ceponatia

I think I might start using something like your journal template, it might help me stick to certain areas I need to work on.

On the subject of app blockers which was mentioned a bit ago, I supported a Kickstarter for something that is like a USB connector that disables functions of your phone that you decide on. This didn't sound like a great idea because what's the big deal if I can just leave the thing unplugged and play on my phone all day? Well you can actually only use your phone when the dongle is IN your phone. That little switch sold me. I've yet to receive it but they've started manufacture (supposedly! You know how Kickstarter is but these guys seem legit). It's nothing you can't do with apps that other people have mentioned above but I always just turned those apps off when I wanted to "misuse" my phone. I suppose I could always just delete the app but they made it sound like that's not as easy to do as it is with regular apps. We'll see.

Today has been an uncharacteristically good day. It was my 2nd day of the week working in the office instead of from home and it went by quickly. I got everything done and even had the ability to set some time aside to read The Myth of Mental Illness but I'm still not very far into it. I believe I've just finished the preface which isn't impressive given I've owned the book for 3 days. I'm going from not reading at all to picking the habit back up, though, so I'm not being hard on myself. I noticed over the course of lockdown how lazy I've gotten. I won't lie to you, I've played games here and there. Much more than I'm comfortable with but still a net positive over what my life used to be like. Committing to a schedule again has been very difficult without anything to focus on most days. Even though I'm supposed to be working from home on the days I'm not in the office, there simply isn't enough work to fill even two hours with. Music wasn't occupying enough time to keep me from my bad impulses so today I dusted off my workshop in the garage and set up an electronics project. Being that all of my hobbies involved me being in my bedroom and usually in front of my computer, I figured having some in which I'm out of that environment is essential. Even though I'm not very far into The Myth of Mental Illness its overall premise has motivated me. As I believe I said a couple posts ago, the idea that depression and anxiety are completely within the patients control has always resonated with me and sounded "most likely true". Granted there are extreme cases where medication should be used (you can't help someone if they're dead) I don't allow myself to be bullied into saying I agree with the notion that some people are simply victims of life who must bear uncontrollable depression. I've never met someone who was depressed who also had a good life. It seems to me that there is an obvious cause and solution there. I'll be my own experiment in that regard. I've certainly tried to overcome depression through habit changes before but I always slip back into my habits; I'm not at all insinuating that beating depression is a simple task, just that it's a life problem and not a brain problem. I plan to start going to bed even earlier because I've always known that my best hours are in the morning after waking up. Nothing good happens past 10pm and I think even people who claim to be night owls could probably see the truth in that if they were honest with themselves.

I'm a fan of Mark Manson's which isn't surprising as I think by now we've both discovered we have similar tastes in literature and speakers! I listened to an audiobook of his main book but don't remember a lot of it beause it was an audiobook. Some of his stuff seems a little elementary if you've been reading philosophy for a while but that's not to discredit him; there's absolutely a place in the world for people who use "edgy" (I dislike that word but I can't think of a better one at the moment) marketing strategies to teach newcomers the basics. "Sure, riots have been happening since America was founded but our riots are more real and important!" People get so swept up in these movements and then in two months nobody remembers they existed. Part of the problem is that they never have leadership or direction (a problem intimately familiar to the political left). They want things to change... okay... how? Who is going to be responsible for doing that? What will it take to make that happen? It should be apparent from historical examples (not even distant ones) that shouting on main street and burning down liquor stores doesn't get much accomplished. Don't get me wrong, and I almost don't want to write this because I think it's ridiculous that people have to explicitly state it lest they be doxxed and assassinated, I support the right to protest and completely agree with the movement's message. I just don't think it'll work. I agree with that as well. The documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a decent modern example. He's been making sushi for something like 60 years and both of his sons have been raised making sushi so that they can take over the business. They're god tier sushi chefs and they just work in a tiny little shop in a subway station. Westerners don't have that kind of dedication to anything. Too much freedom maybe. When you're little, somebody asks you what you want to be when you grow up and I know for me there were so many possibilities I was frozen from the amount of choices. Maybe knowing what you're going to be doing from a young age isn't so bad... provided everyone is paid fairly (which hasn't been the case in socities which operated that way). Of course, I've been playing video games for 30 years and I'm not particularly good at them...

