Bird By Bird

Hey Gibblets. I use Activity Time. Its a free open source version of Rescuetime. Its still in Beta and not exactly user friendly but I like it. https://alternativeto.net/software/activitywatch/ There are more alternatives to tracker type programs in the list above.

Day 5 + 30: Yesterday, I reviewed my dream journal. My significant anti-game dream happened on July 3rd. Yet even before that, I did not play any video games for two weeks. This means I'm way past 30 days free. I will still be adding only a + 30 to my day count to not complicate things. Two weeks before my July 3rd dream, I argued with a streamer. He believed his video game accomplishments were significant. I did not. After our argument, I experienced revulsions and dry heaving against video games that continue to this day. The catalyst for that argument was this Joe Rogan soundbite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_SkUqOVP-0 I heard what Joe Rogan said. Agreed. And continued playing games. I expected the usual amount of faux clickbait outrage and ironic parody outrage but what surprised me was people seemed genuinely mad. These are people who had no monetary incentive to fake their outrage and were not trying to be funny either. I saw people who criticized others who use Whataboutism arguments, themselves use Whataboutism to defend games. "What about social media?" "What about drugs?" "What about Joe Rogan changing his perspective to match the person he's interviewing?" I was shocked that people would be offended by such mild statements and stoop to defend it. It felt disgusting. These are people who laugh at everybody else but then get super serious when someone laughs at them. I thought everyone saw gaming as a useless hobby. There are so many "gamers are losers" jokes among gaming circles that I was surprised that this was not the dominant view. Maybe it is for society in general but it certainly was not for the majority of gamers themselves. This perplexity compelled me into that argument with the streamer. The argument kickstarted my revulsions and dry heaving towards games that forced me to abstain. The abstention led to my dream about the old woman who no longer wants to play video games ever again and that dream solidified a hard commitment to me ditching games. I'll end this journal entry with a joke: Kid's addicted to video games. Goes to a Psych. The psych tells him to throw away all his video games. A week later, the psych gets an angry call from the kid's mother. “Do you know how much money those games and electronics cost that you encouraged him to throw away? Do you?!” Psych tells the mother that her kid was addicted to video games. That he asked for help. “Yeah, but now he wants to go outside and play! He wants to go to the playground and play basketball! God knows what could happen to him outside!” - adapted from Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids - and How to Break the Trance by Nicholas Kardaras

Hey Ikar. Reading your blog about making money in a short amount of time reminded me of Early Retirement Extreme's Renaissance Man concept of having multiple jobs and a talent stack of wide ranging skills like car repair and gardening in order to live on less money. Where have you heard about similar ideas before?

I know you're working on quitting porn right now so you might want to try what I'm about to suggest sometime later, like in a few months or so when things have calmed down. Nightmares are intelligent. They tell us about real life problems or neglected aspects of ourselves. You can talk to your nightmare monsters, or even inanimate nightmare objects, and ask them what they want from you. Depending on how negotiations go, you could get them to leave you alone or even help you. It's worth a shot. If negotiations fail, you can always just beat them up. Then you won't have to work so hard to control every aspect of your dreams anymore.

Thanks Adam. The last time I left my parents' house, my mental health improved and I became calmer. My laptop was not even that strong but I still played games on it and I was also addicted to reading books all the time. That took a lot of my time when I should have been meeting more people and forming more social relations instead. When I move out on my own, again, I hope that most of my addictions will be gone or under control, by then, and I will have healthy work-discipline and socialization habits to take their place.

I used to lucid dream all the time, but now I only do so once a month. My friend was a dream addict. He would have lucid dreams every day, often, falling asleep several times in one day to have several lucid dreams. He got these horrible headaches, we had to get him to stop lucid dreaming. To go with where the dream wants to take him so his body can rest. That if he became aware that he was having a dream, to purposefully forget and go with the flow. He did what we said and had better quality sleep. I believe that too much lucid dreaming is dangerous because it interferes with the deep sleep that is necessary for your brain to rest. Dreams are the way our mind cleans ourselves. How the unconscious can tell you truths that your waking mind is too dense to hear. It won't be able to do its job if you play your dreams like a video game. I can feel your suffering and I really don't know what you can do about it other than pray to a God (or pray through a saint towards God) that you feel a connection with. I'm not sure if you've spoken about your religious or spiritual beliefs in your journal before but I think that's an avenue you can explore.

