Bird By Bird

I'm happy for you Lampshade, that you figured this out. An easy schedule is way more productive in the long run. The temptation to do too much is a tricky devil who whispers the best of intentions that pave the way to hell. Once a habit has solidified and grown roots and is now a normal part of everyday life that you don't even notice is there, that is when its time to add new habits. Maintaining and solidifying habits, as well as terminating ones that used to be good but suck now, is all part of lifestyle flow. Take it easy buddy.

I'm sure it will take a while but keep at it. What's the book about? Do you have a writing schedule or do you just wing it?

Since I've reached 90 days (or possibly 120 days because of that one summer month where my memories are hazy) I'll stop counting unless I relapse because its easier to just write the date. Wed, Dec 9: Took a bath in the tub (instead of a shower) for the first time this year. Overall relaxing but tub is too small for my legs. Sat 12: Put 'cleaning' as an exercise under the 'B' category along with Yoga and stretches. Dad and I moved grey couch from fireplace room to dad's office because I want to turn fireplace room into a workout space. A simple furniture move was meladramatic and overemotional as mom and dad argued about past things brought to the surface by cleaning the house. Sun 13: My legs feel like the antlers of a great and monstrous stag because of the cramped bath plus moving the couch. Mon 14: Legs better after stretches. Week analysis: Not using computer until 2 pm every day makes me feel happier and healthier and more relaxed. It makes me feel that I have more control over my life. I take more time to comb my hair in the morning and make breakfast. I experience cravings for computer but I counter those cravings by activating super easy relaxing lazy mode. A positive side effect of 'no computer until 2 pm' is that I take more naps. These naps make me healthier and I am grateful for them. Even if inner critic bitches about "muh productivity." I remind myself that I am in recovery and I have the right to live healthy and take naps. I realise now that 'new' and 'fun' are virtues that pair together. I want to live in a new fun place and meet and befriend new fun people and have new fun adventures and love and fuck new fun girls and write new fun stories and create new fun art. For next week I work on maintaining my 'no computer until 2 pm' good habit. I'm excited to see what new fun things I will discover and do.

Thanks @Jason70. Yesterday was day 90 and I didn't even realize it. I don't feel different but when I look back, I realize how much healthier and happier I am now. Yesterday I also analyzed my version 1 'Put away laptop downstairs at 12 am every day experiment.' While I did succeed on most days, I still use too much computer. My new version 2 experiment is 'Only use laptop from 2 pm to 12 am and put away laptop downstairs at 12 am.' I also am experimenting with 'Writing stories on paper in the morning and typing them into computer after 2 pm.' I already do this with my weekly journal. I have been doing a sub experiment with paper writing that involves re-iterations of text on different sheets and rearranging like a map and drawing progression maps like Zelda Dungeons. I am honest with myself when I say I like some concepts and aesthetics found in video games but I hate the tedium in playing them and I know as an addict who has relapsed on-and-off again years before ever finding Game Quitters that games will just suck me in and waste my time and my health because billion dollar companies pay the smartest people in the world to make and sell these games to suck people like me, and you, into their world because they want to make more money. I have found these video-game-esque concepts manifesting elsewhere such as the maps I draw to represent story progressions through different scenes and that's okay. I've had my fill after playing Bloodborne and Doom Eternal and there are always new and better games comming out all the time but whatever they are nothing to me. I have my writing, and reading, and music, and cooking, and exercise to entertain me and keep me calm and healthy. I also want more and deeper and new social relations and friends. I wonder what my life will look like after the pandemic. Many people made things during quarantine, many people did nothing. During the Pandemic, I did not play video games for 90 days (or quite possibly 120 days, I'm not too sure about July and August). That is my accomplishment. I won because I allowed myself to sleep in. To lean on a bunch of different crutches from porn to book-addiction, and even got rid of other crutches along the journey. I sought to make the recovery process easy by being as comfy as possible and going easy on myself in a bunch of other areas. We are not perfect and mistakes are made, after all we are in recovery.