I used to have this problem too. I don't have the prayer consideration but for me the solution was to stop drinking and commit myself to a healthy schedule. I often would stay up until 2 or 3am drinking and then would get only a few hours of sleep before I had to be back to work by 8. Now I sometimes have trouble falling asleep but try to be asleep by midnight. It's good to recognize when your best hours are, too. For me, I get the most done before noon and get another burst of energy around 2-6pm. After that there is no way I'll get anything productive done!

I don't check this site very often so I'm just now seeing this. I'm very much the same in that I quit a very persistent alcohol habit of over 15 years and then realized how much of a problem gaming was. The two were hand in hand for me. It requires endless vigilance for people like me because there will always be something to get addicted to no matter what I try to avoid. For example even without gaming and alcohol, I drink at least 2 liters of Diet Coke a day; I don't even like it. I know I still have countless traumas from my past a therapist is helping me work through but progress is insanely slow and I'm someone who needs things to go fast. I've recently been reading the book The Myth of Mental Illness which is an old book and probably not completely accurate anymore but it makes a pretty good case for the idea that things like depression and addiction are the result of not knowing how to live rather than some chemical or genetic anomaly. That said, I've also read the book The Blueprint which claims nearly everything is determined by genetics so I'll have to parse the two and see which makes sense to me. Maybe a combination of both. Nature vs. Nurture is still hotly debated in psychology after all. But I'm right here with you. I feel better than I ever have. Even when something bad happens it doesn't ruin my year like it used to. I got in a minor car accident a few months ago and it cost about $1,000 to fix. Not only did I have the money to pay for it, I rebounded pretty quickly and it wasn't even a concern a few days later. I feel like I'm finally living an adult life at 38.

I'm not a very political person, I just answer questions when asked and when I see someone say something crazy I sometimes can't help myself. That's part of the reason I took up the whole "emotional control" experiment. I was banned (well, told to leave) a Discord server and the Twitch channel I watched for music theory yesterday. Everyone was saying that looting is a good thing and I simply disagreed. I was attacked quite irrationally and emotionally and I said I didn't want to argue about it because nobody appeared to be willing to listen to me. They then said that I was the one who doesn't listen and told to leave which, call me crazy, is exactly what I said would happen. It's fine though, I knew it would happen eventually as over time the streamer and admin of the Discord proved himself to be very emotionally unstable and banned people for asking simple questions or disagreeing with him quite often. It's crazy that you can be called a racist simply for being against the destruction of other people's property. Two things I read later gave me some context into their mindset: white people shouldn't tell minorities how to protest (somewhat fair but nobody in the conversation was black, I also think the recently popular catch phrases that white people shouldn't ______ and men shouldn't ______ are disgusting and quite obviously expose the fact that the people behind them aren't even remotely interested in honesty or equality) and there is no right way to protest because by its nature protest shouldn't obey the laws of the system it is protesting. Also a good point but I still think that destroying other people's livelihoods is a bad thing and historically is the act of Utopian ideologues who eventually turn to fascism. If you're okay with hurting people who simply disagree with you (and they actually have no idea if the people they're hurting even disagree with them, it's not like they're asking them at the doors of their shops), you're already a lost cause. I wasn't given any opportunity to say more than I was simply against looting, though. I've learned this is a quite common practice of the radical left which I used to be a blissful member of. I was an anarchist in my late 20's (after being a Neo Nazi in my teens and early 20's so I apparently had some things to figure out) and did a lot of the things that people are now doing. I also acknowledge that it's not actually the protesters who are doing the looting, it's selfish people who are taking advantage of the situation. That said, some protesters are still applauding the looters on social media and defending them. That casts a shadow over people's credibility and I think it will ultimately destroy the entire movement. It's not possible to sustain a popular uprising when you don't have popular support. Just getting that off my chest. I don't really have any other place to vent frustrations besides my blog and given how people have been behaving there, I know it wouldn't be a good idea. Isn't that weird though? We have to pretend to agree with people instead of being honest because we might hurt their feelings and we know that they're not emotionally capable of hearing anything they don't agree with. That said, if you disagree with me feel free to say so. If you have good reasons I'll consider them. They're just words and most of the time people don't even say what they really believe anyway. They can't... they don't know what they really believe.