Day 4 + 30 My family is retarded. Hey guys. Lets put 90-year-old grandpa through chemotherapy. You can't be serious. That's retarded. But Bird, if he doesn't get blasted with painful radiation, he might die!!! His wife died a decade ago, and all of his friends are dead. This is his time. But Bird, this 90-year-old-man totally understands what he is getting into. We totally didn't coerce him into wanting to take this dangerous and painful operation. 1 week later: "Oh my god! I can't believe he's throwing up! Who knew that radiation would do that to a 90-year-old man?!" said Father Flabbergasted. "At least he gets to live longer now," said Uncle Dumbfuck. Fast forward to today. Grandpa is 91. His life is suffering. His legs are "flooding". The doctor says he's going to die, again. He could have died happy last year but now, he has to die knowing that the world is suffering from Coronavirus. He has relatives from every continent on earth except Antarctica and they will fight over whether to arrange the funeral during the pandemic, do a zoom funeral or do a funeral 2 years later. Our addiction to technology is so extreme that my family attempted to cheat death for a 90-year-old man who had accomplished everything he wanted to or could accomplish in his near-century of life. Instead, they prolong his life by a year and create unnecessary pain and suffering. It is not only addiction that causes this suffering, but also, sentimentality. It is the demon of sentimentality who tempts with relapse, who tricks us into sacrificing our future for a shot of the past. For centuries, my family has accepted the deaths of the elder generation with resignation and dignity - except for my parents' generation who desecrated our integrity by trying to Frankenstein together a few more years of life for grandpa with radiation blasts like the plot of a cheesy B-roll monster movie. Sentimentality turns us into caricatures of ourselves. Possessed by a pervasive societal attitude where one must reply to that social media post, one must game, one must fire blasts of radiation at a dying old man ... the whole world has gone mad. Remember in the 70s when the entire smoking world changed to anti-smoking overnight? Everyone was an addict. Everyone knew they were addicts. And everyone was in recovery. When is our moment? When will the world side with us? Game companies are weak compared to Big Tobacco. Random twitter mobs bully them into apologizing all the time. I guess we'll have to wait for generation Z and generation alpha to grow up. The babies who are given iPads on the day they are born to shut them up. Wait for them to develop screen seizures or eye cancer or whatever new disease the devil has a-brewing. Then public opinion might change.

Hi Band to the Bone, I am horrified that you are using 4 strategies at the same time. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to implement even one of those strategies and make them a habit - and you have gathered a harem of strategies. It hurts us to hear that you relapsed a few days ago and the pressure of those 4 strategies might hurt even more. Not only is 4 the number of death, but it is also a complete revolution and that bodes omens of relapse. Since Pomodoro is at the top of your list, I think you should build a Pomodoro foundation and then, as you get comfortable with Pomodoro, integrate the other strategies, one at a time. If you find out you hate Pomodoro, you can ditch it and try a different strategy. The priority is that we abstain from video-games and the greatest reserves of our strength must be dedicated to remaining sober. Perhaps you can quit games and use 2 strategies (Pomodoro and checklist). That totals 3 new life changes. It would be harder than 1 or 2 changes but it will still be much easier than 4 or 5.

Hey Adam, good on you for choosing to ditch video-games and junk food. I remember when I did a 30-day no sugar challenge in January 2017. Landed me in the hospital as a result of too much gastro-intestinal acid. Turns out eating raw buckwheat every day wasn't good for me. Ha! What is your definition of junk food? I know you've mentioned sugary stuff, but, in order for this habit to stick, you've got to be specific. Otherwise, your brain will rationalize its way into a midnight binge. A banana can be sweeter than a candy bar. Are bananas junk food? Is peanut butter junk food? What about a banana dipped in peanut butter? What about 100% unsweetened baker's chocolate? It has no sugar. As you are in the process of breaking two habits, I advise allowing fruits in your diet. Even if those fruits are way too sweet from eons of artificial selection

