LadyRen

Day 6 The last couple of days have been a little easier I think. It is still hard and I still get bored alot though. The video the GrainSilo posted helped me think about things differently. I have been working everyday as planned, and have been practicing new skills too. I have been playing my guitar more...calluses are returning to my fret fingers! And have been programming a bit more too. I have been using Google Keep alot. I made a shopping list yesterday for the first time in years probably, because I was excited about trying to make hot sauce. I love sauces and always wanted to make them. So today, my partner and I went grocery shopping together. Normally she would buy food on her own. Strangely, my anxiety wasnt conquering me like usual. Maybe because I was excited to make sauce? I made hot sauce. It was fun to experiment and I cant wait to try new flavours. It went great with nachos. Now the house smells like chilli. I havent had desire at all to play Fortnite. Ill check to see if my daughter is online and talk to her a little though.I think in the future, an occasional game might be something I will be able to regulate. Much like watching netflix. But I am not going to put that to the test for at least 3 months I think. I need a solid amount of time to break in this lifestyle change and reconfigure my brain chemistry. I have been pretty happy today and yesterday.

I have been struggling with overeating. It has been much harder to curb my food cravings since i started this detox.

This video is amazing! My comfortzone has shrunk so much in the last few years

Day 4 Im tired. My sleep has not been good. Ive overslept today. And like everyday I wake up feeling like crap. Ive been trying to stick to my schedule, and its going well for the most part, except I havent been able to stick with it to the letter yet. Everyday so far ive had to shuffle things around. It has been so hard to stay motivated. I dont feel like doing anything. I make myself work, I make myself do the things on my "free time list", but im not excited about it and im doing it just because i need something to do. Its not bad exactly. I am more productive. Its just im so tired and unmotivated. It is harder at night in the hours after dinner. I played Fortnite with my daughter for one hour yesterday, and I think it was ok. It didnt exactly feel like i was getting a hit that would satisfy an addiction. In fact, an hour of Fortnite is about as much as I can handle before I want to stop. It was never a favorite of mine. But spending time with my daughter is one of my most favorite things. After we stopped playing, I had no desire at all to play on my own. I have been working more now, because ive been working to a schedule. Its hard working from home with alot of distractions and before now I never set up a calendar for myself, and i had got alot less work done. It hasnt been fun alot of the time. Infact more stressful than not. Thats when i want to stop and do ANYTHING except work. But im trying my best to push through and get it done. I am so terribly weak and unfit. I walked around the block yesterday and my legs hurt like crazy. I used to walk alot more on a daily basis like it was nothing, and i wasnt even fit or in shape then. The last couple of years ive totally let my body deteriorate. It feels like im winning. Im making progress. Im more productive. But its bitter sweet. Its feels like im winning at something I hate and dont enjoy. It makes it alot harder to care about the wins. I have to think about the long term gains. Instant gratification doesnt apply here, and its a big pill to swallow.

Its the end of day 2. Its been hard but I won and pushed through it. The day has dragged on and felt like it would never end. I spent most of the time working that I set aside for work, but not all of it. It felt like everything that could go wrong was going wrong. Fix one thing and 5 would break. Its was overwhelming and I was so close to falling apart. Have my work collaborator to talk to about this stuff helped alot though. I tried to fill my day with some productive things from my list. I practiced guitar and am relearning some songs i forgot because i hadnt played them for years. Continued reading about and experimenting with Unity. Doodled some stuff on paper. Watched a couple of episodes of modern family with my girlfriend. I havent really been out of my apartment today though. But I did finish reading Respawn and scheduled in time to go for a walk in the morning before work. I thought I would do meditation after work to level me out after all that stress. Like a mid-day reset I suppose. It became very hard the later it got in the day. Boredom just kinda creeped in the last few hours and i found myself restless and mopey and wanting to eat my problems. I want to try playing games with my daughter. I think it will be a good way to tell early if its something that can be managed when its controlled. If it is going to be too hard to restrict my use then I will have to give my baby some disappointing news.

I am very afraid of going out in public for any reason. I do sometimes, when I have to like to the doctors, but its a draining experience. I look different, a lot of people dont understand why I am. A lot of people choose not to even agree with my existence. I am lucky that NZ is a pretty progressive country, and people mostly leave you be, but when I go out, people are visibly uncomfortable around me and stare a lot. I want to not care about peoples opinions and judgement on how I look, but its very hard. Mum says ive always been pretty sensitive, and its true. I have always cared too much about what others think. I want to go out feeling confident again but I dont know how. Gaming was another excuse to stay home. But I dont want to be afraid of going out anymore. I dont even think its dangerous. I just get very overwhelmed by everyone.

Looking at the other people in my life who just dont care about these games as much as I do kinda helps. I wanted to play FF7 remake. But I know so many people with fulfilled happy lives, who dont play games. If not playing FF7 isnt a big deal to them, their life is still pretty good regardless, then its probably going to be fine for me too. There was ALOT of hype for that game. Hype doesnt help. It gets us excited about stuff we havent even experienced, and makes us want to experience it as soon as possible. This has bothered me in the past, including with FF7 since it is only on PS4. But im thinking forward now and im pretty sure im not missing anything for my life by not playing a game. Another option is to read all the story/spoilers so you know how it goes without playing it.

