Max

Oh dude, Apple Pencil cap gives me chills. When I was in Paris 2 years ago, I used to take my iPad everywhere with me to activate Uber scooters (couldn’t use my phone, ‘cause activation process required camera, but I fucked up mine while repairing my phone from liquid damage). So, I have a Pro model where pencil sticks on magnets to the side, and while putting my iPad to my backpack, I accidentally disconnected the pencil and it fell down on the ground, but I didn’t notice. A few minutes later, I was walking on the same spot, saw an Apple pencil on the ground and thought “damn, someone lost his Apple pencil, so unfortunate”. And then “hol up, wait a second, lemme check mine” and “holy fuck, how could this happen?!”. So yeah, my pencil cap was damaged to shit, guess it fell right on it. Hopefully I managed to buy 5 caps for $3 on AliExpress and everything is fine since then. So yeah, watch out for your cap and stay safe. P.S. Are you fine with me using bad language in your journal? Since I’ve learnt English mostly from extremely toxic online games, where people insults each other without holding back, I’m used to someone words that people might find offensive. Perhaps I should reconsider how I write and speak English and learn some manners.

@dirac Yeah, I think as long as I’m trying, everything will be alright. By the way, may I ask you, I need to learn physics from 0 to high school level in 2 months, could you recommend something? I have almost unlimited time to study per day and I’m used to self-learning. Thanks in advance!

Wow, I was just thinking about you a few hours ago, decided to check your journal and was saddened that you stopped writing. And a few hours later you’re back. Not even sure what to say, just wow. Welcome back I guess. Well, I’m alright, could’ve been better I guess, I relapsed so many times that I can’t even count. But here I am with my 3 days streak without games lmao.

I'm glad you're doing fine. 39 days is insane, I think I've never been that far yet. Nice picture, I guess it's snow on your window, but I'm not completely sure 🙂

Well as far as I know it is common to think or dream about games when you quit. I had a couple of nights dreaming about gaming and freaking out that I relapsed while it was just a dream. Try to occupy your mind with something else. Do whatever you have a passion for. If you don't have any ideas you can take a look at hobby suggestions on GameQuitters.

Thank you @JSmith @DaBest @Amphibian220 @TheNewMe2.0 @BooksandTrees @dasvira I really appreciate your support. I read all of your replies last week but wasn’t ready to answer then. I didn’t play since my last post, so now I’m 1 week game free. You guys changed something inside me, now I’ll continue overcoming my addiction no matter what. Not only for me, but for you guys, you put efforts in cheering me up and I don’t want to disappoint you. @BooksandTrees you were right, it’s a process. I am abandoning this journal and returning to my first one.

Relapsed again, I'm not getting any better after all. I'm hopeless. I gave up. Games ruined my life so much that I'm not able to fix it. Point of no return is far behind me. I don't even live, I exist. All my plans, dreams and activities are always postponed to tomorrow, but tomorrow's never coming. There is no tomorrow for me. I'm stuck in procrastination circle.

Today I’ve made my first step into better life. I am slowly getting better.

@dirac Hey, how are you? I miss your posts man.

I'm starting to understand that. You're definitely right. I was just too emotional and angry on myself while writing first post in this journal. In Russia we have a phrase "Дорогу осилит идущий" which means 'Route will be passed by the one who's walking'. I know translation isn't perfect.

@TheNewMe2.0 Thanks, I am working on finding a way to quit. It’s very heartwarming that someone actually likes to read my posts, because even I don’t. I think that my previous posts are just loads of bullshit mixed with pathetic whining and bad English. I’ll work to improve that.

Hey @chiliflavor, thank you! I hope you will do it this time. You can’t even imagine how I’m tired of being addicted to gaming. Wish you the best on your journey!

@codepants Thank you for your support. I know that quitting won’t be easy and relapses are most likely to happen. But I can’t start everything over so many times. I wrote the reasons why I quit above.

Yeah, I figured all of that long ago. Why I gamed: 1) I was good at it. 2) Sense of purpose, goal to achieve. 3) Other people admiring my skills. 4) Social interaction 5) Escape from my problems. Why I quit: 1) I completely neglect all my other activities and responsibilities. 2) I am socially awkward and insecure. 3) I feel bad for wasting my life. 4) Competitive gaming makes me nervous and toxic. 5) Gaming all day is bad for my physical health. Triggers: 1) Boredom. 2) Anxiety. 3) Overwatch game updates. 4) Other games. 5) Streams. 6) Gaming videos. 7) Conversations about gaming. So, basically I miss everything in my life that gaming provides.

My name is Max, I am a video game addict. My addiction is beyond any imagination. This journal is my last bit of hope to recover. If I would relapse even one more time, I'll let it go and would never attempt quitting ever again in my life. I'm sick of it.

