and started reading one of the books I bought in my last round. Wednesday I finally got around to buying a better chair for my home office (the left side of my bedroom) and splurged a bit on a Herman Miller Aeron which is like the Mercedes Benz of office chairs. I found one with some "dings" for sale at like 65% off so it was well worth it. It's frustratingly difficult to do research on purchases like that because so many search results are obvious advertisers and the rest are just trying to sell "gaming chairs" which are horrendously ugly and announce to any guests that you are mentally 15 years old. In my humble opinion. Lol. Plan is to finish my Cyber Security project tonight which will wrap up that class and I won't have any UoP work to do until Tuesday when I start "Infrastructure Management" or something like that. Two more modules of Algebra will follow that and I'll have one left and the final exam to do tomorrow. So Sunday and Monday I'll have absolutely no school work to do. That also means if for some reason I don't get these done on time, I have a bit of a time buffer and won't be killing myself at the last minute.

She lives in Arizona and I live in Michigan so I'm in no danger of catching it from her but it also sucks that I can't really do anything for her because of the distance. Just staying positive. She's doing well; the most important thing when you're not high risk is to just stay active as much as you can so you don't get pneumonia and she's still doing like workouts every day (which I'm sure must be miserable). Strangely she hasn't really had a fever or anything just slight difficulty breathing and the loss of her sense of smell and taste. Hopefully that's as bad as it'll get. There was a study years ago to try to create a dormant version of herpes as a possible treatment for cancer as it was discovered the virus latches on to tumors and prevents them from growing larger... so who knows maybe we have some slight protection against cancer, haha. I think mine is just from being sick the other day. Happens every time I get an illness. I haven't been more active than usual lately. I've been more organized so I get more done but I'm not really expending more energy or creating more stress. Far less stress, actually, because I have things finished way before they're due right now. Today has been pretty good just like yesterday. It was my day to work from home and those are really up to me to make into positive days because I don't have that motivation to wake up early and get ready for work that I do on an in-office day. I made sure to go to bed on time (10:00) last night and I woke up at 7 which is when I normally get up for work. I'm going to try to get up at least by then every day so I keep my circadian rhythm consistent. Did a 15 minute yoga session after a shower and breakfast. This one has been amazing, especially after work. I highly recommend you try it if you have chronic muscle pain from sitting a lot like I do. It's not a vigorous routine and doesn't get into much of the strength training side of yoga but it makes my back feel amazing for a few hours afterwards. Also had a chiropractic appointment this afternoon so I'm feeling pretty "loose" right now, lol. I've been lumping yoga and meditation together. I don't know if this would be considered cheating but if you're doing yoga the way it's intended, you really are meditating during it. Especially during Savasana. Plowed through two chapters in College Algebra after done with work so I'm set to be finished with that class by the weekend! Got into functions today which I'd never even made it to in high school so it was cool to learn something new, especially now that I'm actually good at math. I'm going to reward myself with a 30 minute walk outside before doing some cleaning and prepping lunch for tomorrow / eating dinner (same meal). After that I just have to write a blog post; trying to do one a day for a month to get back into the swing. Then it should be about bed time.

