ToastyMuffin

One thing I have found myself doing to reward myself is eating. Now I'm not saying I'm having a cake every break, but after a couple hours of work when I'm starting to get mentally worn out I like to go to my grocery store and buy a can of soda and either a pizza or anything that I'm feeling that day with the budget of 3-5 dollars. I don't think this will work with everyone, but I personally love food and I feel a lot better and I'm more willing to do more again after eating delicious food for a few minutes. You're doing great! Keep it up

Day: 9 Still alive and doing other things are getting easier. Church is opening back up in my area and I had a lot more support about me quitting and getting back into running, so that was nice. I got the kindle today and I got to say, it's really nice to not carry a thick book for reading and being able to choose the font size and look makes it a lot easier to read. I started a 5k prep program from an app called zombies,run! and I'm hoping to be back in shape in a couple months, maybe even lose a few pounds while i'm at it. It would be nice to get back to 165 lb like I was in high school. I did have a couple monthly goals in may that I will be failing. I didn't finish the book I'm currently on (short by about 100 pages) and I didn't fully finish my python coding class (I still have about 5 chapters left or 7 days worth of stuff), but I don't feel bad about it because I did make progress in those areas and I now am able to read much more per day than what I was able to do when I originally created those plans. I'm also able to work longer without having any brain farts which is going to make coding easier to learn and now that I've stopped playing games, I have so much more time to spend on those things that I want to learn. So I'm just going to make some new goals and try to hit those, though I'm thinking of doing weekly goals instead. I don't feel like I need to do certain things as much with monthly goals, similar to having an essay due at the end of the month so you wait till the last week to start. So, still going strong and looking forward to progress in June. Goals: 1.keep reading 60 pages or 1.5 hours (that seems to be my limit for now but with the kindle I'll need to figure out how much that is) 2.stick to the 5k prep plan(I'll show my progress as I go through the weeks) 3.wake up at 6:30 am (I'm now able to get some decent sleep and having those few quiet hours in the morning allows me to go without distraction for reading) 4.Finish the coding classes within the week

Good luck Helen. Welcome to the group!

Hey Abby, Welcome to the party.

As much as @ace_dee put it rather...bluntly. I do agree that if you are going to play games in moderation, you would probably want to play games that give a real sense of enjoyment. whether for the story or the game play. Now having that real sense of enjoyment may make the non-mobile games addicting in it's own right, it would definitely beat playing a small game that was DESIGNED to get you addicted and possibly even have you pay more money than the average cost of any non-mobile game. I have spent about $200 on a mobile idle-game called tap titans 2 and honestly? I could've bought the entire yakuza series twice with that money and would've had a much better experience playing something with compelling story and game play compared to a game that I look at every here and there for the sake of seeing big numbers. As for MMORPGs I can't say....I get attached to those way to easily and so I dropped them after I lost a year off of one.

Oh side note, I've been looking into getting a kindle so that I can get more books without having to fill the closet but I don't want to get the kindle fire because I don't need all the tablet features and I just want something for reading. So I guess the question is, does anyone know if the kindle paperwhite is worth the extra $80? or should I just get the normal kindle?

@Marek Hey, thanks for the insight. I don't know if I'll do coloring books, but when i can I'm going to grab a puzzle to work on during those down times when I need to zone out a bit. Day: 4/5 My computer died yesterday, but luckily all it needed was a good dusting. Not too much happened on day 4. I was rather sleep deprived and so I spent most of the day walking around and doing things that would keep me awake, but I still got my 30 pages in so I call that a success. Last night I finally got some good sleep and it shows, I'm feeling good today and I tried the pomodoro method that @Erik2.0 mentioned and was able to read 80 pages in one sitting before it became difficult to focus. So thanks Erik :). I told one friend about how I'm trying to quit games. I believe I told him I was taking a break, but unsurprising to me he was not supportive about the whole thing. Making a longer conversation short, he pretty much told me I'm going to fail because I'm me...which is why I talked to him first oddly enough because I figured he wasn't that great of a friend from previous ordeals, but this was kind of the nail in the coffin for my decision to try and keep him around. I'll talk to my other friend about me quitting soon enough. They will most likely be a lot more supportive, even though they might be a little sad about it. So right now, feeling great and motivated. Hope it stays this way for a couple days. Goals: 1. catch up with my coding classes(the last few days have made it hard to learn) 2.read 60 pages (Turns out I'm reading a lot faster now) 3.Start jogging a bit

