Stanly Kwok

15 August 2020 (Day 14): No video games.

14 August 2020 (Day 13): For video games, perfect, no playing games and no watching professional e-sports games.

13 August 2020 (Day 12): Ready to write out my feelings and thoughts in 2 days. For now, I'll stay quiet. For video games, perfect, no playing games and no watching professional e-sports games.

12 August 2020 (Day 11): I'm scared of what's going to happen to the world due to this pandemic. Having read a lot of articles about conspiracy theories that the elites of the world are planning all of this etc etc, and I'm like, okay it can be true, but from my end, I can't do shit about it. I have just graduated last year and I'm on my progress of changing my career. I have $0 in my bank account, I'm being taken care of fully by my parents. I am not an independent person whatsoever. I'm super confused and lost, and don't really know what to do, and what the future holds. Fuck this shit. As for video games, perfect, no playing games and no watching professional e-sports games.

Thank you. Yeah I've been struggling with this my whole life. Time to stop ignoring this and face it.

11 August 2020 (Day 10): Mixed feelings, don't know how to put them into words yet. All I can say is that I'm getting better. As for video games, perfect, no playing video games and no watching professional e-sports games.

10 August 2020 (Day 9): Mixed feelings today. As soon as I identified my social skills problems, I started to be able to relate it to my life and trying to figure out how to handle this and make it better. When I was in high school, I had a girl who confessed to me, but yeah, I had such low self-esteem and didn't really understand how to reply and what to do. So I just ignored her, and we never really talked from then on. It was about 7 years ago, and today I just messaged her about what happened and explained what I thought at that time. Still waiting for her reply. I have decided that I will use this journal, not just for my video games addiction, but my life as a whole. Thanks to this, I find comfort and relief in writing out my feelings and thoughts. As for video game, still perfect, no playing video games, and no watching professional e-sports games.

Yeah I have had this issue all my life, and hasn't really educated myself on what it actually is and how to deal with it. Thank you for your help, I will think about it 🙂 .

Thank you for your help 🙂. I'll have a think about it.

9 August 2020 (Day 8): Over these past days when I started writing journals, I noticed that the first thing I enjoy doing as soon as I wake up is writing this journal. I don't really know why, maybe because this is a way of me expressing my thoughts and feelings, and for my whole life, I have not been expressing my thoughts and feelings well to other people, so this is actually something I enjoy and a bit like an addiction if I can give it a feeling. I noticed that throughout my whole life, I have missed tons of opportunities, that if I had expressed my feelings and thoughts in the first place, I would have got that opportunity. Example: when I was in the 8th grade, age 14 probably, my school's basketball captain asked me whether I want play for the team. I actually wanted so bad to play for the team, but I think I was shy, and was not confident that I would be valuable for the team, so I said no. Damn, now I'm thinking about it, it's freaking painful. All I had to do was say yes and I would have my position in the school's team. Regret it so much now, but lesson learned. Heard this saying that "closed mouth doesn't get fed", and I can relate to it so much. Regret is freaking painful. Anyways, my sadness and depression(? don't know if I'm depressed, feels like it, maybe yes maybe not?) have gotten better. Been experimenting with how people would react over my messages, and I got some replies back, and actually had some good conversations. As for video games, it just gets easier everyday. As I have my focus more on my piano, programming and martial arts skills, these video games thoughts are disappearing, and I am confident that I won't get back to it, at least for a long period of time. Also, no watching professional e-sports games. Life is changing for good now for me currently.

8 August 2020 (Day 7): 1 week of consistently writing journals! I have to be proud of myself! Anyway, yesterday was probably one of the hardest days in recent years. One of my biggest weakness is that I overthink too much. I probably created problems that weren't there in the first place. I don't really know how to handle this. This is particularly true for my relationships/connections with other people, in other words, my social world. At the same time, I have got more motivation than ever to be a professional web developer. Really want to make it big, and I just want to learn whatever it takes everyday. So far so good. For video games, it's been perfect. No playing video games and watching professional e-sports games yesterday. I know I can do this for a very long time.

Day 6 ---> 7 August 2020: My strategy worked. I was going through Facebook yesterday and I found a friend whom I met in school who has worked as a web developer for 3 years. I said hi to him, talk about that I also want to work as a web developer. He was really kind, gave me a lot of advice on web development skills and how to make my website look better. As for video games, still going strong, no games whatsoever, and no watching professional e-sports. Addition: Feels so frustrated, disappointed and sad because throughout my whole life (24 years), I can't really say anyone is my best friend, someone I can talk to, to share things with. My parents and my brother aren't the type of a person that can listen and understand, so they can't really help me with this issue. This is super hard. Damn, this is painful, and at the same time I can't kill myself, because I've known too much about the Spiritual World, and killing myself won't erase the pain. Suicide isn't something that my head is not familiar with.