Weekends are still a mess for me. I stay fairly busy but the use of my planner completely falls apart. I'm not the kind of person who tracks everything he does but I have things scheduled on the weekends that need to get done and when I don't look at my planner, I forget to do them. I still managed to get caught up on Monday and today I'm working on getting ahead for the rest of the week. Quitting caffeine didn't go according to schedule but I'm starting again today. Had a rationed amount of coffee this morning and switched to water by noon. That's what I'm aiming for over the next couple of weeks. I'll gradually cut down the amount of coffee. I might stick with one cup of coffee each morning permanently because it does have benefits aside from the energy boost. I have gout thanks to my alcoholism which was in recession for two years but it's come back recently; probably because of all the fast food I've been eating in lockdown while using the excuse that I can't go grocery shopping. Lol. Coffee for some reason alleviates the symptoms (symptoms being excruciating pain like someone stuffed broken glass inside your ankle) as does black cherry juice. Cherry juice is expensive AF to be drinking every day though. My best friend's COVID test game back positive today. She's scared and I am a bit too but I'm sticking to positivity in conversations with her. She's not a very emotional person so I'm sure she's hiding most of it. Her husband is sick too so at least they have each other to lean on. She's younger than me (26-ish, I'm 38) and extremely healthy so realistically she should be fine but there is that 1 in 10,000 that just drops dead for no obvious reason. She's known me longer than anyone alive and helped me get through my darkest times so it's pretty important to me that she get better. I was pretty sure I had it yesterday! My mother went to get tested on Monday because she felt under the weather and yesterday I felt miserable. Bad, persistent cough, chest pain, aches, fatigue, the works. I woke up today with a cold sore (yay herpes lol) and feel perfectly fine otherwise. That's usually what happens. I'll start getting sick, it'll turn into a cold sore, and I'll be fine. Still, cold sores suck. Uncomfortable and unsightly. Lots of stigma around them as many people think you did something to get it. I've had the disease since I was a baby though. I don't know what life is like without a cold sore or three every year. Lol. Picking yoga and meditation back up today. Only did it one day last week. Also putting together a weight training plan. I have to start from scratch as I haven't been to the gym since they all closed. Gotta get back in the habit though.

It's weird to be a PC enthusiast and not an active gamer. I continue to tinker on my desktop despite gaming only a few hours a week lately. Yesterday was a pretty big day of maintenance and upgrades, not for any sort of performance increase but just to make it look cleaner. When I built this PC I did it all from memory and didn't bother to read any of the manuals. Yesterday while cleaning up I finally got around to reading them and oh boy did I have everything messed up! My PCIe x16 slot was only running at x8 because of where my M.2 drive was installed (which isn't really a big deal but I still moved it just to have the knowledge that it was set up correctly). I had no idea that the case I purchased had SSD mounts on the reverse side of the case and that all of the PSU cables could be run through a wall and kept out of the way so I did that and the temperature is 10 degrees less because basically two of the fans were blocked before. Lol. Also had my wifi card installed on the wrong slot and my connection dropped every hour or so because the card didn't have enough data transfer capacity through the motherboard. Ridiculous mistakes for an IT major but I learned a lot. Class is progressing really well. My last week of CYB/110 is next week and I'll finish College Algebra at the same time (taking it through a 3rd party company to save money). I've learned a lot in this current course; I feel like all of the B.S. prerequisite courses like "how to install Windows 10" are over with and I'm finally in some advanced classes. Even learned how to break into a firewall last week, lol. Started looking into getting a gun license so I can start going to the local range. It's something I've always been interested in (and have done a few times in the past... not entirely legally, lol) but never had the money or time. The process of buying a firearm, at least in Michigan, is actually fairly complicated so idk what people are talking about when they say we need stricter laws. Obviously people who are buying guns intended for criminal activity are not buying them from licensed sellers. I'm probably going to take a CPL class rather than just getting a regular purchase license, not because I plan on carrying around a concealed weapon but because it counts as a PERMANENT purchase license and covers so much more that I won't have to worry about accidentally breaking the law through ignorance, haha.

Yeah I think gaming comes with a lot of other bad habits like drinking various unhealthy substances. I'm not sure why, maybe gaming just puts one in that hedonistic state where we want to be experiencing complete bodily pleasure in every way possible, lol. When I don't game, all I drink is water and I cook every meal I eat. When I go on a gaming binge, I'm back on the soda and fast food. Clearly one is better for me. 🙂

Didn't post yesterday but I at least checked the site and replied to some stuff. That counts, I think. Lol. I had kind of a lazy Wednesday night which led me to not set my self up for success yesterday and the day up until about 4pm was a wash but I was working from home anyway so there wasn't really much I could do. That's kind of a lie... I could have done homework in between work tasks and on breaks like I did Tuesday and Wednesday. Anyway I still managed to get my shit together by 5 and did another module of Algebra. I'll finish chapter 4 today and will have one chapter left then I'm DONE with college algebra forever. Crazy to me because I've always told myself I'll never be good at math and I'm actually having fun in this course! I'll be going on to statistics and calculus so we'll see how much I love those. I've never even seen a calculus problem before but the urban legend is that it's hard. I'll also be finishing my Cybersecurity project tonight so I'll have the weekend school-free (unless I get crazy and decide to attack Algebra chapter 5 early which I actually might). I'll probably go out of town again at least one of the days, just a drive up the coast. We'll see!