@bearI'm happy that my advice has had a positive impact on your lifestyle and that I've been able to make a difference or plant the seed that will grow to make a difference. You may not see this for a while but I'll write this for you when you get back and even if you don't read this, others can benefit so its all good either way. I got that from Tim Ferriss. The full equation is: Research + Doing your own Experiments + Analysing your Experiments + Changing your experiments based on your analysis and new research and re-analysing them again (loop) + Using the results to make money and compete against other actors in the field All research is second-hand and third-hand information. Second-hand is that the author wrote about his own experiments. Third-hand is the author wrote about other peoples' experiments. Work or information can be in the form of studies, articles, videos, books, or attained through prayer, dreams or meditation. Disinformation and fake news is frequent because authors want to make money. Disinfo is such a problem that most research must be filtered through personal experiments because that is the only way to get First-hand information. Ferriss recommends AB testing: running 2 or more experiments either at the same time or one after the other and seeing which delivers better results. First-hand information is flawed because of personal bias and must be compared to the Second-hand and Third-hand information found through research in order to remain grouded. If A and B are run and A wins. Then experiment AA and AB and if AB wins, then experiment ABA and ABB. Then the final test is to either use your skills in the market by offering your products and services and see what improvements need to be made by customer feedback. Or by entering your work in competitions to see how it fares against your peers. All this to me seems obvious but I realize I didn't know this five years ago and I still have problems bringing things to market or competing. --- Scott Adams wrote in one of his books that Jesus Christ and America's founding fathers were successful leaders because they inspired people to be better than themselves. If 'Be Yourself' is Super Saiyan, then 'Be Better than Yourself' is a Super Saiyan beyond a Super Saiyan, or Super Saiyan 2. 'Be Yourself' is acknowledging your own desires and fears. Is figuring out which desires are something you really want, and which desires were implanted by the Nietzschean Dragon of 'Thou Shalt' which is society and authority figures wanting you to do things that may benefit them but not you. 'Be Better than Yourself' is thinking about what God wants for you (destiny) and how that helps or hinders your personal desires (destiny versus desire). What parts of your destiny to accept and persue or debate or fight against and what desires don't fit the Better You and should be surrendered and which to keep. Destiny + Desire = Dharma (which is the perfect flow between you and the universe and God) --- Most people have a crutch or many crutches to fall back on. Its okay lean more on some of your crutches while getting rid of another. ie Healthier to first stop gaming and watching streams first for 3-5 months and later working to stop watching porn and masturbating (or the reverse) instead of all 4 at the same time and breaking yourself. Its okay to take breaks and its also okay to slip up and fall. Sometimes it is healthy to take it easy on yourself when you feel like you should push yourself harder - but that feeling is the demon of self sabotage that causes burnout - or sometimes that is the goddess of Victory and you should push yourself harder. It all depends on the situational context or the dharma of the situation. Its also okay to have a journal where you relapse every day or so because journal work lets you see where you are making mistakes and benefits you with a record. Even if you never return, most addicts recover by themselves so I'm optimistic. People age out of addiction. It is an overlooked miracle.

With video games/drugs/gambling/cigarettes i felt good sometimes, without games/drugs/gambling/cigarettes i feel awful all the time. Your statement is a common experience that I, and many other recovering addicts, experience on our journey towards good health. Acknowledging your feelings is a big step because it means that you are being honest with yourself and that's good. That awfulness is a part of yourself that you've been ignoring, repressing, neglecting and you have to suffer through it because it is through suffering that we are redeemed. If the burden is too much to bare, pray to a higher power.

That's my mom too. I've wasted so much time on bullshit when I could have been honing my art skills if I had a competent parental figure and not a bunch of broken manchildren and womanchildren in adult-suits.

That's exhausting. It takes me 1-2 weeks to write a short story. Take it easy and do 1 short story a month.