6 August 2020: Just a thought of the day. Currently have mixed feelings and opinions about social media. I've heard about social media and technology addiction, have watched some TEDx videos about them on Youtube, and I do agree that spending too much time on social media distracts me from being productive on building my skills and exercises. The urge to look for notifications, likes and comments is just there pretty much all the time. I have also been going on and off about my social media addiction. (Not engaging in social media, then come back to it, happened several times) However, come to think about it, I don't really have friends. Without social media, I don't really have anyone that I can talk to regarding my personal life, or sharing something about my challenges, struggles, etc. I recently started a conversation online with 3 people (whom I have met in real life), and they all didn't respond to me back. I believe this happens because of me lacking the social skills, or the ability to understand other people, or listening to other people. So finally, after 3 months of not engaging on social media, I came back to it yesterday. Still, mixed feelings and opinions. In one way, it does distract me from my important personal goals, which is to code and get a programming job. In another way, I hope to attract like-minded people (e.g. people interested in piano, martial arts, exercises or web development) and maybe we can talk to each other about those. This gives me an opportunity to talk to more people and practice my social skills. So, my conclusion for the day is that I need to use social media for the connections, interactions and maybe hopefully attract someone I can talk to about my hobby or career. However, I also need to train my mind not to check for notifications, likes, comments, etc. a lot of the time. I need to realize that the main purpose of me coming back to engaging social media is to attract like-minded people and gain connections.

Day 5 ---> 6 August 2020: I'm 24 and never had a girlfriend in my entire life. And I know it's because of my lack of social skills. I don't really know how to understand people, listen to people or engage them in interesting conversations that can be fun or serious. It's for both males and females. Really trying to work on it now. Other than that, I'm going pretty well with building my skills and enjoying my hobbies. (No playing games, no watching professional e-sports games) Heard that while it's important to create a to-do list, it's also important to create a not-to-do list :). Watching professional e-sports games is a small action, but can be dangerous in consequences, if done repeatedly, could hook me back to playing games.

5 August 2020: I feel I have terrible social skills. In the real world, the best skill that you can have to succeed is your social skills. Trying to get a job, or promote your own business, it all comes down to your connections, and connections are created through your social skills. I identified that problem yesterday and now I'm trying to find ways to be more sociable. So far so good, no playing games and no watching professional e-sports games.

@BooksandTrees Haha too late, I have done that 2 years ago, and as a result I keep going on and off on my video games addiction. I actually have started trying to get off playing games since 3 years ago, 1 month I wouldn't play, then go back to playing. Then regretting it, not play again for some weeks or months, then come back playing again. Happened several times. My biggest mistake was not finding a community of like-minded people like this forum. I came here 3 days ago, and it clicked, it feels much easier to quit gaming 🙂. Thanks for the advice though 🙂

@Erik2.0 Yeah man. That's my biggest regret. I was 21 when I realized that I had spent about 10000 hours on gaming that I could've used for other things more productive, e.g. playing a music instrument or training martial arts. I actually got so mad at myself because I can never get back those 10000 hours. Now I'm trying to recover, trying my best to live life.

@BooksandTrees Haha I have had a lot of embarassing conversations, in real life and online. At times I had so many of them in a row, and then got so disappointed and decided not to talk to anyone anymore, believing that I will be alone forever. I guess I have to keep trying and figure out this skill. Thanks for the feedback and good luck for you too 🙂

@illi Welcome!

@BooksandTrees Hi, I read your story, can't really relate, because I was addicted to MOBA games, but I used to play as many hours as you did. Anyways, I spent most of my childhood and teenage years playing games, and I didn't really use that time to learn people or socialize, or anything like that and I am 24 now and I consider my social skills as terrible. Do you have any advice for that? Thank you in advance.

I had been playing games for pretty much my whole life. For the past 3 years I have been going on and off about quitting my video games addiction. I wouldn't play for 1 month, then got hooked again. Then one day regretting it, wouldn't play for weeks or months, and then got hooked again. Happened several times, and my biggest mistake was not finding a community or a group of people on the same journey. I had these thought of quitting game, but I did not tell anyone, and thus nowhere to share my thoughts, or get insights from other people. This is my third day on this forum, no games at all, and one thing I can say that's been really helpful is to know that I'm not on this journey alone, and we can encourage each other to quit and find other productive things 🙂 . I wish I had found this forum earlier. Cheers 🙂

I am currently learning web development on CodeAcademy. We can share to each other, e.g. our difficulties, challenges or goals of learning to code if you want 🙂 I am currently focusing to get a web development job and eventually create my own business doing software/web development. This kind of focus has helped me to direct my focus away from playing games. Just maybe a helpful thought.

That's what I'm trying to do. I currently focus on developing my piano, programming and fitness skills, and I know if I don't do any of these 3, I will go back to playing games again. Whenever I think about playing/watching video games, I decide to practice my piano, or programming skills. So far it has worked for me.

4 August 2020: No games at all yesterday. Tempted to watch professional e-sports games, but I know those little things can hook me back into playing the game, so I did not watch. So far so good, been getting better with my piano and programming skills. Can't go to the gym yet, because of Covid-19, still keep my daily running going on.

3 August 2020: No games at all yesterday (after coming to this forum). Felt really great, I could direct my focus much better on my piano and programming skills. Looking forward to the next days of no gaming.