Day 2 Today is so hard. Ive starting working to my schedule as planned and im sticking with it, but alot of things are going wrong with my work and im so emotional and fragile today. I want to scream and run and hide from everything and everyone. After yesterday, I am still so conflicted. im feeling withdrawls jerking at me. I want to escape and play games. Anything. but I cant and its like thers a kind of emotional whiplash. I am so unstable and anxious today. A pin drop will make me lose my shit, or break down, or spiral into a panic attack. I am trying to do things, hobbies or whatever, to give myself some enjoyment but everything is bloody flavorless while i am feeling like this. I dont want to do anything because it feels like I wont enjoy it. Im just doing stuff to fill time while i wait for this to pass over. The biggest thing on my mind is what to do about gaming with my daughter. I feel like if i set up rules for myself, to only play with her on those rare occasions, that ill be setting myself up to fail, or that giving up my old way of life and progressing with the new wont work anymore because I wouldnt have actually quit. I hate this.

I realized a bit late, but my daughter text me today to ask if i wanted to play Fortnite with her. Im a mess and I dont know what to do about it. There really isnt much we can do living apart together. This was our thing and im taking it away from her. Ocassionally we would play minecraft together on a server I bought for us. Recently we had enjoyed playing Fortnite together. My daughter doesnt know ive quit. What do i tell her? Its the one thing we could still do together while we were apart. I dont know what the hell to do.

My first day is nearly over. Its gone pretty well. I started the day differently, with a little self care ritual. After my coffee, I spent a good amount of time in google calendar organising how i will spend my days. A friend recommended google keep to make notes and scribble down any brain farts i might have to organise my thoughts, also you can set reminders and give yourself little messages, so im going to set up some little positive affirmations and such. Its still so surreal. I just about had a melt down because it dawned on me that i cant access my steam account now even if i wanted to. its GONE. My mind still wants to escape all the time. Even now its like "i want to be doing something else". After playing with the calendar, i spent some time cleaning my work space. It feels like years since my desk has been this clean, surely it hasnt. Its hard to tell though when days and months blur together. I actually spent a couple hours learning and practicing some development stuff. It was so goooood and ill continue it tomorrow. Something else i had thought about alot but never started because i just played games instead. It really does feel good to be coding and stuff again. Have you ever gone a long time without chocolate, and then when you try it after so long its like " HOLY CRAP I FORGOT HOW AMAZING THIS IS". Kinda like that. Maybe not as dramatic lol. It turns out, one of my deadlines is tomorrow for a project, and I had been quite lazy about it, because you know...gaming. So I had to make a change to my callendar to get that done today. Its nearly done (im on a break while writing this), and I can get to work on the next thing in the morning. Its been a challenge to break up my day. I naturally want to just do whatever im interested in at the time, and only that. Ive had a past habbit of doing things in phases. Devoting alot of time to one thing, losing interest, devoting that time to something else. It has been both difficult but satisfying today. I think I will go to sleep feeling like I have achieved something

Now we can learn to be our best selves!

YOU CAN DO IT! I love programming. It is very therapeutic for me, yet I hadnt done it nearly enough in recent years, because gaming. I recommend Java, because of its wide variety of application and popularity, and also C#. It is similar to Java in syntax but is such an elegant language to use. I havent touched C or C++ since university, and the only reason we had to was for hardware programming and assembly code. They are significantly harder to learn and put to good use than higher level languages like Java/C#

Thank you for all the feed back. Congrats on your progress! Day 1 Its my first morning waking up without games. I found myself wanting to stay in bed longer like i had nothing to wake up for. I am not a morning person at all, i feel like trash everyday when I wake up, and before i would go to the bathroom, make a coffee, switch on my PC and game. Now Im going to try a routine...something ive always struggled with. When I was doing the exercise in Respawn about figuring out what time you have free, i was embarassed to do it because the only things i could put down, is when i go to sleep and when i wake up. There is this massive 16hour long block of time everyday where I should do stuff at some time, or not because ill probably ignore most of it and play games all day. So in the mornings I am going to wake up, go bathroom, wash and moisturise my face, have my coffee, and while i have my coffee im going to check things like this forum, and maybe see if there are any new youtube videos from my favorite creators, who are not game play streams. The important thing is, Im giving myself an hour to do this each morning, and after that, I go to work! Working is something else that has been hard. I am a 3D modeller who works from home. So my job involves sitting at a computer for many hours, and with that comes many distractions. Came many distractions. I have been not very productive in my work because of how much more time I invest in to playing video games. I love my work. Very few people get to enjoy creating for a living. However sometimes I would come up to a challenge I didnt like or want to do, or I would create something I wasnt excited about, or a deadline would be stressing me out, so I just played games instead. I have some things to figure out of what my working day will involve, but I want to put aside 8 hours, including breaks, every day except Thursdays and Fridays, when my girlfriend has her weekend, and the time when my daughter comes to stay....Perk of being your own boss...choosing your weekends! Only now Ill actually have a weekend to choose, and not just everyday be a blur of wake up game sleep. Brings me to another thought...My daughter always asks me when we talk, "what have you been up to"? I lie and say "mostly just working. Not too much." I dont want this. My little girl is still young and doesnt think much about it. But as she becomes a teenager/adult...I dont want to be known as the parent that just plays games all the time. We used to go on little adventures. When I moved to this city and everything was still new, we used to drive out to different places just to check it out, and it always made her pretty happy. She doesnt really care about games. She likes them and enjoys playing them, but all she wants to do when she comes is spend time with me. Games dont really matter. I guess maybe they mattered more to me. I want her to be proud of me, so i need to be proud of myself first. I want her to grow up into an adult who feels love and happiness when she thinks of me, and not contempt and disappointment because of the way I chose to live and spend my time. I really have alot of thoughts to get out this morning. Yesterday when i deleted everything...its crazy what kind of hold it all had on me. It all still feels so surreal. It is like yesterday I just found out a close friend died and I am going though the stages of grief. It almost doesnt feel real yet. So today, I dont have a proper plan/calendar, so I am going to iron that out a bit more. Figure out how I can fill my work days, and what to do with my free hours. I am scared and I just want to run away from all of this like I used to.