One thing that helped me once I realized it was that it's extremely difficult for me to focus on not gaming, but if I instead focus on doing other things I never think about gaming at all.

Welcome to the community! I see a lot of familiar things in your opening post. I used to hate wherever I lived too and like you recognized it was usually because of things I didn't want to either deal with or change. I have always had pretty negative parents. I try not to say they're bad parents because they do their best, but they've certainly created a lot of trauma in me, haha. And I'm totally jealous that you got sushi. The restaurants around me are all still closed for the most part.

Cool. I'm working on getting one myself.

I'm glad your social anxiety is subsiding. Mine is still pretty strong but where I live we still aren't allowed to go out very much. It'll probably get better once things open.

It's been a very good two days. Forcing myself to stick to what my planner says has really put some dynamite up my you-know-what! I even wrote a serious blog post for the first time in almost two months. It's 3:30 here and even though I'm working from home, I've finished my math homework for the day and have a head start on my cybersecurity class project. When I woke up I meditated for 5 minutes and did 15 minutes of yoga which... I can't even remember the last time I did anything physical. It hurt lol. Kind of a bummer: I used to do yoga every day and had gotten pretty flexible and now even child's pose feels like my hips are going to snap! I'll get back to that point, though. There's a weight bench in my garage but I haven't mustered the willpower to hop on it yet; it's in mind for the future. I've scheduled writing time in every day. Just 15 minutes for now but I'll increase it over time. I'd really like to write a book one day (more than one, really) but never set aside time to do it. So that's how I managed to get a blog post done today. I'm also making a goal to update this thread every day. I've really let my involvement here slide through COVID. I allowed myself to give in to depression and lethargy. Knowing me, I probably will again some day, but you have to take the good times as they come. I'm just through using sleepiness and my adderall as an excuse for not doing more pointed tasks. I find that once I get something started I'm very able to stick through it. It's just getting that initial burst of energy that I have to figure out.

I took a couple of Krav Maga classes three years ago when I was still trying to find ways to quit drinking (it didn't work so I stopped going). You're right, it's very practical and ... shall we say efficient? lol. The instructor at that school is actually the same one offering the Jiu Jitsu that I've been contemplating. There's some amount of shame I feel about going back to that gym after signing up for a year and then quitting after three sessions to drink all day but I doubt he even remembers me. It's like the feeling I had the first time I went to college and I skipped a class so every day I'd obsess about everyone freaking out that I skipped, so I'd skip again. Lol. Endless cycle. That sounds very interesting so I'm going to order it for sure. I just bought a hardcover today so it'll have to wait a few days but I look forward to it. I have a similar book but it's about "manners" and was written in the 19th century. Pretty interesting how much trouble people went through just to eat dinner together. Lol. I think there's a lot of value in bringing some of those things back though. We might treat each other better as a result.

Your recent post describes a problem that a lot of newcomers to Game Quitters have, I've noticed: one of the main points of the program is to fill all that empty time we have when gaming is out of the picture and I think people are quick to jump to all of the things they think they should be doing or want to learn and don't give themselves leisure time. If you hate reading, even reading isn't a destresser! One of addiction's biggest curses is that, depending on how long someone has dealt with it, they might not even know what they like to do. That's where I found myself two years ago after rehab. I had some idea of things I sort of liked doing back when I was 17 but I was now 36 and some of those hobbies weren't appealing anymore. So yes, I agree with the assessment of you and your therapist. We need some leisure time and we need to spend time figuring out what leisure time even is for us. Lots of people in psychiatry use the phrase "be kind to yourself" but I don't even know what that means most days, lol. Beating myself up and being stressed over what I view as procrastination are just as natural as breathing is for me. But, we continue to grow.