Any addictive behaviour is a substitute for real suffering. Acknowledging and exploring the dark places of your past and your own soul might feel bad but it is necessary to grieve in order to live the full human experience and be a complete person. Knowing that there is something under there, that has been covered up by games is already a huge step to recovery. When the monsters under the bed are either slain or redeemed then you'll feel better and the urge to game will be lessened.

I've had a love-hate relationship with my piano for a while. It's all part of learning to take it easy not hate yourself for missing a few keys here and there. "There are no mistakes, only some keys that sound better than other keys." is what I read in an improv piano book.

Humans naturally look for new things. It's multibillion dollar companies who pervert and desecrate the human brain by mass producing entertainment garbage that hurts out productivity and tires us out. I'm looking for new things to do - 'do' as in actions - implied movement instead of just consuming content (which may also be okay in moderation unless there are major addictive factors like video games). Maybe that's what we should all be doing, be discerning with new things to consume and seek out new things to do.

Oh yeah I forgot about MMM. I love his blog. It might be good for me to join up with the forums. The rest of the FIRE movement, I'm not so sure about. It seems a tad grifter-ish to me. I like a few other finance bloggers too, I have them bookmarked somewhere, don't really remember their names. I think I may go back to reading them again. Thanks for reminding me.

Thanks for asking Lampshade. I want to host websites on my own server. It's harder than just paying someone else to host but I think learning how to do something by yourself builds character. Right now, I'm experimenting with VPS Virtual Private Servers. My progress has been slow but I've learned a lot just by running into walls and searching for the answers on forums and youtube. --- Tue 1: Sent a bunch of emails to Toastmasters to book their next speeches with our club. Wed 2: Discussed plan with mom to clean the rest of fireplace room. It took her a while to understand the concept of: a little bit of cleaning every week. She's used to doing things all at once and burning out. I was taught to act like that too. Past implications look more eldritch every time I look back. Thu 3: Checked forums for problem with ghost blog sudo password that it never asked me to set but wants me to input anyways. Fri 4: Realize I need to exercise to live a healthy life. Thought up an ABC rotation. A: Weight Lifting. B: Yoga. C : Meditation. I might have an AC day followed by an BC day then a pure C day for rest. Decided to either exercise or meditate every day. Sat 5: Read giant collections of books that was delivered. Fun stuff. Spooky stuff. From the Dialogical Genre where the author has a dialect with a supernatural being. Added more categories to exercise rotation. A: Arms, Legs, Chest, Core. B: Yoga. C : Meditation. O: Go Outside. Did AarmsCArmsO Saturday and AlegsCBO Sunday. Considered Zoom DnD groups and Zoom improv groups. Realized my life is full of old and that I want to try and experience new things. Sun Dec 6: Tried out 4chan's /qst/ board. It's like DnD or Choose Your Own Adventure stories but played on an imageboard. Too slow paced to be addictive. Tried watching DnD streams and videos. Every single one of them bored me. Looked at some Zoom inprov classes and meetups but was too intimidated to sign up. Maybe I will do that later. Mon, Dec 7 (Day 86+30) Did not eat enough today. Realized that I don't need the computer for anything except for zoom meetings, email and the linux websites I am experimenting with. I can exercise, play with toys, write stories, read books, eat, sleep, and meet new people offline. There are entire days when I could, theoretically be able to live without computer. This simple truth is, to me, mindblowing.