I'm down!

Ordered Gulag Archipelago today as well as another Peterson mentioned "The Myth of Mental Illness". No clue when they'll arrive but you've inspired me to read again.

On the plus side if the country goes into an economic disaster and you're one of the people who still has a job, apartment prices will drop like stones. Hang in there.

I'm surprised that nothing by Nietzsche has ever been banned as well. He was represented to be an inspiration for the Nazis and there are claims that he was anti-Semitic but both of these have very little factual weight. Whenever someone takes a rigid stance on social order, people say they're a Nazi. Because of how difficult it is to get through a book like Beyond Good & Evil it's a reliable wager that most of his critics have never read him. I can't claim to know his mind either as I have yet to finish any of his books. I get the general idea. The thing that strikes me about "philosophy" (I wonder if people like him would even call themselves philosophers or if he hated that term) is that, at least for me, I find no fault in any of the major philosophical positions. I hear people say this philosophy is wrong or that philosophy is dangerous but to me they all make sense in a certain light. I don't think that any one philosophy has all the answers yet because they're all designed by people who think their opinion is the right one and thus are doomed to be mostly wrong. But there's something to be learned from every philosopher, even if reading Plato makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon. That's not his fault though, a lot of his passion is lost in translation. I haven't read The Gulag Archipelago yet but I intend to. It's spoken of highly and frequently by Jordan Peterson who I generally align with in morality.

Wow I had a long response written and accidentally pressed the hotkey to open the source code viewer in my browser and it wiped everything. I played just about everything "big" that has ever come out for the PC, I was never a console gamer. I bought a PS3 when it came out and only ever used it as a DVD player despite buying and trying to play several games. My Steam library is around 1200 games but most of those were bought when I was still actively drinking and would drunk-purchase about $300 worth of games a week. I make about $10,000 a year less than I used to back then but still end up having way more money because I'm not blowing it all. But as examples I suppose I most liked open world RPG style games like The Elder Scrolls and Witcher 3 as well as simulation games like Civilization and Factorio. I still occasionally play games like Factorio and Space Chem because I don't "enjoy" them like I did other games. They're more like tests of my logical abilities. I play very rarely though, maybe a few times a month. I think "gaming" will always be a small part of my life even though I don't find most games interesting anymore.