I know it’s hard. I was on the verge of relapse yesterday. It takes time and efforts to change. All we can do is just fight through it.

Don’t worry, I had exactly the same during first weeks. As far as I know from other journals, it’s quite usual. Wish you luck!

Try Alarmy. I used to sleep till 1 PM, now I'm waking at 8 AM. This shit won't let you sleep, trust me. I prefer turning off after solving math problems, but photo and QR code work well too. This app is just saving my life, can't imagine what I would do without it.

@dirac The book is Digital Design and Computer Architecture by David Harris & Sarah Harris. We used this book on our FPGA course. Instead of many others, it was written and edited by people who actually work in the industry. In companies like AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Apple, Broadcom. So it is very accurate. I would use 3D printer in your case. They’re pretty inexpensive on AliExpress. And learning 3D modeling seems very interesting for me as well.

@dirac Great idea to try FPGA. I’ve been on such courses and they were pretty intense. I know a very good book related to FPGA and digital design, so tell me if you’re interested in it. This book will prepare you to any FPGA courses very well. I highly recommend starting your own Arduino project, from my experience copying projects is not that interesting. You can always learn something that you don’t know in the process. If you don’t know what to do, you can find existing project and make your own version with your code and scheme. Be careful with that game though. I had couple of times when I started playing single player game, but ended up playing Overwatch after. Your case might be different, just keep an eye on that.

I fully agree with this. I tried to play on moderation for 5 years. After that I realized that it’s not an option for me. @FettsNotDead If you really want to play on moderation, at least consider doing 90 day detox first. During this time you’ll get a better understanding of your relationship with gaming.

Hey, good luck! Received mine a couple of days ago.

@dirac That would be very cool if you’d post Arduino progress here. Gonna be interesting for sure. Also it can motivate you to do more. Recently I worked with FPGA board, it’s much harder than Arduino. On FPGA, instead of writing a program you are configuring logic inside a chip. If you wanna learn more about it, google or check my journal, I had some posts about it few weeks ago. But still I have some plans for Arduino. This month I’m gonna build ‘smart’ humidifier, that’ll use a sensor to keep humidity in a room on set level. Also I’m planning to build mechanical keyboard from scratch.

@dirac Thank you, I am trying to learn as much as I can. I started with Arduino when my friend who works as an electrical engineer told me about it. He also gave me a board and some electronic components to play with. At first I was watching and reading tutorials on the internet, after that I bought a book about Arduino. And in my case it was a pretty bad way to learn Arduino from scratch, because I had 0 coding or electronics experience, many topics in such resources are not fully explained, and I started copping code or electronic schemes without understanding how they actually work. So in my opinion it is best to learn C/C++ on a proper level, and learn electronics on a basic level, at least fully understand Ohm’s law, how transistors work etc. After that you can try to do a project that you are interested in. In that process you’ll learn everything else what is needed. This is how I see a decent way to learn Arduino. I might be wrong though.

That’s nice that you got into digital electronics with Arduino. Well, I do projects on Arduino boards since 12, so for 5 years already. But because of gaming during all that time I am still pretty mediocre at it. The hardest thing I’ve done would be a program for EEPROM (non-volatile memory) management. It was tricky to do. I guess at some point I’ll improve the algorithm a bit and then upload it as a library to GitHub, as far as I’m concerned nothing similar is publicly available. Also I’ve done a simple counter that works in a real factory for 1 year already. There’s a chrome plating line of 30 baths with different liquids in them. In order for chrome to stick to surface of metal object, bath itself works as positive electrode (anode) and plating object is negative electrode (cathode). So positive ions of chrome in a liquid stick to metal surface of an object. All process is controlled by computer, plating objects are hanging on a bar, bar moves on rails between baths. Every time bar dives in a bath with chrome, rectifier near a bath starts working on 4V 3000A, which starts chrome plating process. My task was to count how many bars with product were chromed. Rectifier turns on only when new bar is in a bath, when rectifier is on, its bus creates a magnetic field which is possible to detect by reed switch. So I programmed Arduino to detect when reed switch changes its state from 0 to 1 (it is important to ignore when it changes back from 1 to 0) and increase counter variable. I’ll attach a photo of my counter when I was testing it in a factory. I like that Arduino is very easy to start messing with unlike other microcontroller boards like STM32 (but they’re much more powerful and feature rich). So keep going if you like it, at some point you’ll be able to build whatever you want. I hope that my explanation was interesting to read, it might be unnecessary complicated and with a lot of grammar mistakes, but I felt like I wanna share it with someone. Good luck! UPD: I found a photo of a counter installed on its place.