Same here

I didnt have a plan. I just kinda fell into it, bought respawn, read the first four chapters, now i have no games. But after all ive been reading and learning, and the emotional spiral ive experienced, i would not feel good if i were to play games tomorrow. I dont want to. In saying that, its so surreal still. Its like someone has died and im grieving, or ive lost a limb, or something. It all kinda happened very fast.

EDIT: Im not really going to aim for one post a day. Some days I might want to post more than once. Its a diary after all. I did not want to start this diary, just as much as i did. I wanted to just "do it later" and do something else more fun like watch netflix or play games. But this kind of thing is why i need and want to quit gaming, because the minute i dont want to do something...anything....i game. Except sometimes i do want to do something, but it might be boring or whatever, so i dont bother and just play games. It kind of slapped me in the face, on why exactly I wanted to quit now. Even starting this Diary was a trial. I went to the doctors last week, she weighed me, and holy cow, i was the heaviest i had been. It took a couple of days to sink in just how serious this is, and was the final kick in the butt i needed to fix stuff. But i couldnt, because as soon as i got home i just played games and avoided dealing with it. Losing weight is one of the many reasons I want and need to quit. I found Cam's videos when i googled "escapism", earlier today. I knew thats what my gaming was and i wanted to stop but couldnt, and it was suffocating me. The videos made me cry alot. Alot. Because it hit the nail on the head. Someone else was telling me to my face everything that had been happening to me, and it was all true for me. The only way im going to break this cycle is remove a link from the chain, and that link is gaming. I started reading Respawn, and got to the part where I was to delete games. It was terrifying. I cried alot and dread hit me like a truck...What was I going to do now? I uninstalled everything, and nearly had a panic attack when I uninstalled the launchers. Ill miss the free game from Epic. I wont get to see whats coming out or whats on sale on Steam. I really wanted to play the C&C Remaster which comes out in a couple of weeks. All gone. I know its for the best and i was constantly thinking of all the other stuff i will be and can be doing now. The hardest thing for me though, is not being able to play games with my daughter...and im honestly not sure i wont be able to. I only see her for one weekend every 2 weeks. While she is here, we like to play minecraft, or roblox together. Its the only time i play those games and we have so much fun. I dont know what to do. Find something else? Only play games when she visits and we can play together? Theres some irony in my need to quit video games. Its been my childhood dream to create games. Every thing ive done and learned as an adult, at school, and university, has been with that in mind. But along the way i got sucked up doing nothing but playing and the rest of my lifes goals took a back seat. I was scared and conflicted because if im not playing games, does creating them make me a hypocrite? Nah it doesnt. Games arent bad. Many people love games who are not hooked on the escape. I was telling a friend of my plan to quit. She said "game developers dont play games anyway". It made me laugh and isnt entirely true, but it reminded me that the experience of creating, and playing the game you created, is not the same as playing games you didnt create. I have made unfinished games in the past, and stopped because i lost interest and played other games instead. I very much want to learn how to not fall in to this trap, so i can actually finish a project. The only thing I have not removed from my computer, is Second Life. Many argue that its not a game, although it does contain many. But my reason for that, is that its how i earn money. Creating for SL is my source of income, and im very rarely on there for reasons other than work, messages, occasionally listening to a live singer. In fact, by not gaming, I might be able to create more, therefore earn more. Its been a hell afternoon of emotions, and I dont like it one bit. I hope it gets better. I hope i can see this through. I hadnt officially started, or quit yet when i started writing this, but i guess i have. Im mostly scared though of succeeding, and then later replacing gaming with some other form of escape.

Hi im Renee and im scared to do this, but i am reading Respawn and want this to succeed for myself.