The OP's post is interesting (truly) and as someone else said there's a lot packed into one post so I'll do my best to address the main points. They're taking an entirely logical (and in my mind correct) premise but viewing it through the lens of emotional trauma and massive depression which then extrapolates the premise into logical fallacies. That's problematic because the two can't be reconciled. There is no point to life; there is no will behind creation beyond your parents' entirely selfish biological need for a child. Does that matter? No. We already exist; choosing to do nothing with our existence is not only incredibly lazy, it's also impossible. The OP states in their case that they don't desire sex, a career, possessions, or money. This is possible but unlikely. Nihilism (of which the aforementioned post is a casual take on) is problematic because it's a reaction to religious dogma. In the modern, less dogmatic world, nihilism loses a lot of its clout because most people already know that there is no purpose to our being here. If purpose was necessary there would be massive amounts of suicide all over the globe. Clearly purpose doesn't have as much value as those without purpose place on it. It has value in higher stages of life but people in advanced stages of addiction who are so depressed that they can't see reason to even support themselves are not yet ready to contemplate which purpose speaks to them. Purpose is a choice, not something a god or your parents give you. If you don't quit gaming, you will live in abject misery until you die. Based on everything you've written this is much closer to fact than opinion. You're living your life entirely on autopilot and outbursts such as this one are your physiology's way of coping with the obvious knowledge that it's not the right thing to do. Your anger is directed in every direction except at the person responsible for your state: you. Most addicts claim that they are smarter than everybody else but this is bluntly false. If they were truly that intelligent they wouldn't waste their lives drinking and playing video games. Why do people "chase" money, family, and so on? Partly biological necessity and partly because they have been taught that they need to prepare for the future. It's unfortunate that addicts (myself included) were never properly educated on this fact. You don't simply keep playing video games until you get old and die. As they age the extreme addict is forced to work worse jobs while they get sicker both physically and mentally until they are no longer able to support themselves. Death is no release here, either. They continue to live for years as wards of the government either on the street, in shelters, or in the hospital. They don't get to play video games there. Personally, I find going to college and finding a life partner to be a logical solution to this potential threat.

I only played single player games so they're still a no-go for me.

Now that I have a bit more time to sit and write, I'll post a real update on what I've been up to. This will be a longer post and I don't expect many people to read it but it serves the secondary purpose of helping me organize my own thoughts in a place where not many people will read it so I can just say what's on my mind. I'm prone to designing projects or experiments based on things I read and ideas I have at 3 AM. Two weeks ago I decided to experiment with extreme emotional control and asceticism (the opposite of hedonism). While I can't remember the thoughts I had that inspired the idea, part of it is due to how much time I've spent on the internet. While I've met several great people whom I enjoy talking to and genuinely learn from, the internet at large is a toxic place and brings out my worst qualities. I frequently say things I regret later. Over the last couple years I've developed a feeling of shame whenever I engage in social media or something like that... even if nobody argues with me but it is exacerbated if they do. Controlling my emotions isn't the same as being emotionless. That isn't possible without the use of psychoactive compounds which, from my experience, don't truly remove emotion but rather amplify the bad ones. A better way to describe it is controlling my emotional reactions and impulses. As we're all addicts here, I'm certain you all understand the appeal of impulse control. I've attempted to control my impulses in the past but I've never taken a logical approach to it such as this. I was always clenching my fists and trying to force myself to not do something rather than examining what was going through my body and alleviating it through reasonable analysis and then taking action based upon my conclusion. It's been tough and frequently confusing. I've had far more realizations and thoughts than could be summed up in a forum post. For example, if I'm controlling my emotional reactions and most conversation is an emotional reaction to loneliness or the feeling of wanting to fill silence, I spent many days not communicating with anyone. I've relaxed my grip on that and have come to believe that connection does serve a logical purpose when there's a goal behind it. Why am I writing this post, for example? There's no baseline reason for me to even come here and write anything. Trying to help other addicts would be a selfish emotional reaction and also quite futile, realistically. However on further thought, I realized that I have learned many things from some of the people here and the exchange of knowledge and ideas is always a good thing... and quite objective. It's been awkward, of course. As I said: while I can control my emotional reactions, I can't control my emotions. I've stopped laughing or smiling at people's banal jokes they tell in order to get a reaction that validates their existence and it's uncomfortable to say the least. It's my own fault; I've always been the kind of codependent reactionary who makes sure people feel as though they are funny and interesting so that they like me. Now that I've gone to the other extreme, everybody thinks my mother has died or something. I look like I must be miserable when in reality I'm quite content. I've changed the way I write both in music and my blog. I've made a conscious effort to not use emotional words, discuss things from an opinionated or emotive viewpoint, and have tried to be more concise and blunt in my prose. I've been well known for self-indulgent, drawn out descriptions and exaggerated measurements when writing. Now I try to say what I want to say with as few words as possible, while still maintaining interest. It's difficult. My music has become minimal and atonal in my attempt to not convey any emotion but retain interest and movement. I compare it to the Brutalist architecture of the mid 20th century: formal and functional with no extravagance. One might ask why write music at all but music has benefits beyond provoking moods from studying to increasing cognitive activity for the writer (and some theorize the listener as well but this is widely debated). In many ways this is a return to a lifestyle I tried to pursue as a teenager. It was then an attempt to insulate myself from abuse and trauma whereas now it's to develop a more precise mind. I don't expect to do this for the rest of my life but hope that I'll learn some skills through the process. I can't claim to keep this up 24 hours a day and with everybody I meet but I'm doing better than I expected. The metrics I use before saying something, either online or in person, would be valuable to all people. 1. Do I simply want to say this or is it something that should be said? 2. Would anybody in the audience care? This eliminates the majority of worthless comments in my day.