No. Most people act differently. Some people are scared of new information and prefer to think as little as possible. Others take their time digesting new information until it makes sense, comparing it against previous and similar information they already know. Only a rare few are compelled to learn quickly. No. Seasonal jobs like ski lift operators or oil workers, athletes who hate some parts of training but do it in order to win, people who hate their jobs and monks who spend hours in meditation every day - none of them are addicted. Working long hours for money is not addiction, it is just work. Monks meditate to cleanse themselves and fight inner demons. While it is possible to get addicted to these things, most of these people are not. They just have normal desires. Addiction is an animalistic compulsion to perform actions for an activity that causes harm to yourself (and by extension to others). Addiction is the corruption of desire into an unhealthy extreme. The street urchant who steals bread to eat is different from the kleptomaniac who cannot stop himself from stealing all sorts of pointless things. You were addicted to gaming when you were younger. Most of us are young. Some of our older members also cannot afford to game because those billion dollar companies hire the smartest geniuses on the planet to make and sell these games to be as addictive as possible to make as much money as possible. You're lucky that you have not been caught in the net with the rest of us fishes but it could always happen. There's one guy on our forum who is only addicted to Overwatch. Other games are meaningless to him. If Overwatch never existed, he would never have gotten addicted and would be living a better life. Different people react differently to different addictive substances. I think it's smart that you refuse to play games with killing or violence in them because that makes you swim safe from a lot of nets and there could be a game in that category that could addict you.

Apathy or numbness is the absence of feeling. Depression is the dominance of sadness as a feeling to the point where it feels like the only feeling. Depression can shift into apathy and back because emotional climates are fluid. It sucks that things are bad for you right now. You'll know you're getting better when you start to cry, or get paranoid, or have angry outbursts - that means the emotions are comming back. It's what happened to me. Be easier on yourself too. Apathy and depression are fail-safe mechanisms that force us to take a break when we are too hard on ourselves.

Game Quitters is an amazing online group. Supportive, positive and nurturing. I'm thinking of being more social during the next year and I'm thinking about what communities to join. Since the pandemic makes it hard to meet in person, I want to know what other online social groups GQ members belong to. Is it a niche group or general interests? Is the culture supportive? Edgy? Laissez-faire? Healthy? Paid or free? Is communication mostly typing or mostly zoom? Is it a social media group or do they use forums or discord? I also attend weekly Toastmasters meetings on Zoom as a part of my Toastmasters Public Speaking Club. Members offer encouragement and supportive feedback. I pay $80 every six months. The culture is business casual and most members are middle-aged. Game Quitters and Toastmasters are the only online communities I belong to. What communities do you belong to?

Reddit is my worse timewaster, so addictive and most of the info is second rate at best. The website is still ugly even after a decade of improvements. The content is nowhere near as good as other things I could consume to waste my time like shows or books. I found that any news I wanted on reddit could be found on twitter, any tech problems I had could be answered by youtube or stack exchange, any recommendations for books or shows could be found on goodreads or imdb, any art or pictures were better on instagram. And yet no matter how mediocre reddit is, it's still so addictive, I feel cravings and it wants to pull me back in. Annoying.

Game dreams like these is your psyche's way of purging garbage influences from your unconscious. Like it's saying: "Do you still want this? I'm throwing it out." Means you're getting better.

Many of friends hated documentation too. I on the other hand like writing documentation. In some classes, I would do their documentation work, and in exchange, they would help me with other projects. Maybe one of your professional allies at your company likes documentation and would be happy to do it for you? Maybe there's a junior employee you could delegate this to in exchange for advice over lunch? Most people delegate the report writing parts of their jobs to freelancers anyways but if you can get it done without paying for it, that's a super bonus.