I'm narrowing down the kind of training I want to start and I'm leaning towards Jiu Jitsu but I've always been interested in boxing as well. I've taken martial arts in the past so I'm pretty decent with my kicks but never learned much fist-fighting. It's bizarre that martial arts schools will straight up tell you that trying to kick someone in a street fight is a great way to land on your ass but then all they teach you are kicks. Lol. At least Jiu Jitsu is mostly grappling which seems like it has far more real world applications. That book "Gentleman" sounds interesting I'm gonna look it up! I'm always down for tips on how to do things better. I'm sure I suck at ironing but it looks decent when I'm done haha.

Well that payday for those people is ending whether that's a good or bad thing (I think bad personally... if I have to choose between a few people scamming the system and a complete economic collapse I'll choose the former, lol). I sympathize with having big plans every day but then feeling too exhausted to do anything. I listened to a podcast (Rogan I think) lately about how you can build up some resilience against that by just forcing yourself to keep going for a while. I don't know if that's true because I read a book as a teen called The Power of Full Engagement which is one of those trashy self-help books by guys who don't really know what they're talking about that kinda claimed the same thing. Didn't really work for me but I also probably didn't commit fully. Discipline is hard. Especially if you're older and never had it in the past. Undoing 30+ years of laziness and giving in to my impulses is the hardest thing I've ever done.

Good quote for my current week! I'm really into discipline this week and not using things as an excuse, such as being "tired". I'm always "tired". Maybe that's just how being alive feels and I've gotten lazy. Lol. I wrote a few more habit goals in my planner to roll out tomorrow morning. Meditation and yoga every day which means I'll wake up an hour earlier (which is actually an hour later than I woke up before COVID) and be forced to go to bed at a decent time. I actually do go to bed at a normal time most nights but I can't fall asleep until almost 4am. I was tossing and turning and getting angrier and angrier last night. Went to bed at 10, finally took a sleep aid at 1 but it did absolutely nothing, and last I remember I looked at the clock and it was 3 so I guess I fell asleep shortly after that. I'm EXHAUSTED today (it's an in-the-office day). Hopefully that means I'll be so tired I'll be able to fall asleep tonight but history doesn't bear much hope for that. I'm working on a budget today and kind of have a revolutionary idea (for me, I'm sure it's nothing new to people who know how to budget) in which I'm going to actually decide what I'm going to buy every day ahead of time instead of relying on some arbitrary amount of money I'm allowed to spend. This coincides with my goal of giving up all caffeine except for a normal sized coffee on work days. I'd say give up all caffeine period but I remember what I felt like the last time I tried that! So I'll get myself down to a cup of coffee which will actually be a significant decrease and I'll see where I can go from there. Last week I set up a schedule for my two classes and it's helped big time with anxiety because I'm no longer procrastinating. I'm also learning math for once which I think I've said before but it still blows my mind that I'm actually pretty good at it now. I'm up to quadratic equations which is pretty basic algebra but I never did homework in high school so I didn't memorize any of this stuff. It all seems new even though I've certainly done it before. It's crazy how much of a zombie I used to be even before I started drinking.

I grew up as a super-left beta male incel so a common trope among my group of friends was that people who drove trucks were moronic redneck gorillas. Yesterday I bought my first truck and I love it. Not only is it a sign of how much better my life has become since getting sober (actually driving something I want to drive instead of whatever piece of crap I can afford) but you feel a bit safer knowing that you could plow through virtually any vehicle in front of you and barely scratch your paint. Kidding, mostly. I was rear-ended full speed by a drunk driver while stopped at a light once by a Dodge Ram and it completely obliterated my Ford Focus while the Ram looked like it hadn't been touched. This week was the last week of furlough but we're still working from home most of the week. Michigan has been one of the slower states to try to reopen and it's looking like that's a good thing when you look at places like Florida which is on the verge of becoming a zombie wasteland (well, it already kind of was wasn't it?). I've been using my planner more consistently finally and making a point to actually finish everything I write in it every day. As such I'm ahead on school for the month and even started to read again. All is going well right now but I've been here before. Just waiting for my motivation to drop off a cliff but that'll be temporary too.