Hey, thanks for the welcome. Right now I'm reading some of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series by Robert Kiyosaki where he talks more about the mindset you need to be in to be successful even though one might think the book is more on how he became rich. It's giving me a lot of insight as to why certain people can do amazing things while others simply think about it and don't take action. OK...It's day....3 and it feels like it's been a week already. First issue I ran into is now that I have all this extra time with no exciting tasks to keep me awake, my sleep schedule of going to bed at 5 am is downright killing me. Last night I went to bed at 10 pm and I'm feeling 1000% better, but getting my sleep back in order is now definitely in the top 3 of my to do list. I haven't been able to focus on reading and coding for more than 10 minutes at a time, but I feel that is from the sleep deprivation and will get easier in a couple days. This morning I already read 20 pages and I'm going to try reading a little every hour to keep up with my goals. Boredom is going to be a problem. I have stuff to do, but right now with the low energy levels it's hard not to just lay down on my phone and watch youtube all day. I've been keeping it down though and started making D&D(Dungeons and Dragons) Quests just to fill in some of the time when I can't avoid procrastinating. Goals: 1. Sleep on time at 10 pm (I can't emphasize enough how dead I've been.) 2.keep reading 30 pages (I'll bump up the numbers when I can read for longer) 3.keep walking for a few minutes everyday.

Hey, ToastyMuffin here. I guess as an introduction I should start with how my earliest memories were with a controller in my hand playing with my brother. Video games got me through the worst times of my life, from losing 2 close friends in school and not having any friends for years after that. It was hard for me to see video games as anything but good, but now as I am older, I see those games were a crutch that I needed back then to get through life and I never let go of it. My life is not in a good spot. Now with the whole world on lock down it made me have to look at my life objectively and evaluate everything that I have been through. From the friends I now have to the job that was just enough for me to survive, I realized that I wasn't satisfied with where my life was going. So I made it clear to myself that I would do whatever I needed to get where I wanted in life. I decided to start reading books on how to start a small business, how to invest, how to make money, but after weeks of reading I found that I could only do something productive for the first 2 hours of my day then it was as if my mind would start yelling at me to look over at my computer, telling me to take a break. but of course, once I start taking a "break" the 30 minutes turn into a couple hours then I only realize the day is gone because I'm starving, shaking from the lack of food in my stomach. I'm tired of living paycheck to paycheck talking to friends who are in the same situation. I'm going to change the way things are, even if the people around me don't understand. I'm sick of it and this is the start of my life the way I want it to be.

Hello, this is very strange for me but I feel I need to at least start this. I joined Game Quitters today and today is the first full day I have gone without playing or watching someone play any games. I didn't think it would be this hard to NOT do something video game related but it's like fighting with myself to do anything else at this point. I'm not too worried about having other things to do. I'm reading to learn about starting my own business and learning python programming hoping that I'll be able to make more money than any min wage jobs. I'll try to get back into running and cooking too when i'm able to get the energy. I don't know what I'll do about my friends though, now that I'm not doing the one thing that we like to do for fun I'm worried about how our relationship is going to turn out down the line. Hopefully we can find something else or I can find other people through new hobbies. So for right now. Goals: 1.walk outside for 30 minutes each day (Get that sun back into my life.) 2.Make a real Dinner (No more ramen noodles.) 3.Read 30 pages each day of any book. I'll update this every few days and hopefully there will be progress.