Yesterday was day 80 + 30. Put computer away before midnight every day last week except Saturday the 28th. I skipped morning affirmations that Saturday. Wrote 4 times last week. Went outside 2 times last week. Fine tuning an easy system for my Toastmasters speaking club to decide which member will deliver what speech on what day. Booking people to give speeches 2 or more meetings in advance is way easier than a few days before as we've scrambled to do so before. My one week reading fast was broken after reading a few packages from an erotic novel. I also read short articles and a lot of webcomics but that was expected. Otherwise my mostly successful no reading week went well. Caught up watching some old shows I meant to see a while back but didn't. Also found some old songs I liked and organized them into playlists. The 7 books I ordered in the mail arrived and I'll read them soon. Upgraded my Linux server. Apparantly I was supposed to get 10GB memory but they were only giving me 1GB - no wonder I kept running out of memory; if only I asked for help earlier. I still haven't found the right balance between figuring things out for myself and asking for help. No relatives for the holidays means less Christmas shopping. Considering getting some relatives things for the holidays but they already have low expectations of me with all the advantages that entails. If I get them something during the pandemic, they might expect something mailed next year too. Decisions. Decisions. The dining room table has finally been cleaned of old toys and random products and junk. Dad and I moved the table a few inches to the right so mom could finally clean the mold stain in the permanent carpet under the table leg that was hiding there for the past month. She's decided to spray bleach once a week until the stain goes away. I sure hope the table remains clean. Who knows, miracles can happen. PS: No predictions this week.

Wed 18 to Sun 22 | Day 67 to 71 + 30 Possibly my most healthy week, if not my most productive. Put my computer away before midnight on every day - usually before 6pm. Slept a lot more. A LOT more. Looked into Diaphragm Breathing and Wim Hof Breathing. Decided to practice basic Diaphragm exercises before going into more advanced stuff. Wrote affirmations almost every day except Tuesday - noticed I was grumpy on that day because I skipped affirmations. Made a music playlist for writing affirmations to. Barely went outside. Did a good ammount of cleaning, less then the overcleaning of last week. This week I am starting my one week of no books or articles fast/abstaining. I'll probably cave and read webcomics. I predict that I will keep to the no reading books and articles fast but will probably read comics and some Game Quitters journal entries. Still bogged by breakfast procrastination. Watched a movie with parents on Saturday morning, might make this a regular occurrence or might not because I prefer more active activities.

The hardest part about a shit family situation is the temptation to "play peacemaker" between mommy and daddy. That's self-abuse. Asserting healthy boundaries might seem hard at first but gets easier the more you enforce those boundaries. Embrace the divine 'No.' "That's your problem, not mine." "This topic is innapropriate - something you should be discussing with a friend not your adult child." and other healthy boundary asserting phrases. Whatever you choose, just make sure that you come out on top in the end. You get the money or whatever possessions you want. It's their fault for ruining Christmas by having a nasty divorce in the first place, and a good chunk of your life wasted on their bullshit that you'll never get back, you might as well get yours.

Week on, week off makes more sense.

Brutal. I was assigned night shift 2 weeks in a row a few years back. It was quiet for one, but really took a toll on me. Slept in the car from 8am to 4pm because I was too tired from work. Then drove home. Never again. How is that even legal? What is your set rotation or schedule? Is it straight nights or do you alternate?

Gaming-induced psychosis (also called Game Transfer Phenomena [GTP] or the “Tetris Effect” a form of psychotic break that can occur when excessive gaming, often combined with sleep deprivation, blurs the line between what’s real and what’s fantasy. psychiatric symptoms of both derealization (not knowing what’s real) In my work with psychiatric clients who had these kinds of dissociative experiences, I knew that grounding techniques could be helpful. Essentially, you help the client use his or her five senses to feel the immediacy—the physicality—of the present moment. Dan and I tried standing together and making a loud clapping sound; that seemed to help snap him out of his delusion for a moment. I asked him to grab and crumple a piece of paper, which he did. - Glow Kids, Dr Nicholas Kardaras Your condition sounds similar to what Dr. Karadaras describes in the blurb above but I could be wrong. It's hard to diagnose medical conditions on a forum. Gamequitters.com has a list of therapists and doctors you can call to consult on your Assassin's Creed problem. https://gamequitters.com/find-a-therapist/ Your problem sounds serious and regular therapists or doctors who are ignorant of gaming addiction might ignore you or give you pills that turn you into a zombie. I suggest to try scheduling an appointment with one of the therapists on the list. https://gamequitters.com/find-a-therapist/