Well on the bright side girls like that still don't want to date gamers from my experience, lmao. I know lots of gamer girls and they're all dating guys who are totally technologically illiterate and hate gaming. Makes sense, I'd want to be with someone who had somewhat different interests from me. Probably because any woman who had identical interests to me would be completely deranged like I am. Haha

I've been thinking about that and have tried to be mindful of not putting too many lengthy activities in my planner for one day. I can probably space out my two classes better so that I work on them on alternating days. I don't think it's completely that though because I really don't do that much in my free time, haha. Lots of Netflix and laying around.

This is one of my good weeks. I don't know what causes them but it appears to be having a really bad week leads to the next one being a total rebound. Last week I procrastinated and did my homework on the very last day, didn't work on any of my math course, and didn't write any music. This week I've gotten 50% of my schoolwork for the week done on the first day, caught up on SLEEP which I've needed to do for so long. Some people say you can't actually catch up on sleep and just getting one nights sleep will reset you but I haven't found that to be the case. I slept for 10 hours last night and I feel like a new man, lol. Starting to focus on eating better finally. I've been thinking about it for 4 months but I'm just never hungry. I'm getting to that point where I have lost too much weight. I haven't been working out at all since lockdown started so I don't look underweight because I'm still flabby but if I were toned and had some muscle again I'd probably look skeletal. Getting outside for at least 30 minutes a day, too. Just feels better. My planner needs a lot of focus too. I use it about 3 days a week and when I do use it I don't hold myself accountable for actually getting done what I write in it. This week I've been way more on top of that. Yesterday was a bit of a loss because I just needed to sleep but I feel great today so I foresee getting a lot done.

Yes it's interesting that we know from history that the same thing was done with both cigarettes and sugar (and even Radium) but people still fail to question research that says something is healthy when it's clearly too good to be true.

Coincidentally I was thinking about this very thing this morning before work. Or maybe it was last night before I fell asleep. All a blur, haha. Life is a collaboration whether we intentionally participate in it or unintentionally. Every idea we have, thing we say, and even the things we enjoy and commit our lives do are based on something we saw someone else do, heard someone else say, and so on. That doesn't mean it doesn't have value, quite the opposite I think. But what I was trying to say in my original post wasn't that we should be concerned with having unique ideas, just that many people criticize others for not "doing the research" and so on when in reality virtually nobody does any research. It's human. You find your tribe and you parrot what they believe. Like @BooksandTrees I try to be independent of all of that but we do still fall somewhere on the political spectrum. I think that idea is out dated and I've been trying to puzzle out a better way to measure ideas but I don't know if I'm really the man for that job, lol.

@Erik2.0 you might like this one, good starting point: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/episode-1/

Isn't it crazy how good it feels to just exist and think sometimes when we've been hiding from that for so long? Maybe not directly hiding from it but we certainly deprived ourselves of the opportunity. I think part of what makes games so addictive is they do require a high level of some kind of thought even though it's not critical thought or introspective thought... so on some level we feel like we're actually doing something.

My belief is that focus is a skill and we're taught by modern pop-psychology that focus is something you're either born with or you aren't. If you can learn to meditate and sit still for 30 minutes at a time, why wouldn't you be able to learn to read a book or study for school? That's how I look at it anyway. Just keep doing it and you'll get better with time. Brain fog is normal too. We may not think that gaming addiction damages our brains because it's not a chemical but everything you do alters the physiology of your brain for either better or worse (usually worse tbh). Brain fog is sometimes a symptom of your brain repairing itself.