It looks like you have a good routine. There are a lot of things in your lists that I'd like to be consistent at but it's been a challenge to say the least.

I recently noticed the same thing you both pointed out, @Ikar and @Phoenixking : ideas come easiest when I'm out in the world just "being". With throwing myself back into music over the last couple of months, it's really punctuated how braindead I get when I'm sitting at the computer, even when I'm consciously trying to work on something artistic. A couple weeks ago I realized that if I go for even a 20 minute walk at the park, I'm flooded with inspiration.

You touched on some great insights over the past couple of posts. When you said that you don't like unproductive people because it reminds me of who you used to be, that's a very normal emotional reaction to your own changes and I think everybody goes through it. I believe we're most disdainful of people who still engage in the negative activities we used to do. As a personal example, I've never understood the former alcoholics who go into servicing other alcoholics. I absolutely despise alcoholics and feel no pity for them at all. Perhaps this is because I've not yet been able to forgive or pity myself for the things I did. Perhaps because I just hate selfish people. The same goes for game addicts. I love talking to other people who are actively pursuing recovery from game addiction but I feel no drive to reach out to addicts to try to show them the error of their ways or to make the world a better place that doesn't cause game addiction in the first place. I am knowingly very selfish, though. It's something I try to be mindful of daily and I don't often act out on these beliefs and impulses, I'm just saying they're the default way I feel toward other addicts. People who complain about the same thing every day are indeed annoying but as @Ikar said, this is just basic human nature. We all have the impulse to complain about our woes and the accompanying impulse to "relax into the abyss" (Thrussell). Some of us can consciously overcome our animal nature and complain / procrastinate less often.

I can't read at all at home, there are too many other more stimulating things to do. Reading at the park is a great idea; it's been quite rainy (and strangely, snowy) here lately but I think it's starting to finally become spring today. The park by my house is about knee deep with flooded water from all of the rain right now but reading at the park is a good recommendation once it recedes. Nietzsche is difficult to read. I don't remember which of his books specifically I've read but I think Beyond Good and Evil was one. I initially was very frustrated with it because I felt like I wasn't retaining or understanding anything but then I looked up some tips online and lots of people said books like his aren't the kind you just read page by page... sometimes reading one page can take an hour to really analyze and digest. Is this something you've found? I tend to be hard on myself with reading, though. Even in school, I get very depressed that I forget most of my previous classes once I move on to the next one but from talking to people who have graduated, that's normal. College is just for the degree, you don't really learn til you start working.

I only read the original post and some of the last ones so I apologize if somebody has mentioned this, but have you read The Power of Habit? It changed my perspective on habits. It's not just another self-help book eschewing folk wisdom, there are a lot of scientific studies mentioned in it that are quite illuminating. My favorite (and I'm severely paraphrasing so don't claim this is 100% accurate) was about a girl who obsessively bit her nails to the point that her fingers were constantly bleeding. She got involved in a medical study revolving habits and the researchers had her make a note every time she felt the impulse to bite her nails and then immediately do something different, such as sitting on her hands at first. She was able to completely change her habit (the book is very persistent in its observation that you can't break habits, only change them) in just a couple of weeks.

Hi! Been a while. A lot of things have happened but I don't have a lot of time right now. This is just a brief update because it's been so long since I've posted that my journal has almost made it to page 3 of the archive. Yesterday I hit 2 years sober from alcohol. I didn't even notice because lockdown has my days blurring together so badly. It's been a weird couple of years. You really start to age (in a good way) once you stop hiding from your feelings and all of your problems. For those of you who are quitting gaming I can say that the two are very related, neurochemically, and it's so worth it. It's hard at first... probably the hardest thing I ever did... but now I can't even imagine going back to my old life.

"Dying" (metaphorically) was a big fear I had when I quit drinking. I was afraid of what the new me would look like... the person who didn't spend 9 hours a day at his computer downing beer after beer, making lewd, childish jokes to fellow internet trolls, and sexually harassing every woman he met. I don't really know why I was afraid of losing that persona then... maybe I didn't see what a tumor I was while I was still in it. But I'm happy to report, since you seem to be concerned about your own change, that the best things about me didn't change at all. I have the same interests, same taste in food and art, and same sense of humor I've always had. I'm just less childish and angry. I know alcohol and gaming aren't the same things but they do keep us in the same childish mentality. Embrace your evolution. 🙂

Wanting to help others is a noble goal.

Lol hopefully I'm good by then! I joined this Discord channel for a guy who does YouTube sound design tutorials and have actually met some great people on there which... to be honest aside from here at Gamequitters I haven't really met people I've liked in a really long time on the internet lol. Like, a decade. So many trolls. He introduced me to a pretty cool Twitch community of musicians. It didn't occur to me that there were people doing stuff besides gaming there but people will always find new ways to be creative with stuff. Was watching a channel yesterday that was doing live 15-30 minute challenges that were quite fun. I re-did the voiceover for an Orange Clean commercial using random sound effects along with about 15 other people lmao. Some people just recorded their own voices over the video but I went kinda wacky with it and changed everything to cheesy bass noises. Lots of fun, I'll probably check that channel out again in the future. I was really paranoid about submitting what I made to be played live on Twitch because I'm still quite new but it got a lot of laughs which was my intention so that was surprising. I'd post it here but I'm not sure how to get the video and audio to export together, he was playing the audio clip and syncing the audio up manually in his DAW on stream. I also discovered the usefulness of "reference tracks" when making music. I'd always heard about this but wasn't quite sure how people used them. Basically you pick a song you really like from the genre you're trying to produce and keep it on a separate audio channel in your mix to kind of base your own mixing off of. You're not trying to recreate the same song, it's more to make sure your frequencies are in the right areas for the genre. Once you're more of a pro at it you don't need to do that but it's definitely invaluable for beginners like me.

Updates are almost once-a-week right now but I know that this journal is more for me than anybody else so I get to it when I get to it, haha. Been very absorbed in music... I haven't done much work on the podcast yet because I'm now having issues getting the microphone to work but it'll be sorted out soon, I'm sure. I signed up for a workshop (online, of course) yesterday on two programs called Orca & Hydra. Orca is a midi program which uses its own very basic programming language to control external instruments. You can create some really spacey computerized-randomness with it, it's been a lot of fun! Hydra is similar but it's for video editing. Like Orca, it uses code to manipulate images and patterns on your screen which can then be projected during a live performance or something. I believe it uses Javascript so if you already know that, it should be easy to figure out. I'm new to it so have only scratched the surface. What's really cool about it is it's browser based so you can play with people all over the world live. While doing research on Hydra I stumbled across the page of someone who used Orca with the Unity game engine to do live visuals for their music. I hadn't even thought of using game development environments for something like that but it does logically make sense. Games are just visual representations of code... a game engine doesn't TECHNICALLY have to be for a game if you code it to do something else. Definitely going to look more into that. Maybe something good can come of my background in gaming after all. Lol Anyway, that's my weekend. See you next week. 🙂