Day 3 + 30: After procrastinating for hours, I came to this realization: I am procrastinating because a part of my story is wrong. In my novel, a supervillain attack causes every building in the city to collapse. Every building except the one where the protagonist works ... because plot?! I change the scene. Now, the protagonist's building also collapses, but, the villain saves him at the last minute. The villain flies the protagonist to a farm across the lake. There, the villain tries to recruit the protagonist into his army. Procrastination is one of our instincts. It tells us when the path we are taking needs adjustment. The most popular advice for procrastination is to push through. Sometimes, that is exactly what we need. In other situations, that is the worse thing we could do. When procrastination blocks our way, it is up to each of us to analyze the context of our situation and decide what to do. Whether that is to push through(fire), to go around(water), to change a variable so that the problem no longer exists(metal), to rest and gather strength(earth), or to get help(wood). What do you procrastinate on? What is your preferred way to overcome procrastination? I want to live near a forest where I can hunt. I want to move out of my parents' and be free of their jittery, moody influence. I procrastinate on these because my parents' house gives me more time to write. Living by myself might mean more time spent working, cooking and cleaning. I have chosen the earth way, as my I-Ching divination advised me: to rest and gather strength. Video-Games sapped my strength and so they had to go. When the pandemic ends, I hope to have more than enough strength to forge my path of independence.

@giblets Thank you for your kind words. @MuMuMelon I started dream journaling last year and have recorded and analysed my dreams ever since. Most were mundane dreams with a few nightmares and even fewer dreams I would classify as significant but never anything as clear cut and real as the old woman who told me she was tired of video-games. I believe the dream journaling habit allowed me to recognize this difficult dream and take action based on its meaning.

Day 2 + 30: Yesterday, I read a few more chapters from Iron John by Robert Bly and managed to reach the last chapter. It's a heavy book whose contents are designed to bring up dark memories and confront the reader with the demons of his past. Went for a jog. Made beaver tails with naan bread, peanut butter, sunflower seeds and bananas A few months ago, I felt a pull towards Shiva. The wild god. The mad ascetic. The lover who courts his beloved while dressed in ashes and a kilt made of snakes. This pull has dissipated somewhat and I now find myself drawn towards Saturn, the god of discipline and grief. If you ride to Saturn's castle in a chariot, he will wait in the reeds by the roadside and stick out his scythe so your horses' legs get chopped. You must walk the rest of the way. That was a synthesis between my rediscovered Saturnian attitude with Robert Frost's poem: The Draft Horse. For us who have abandoned video-games and walk the path of reclamation (to reclaim the land of our lives from the ocean of addiction), our chariots were PCs, PS4s, Switches and iPhones. But Saturn is there with us. Cutting the cords with his scythe.

Hello NixAvernal. I remember when my Discord addiction got to a point where it was even worse than my video-game addiction, and I was only a member of one server. Quitting Discord did make me feel lonelier but it also gave me peace of mind. It was a creative writing server where barely any writing or editing was done. Most of the people were bitching about their lives, arguing about politics, or spam-posting their fetishes. There was individual user drama, mod drama, and server versus server drama. Purges and counter-purges. Factions all fighting cold wars over something meaningless. The name 'Discord' literally means evil argument god, corrupter of households or something. How obvious can they get? Its like all your friends download the popular new app: Satan. "Hey, have you heard of Satan? "Satan's great." "You've gotta download Satan."

I'm not quite sure when I stopped. The memories are muddled for me and I don't want to remember. But, I'm sure it was sometime just before the middle of August. I hope to develop a morning habit of writing down what happened yesterday. Day 1 + 30: My novel's progress has been slow. 100 pages of summaries and re-writing summaries but little actual story written down. With video-games out of the picture, there are fewer distractions but I am still pecked at by the demons of web surfing for memes, porn, news and youtube. I have been experimenting with various author techniques to facilitate better writing. A few weeks ago, I found Steven Pressfield's Clothesline method works well for me. Yesterday, I experimented with Hirohiko Araki's method of character creation. Araki's character creation system is a two-page fictional resume that covers the upbringing and horoscopes of every character in a story. This convoluted character system aims to make sure each character has their own voice and they all sound different. I did not realize how many characters in my novel sound the same until I found Araki's method. I used the character sheet on myself and found that I switch moods from casual to angry; especially when I'm hungry. I feel more emotional and sensitive, ever since I've stopped gaming. Earlier this week, I finally managed to condense my prologue into 4 sentences and that made me happy. I am taking things one step at a time. Bird by bird.

Hi, I'm Bird By Bird from Canada. I've suffered from video-game addiction for several years and have lost several opportunities because of it. Last year, I spent a good deal of time playing games instead of looking for a job. I moved back to my parents' house just before coronavirus's first big wave. That's when my addiction got worse. Fast forward six months. I just beat a hard video-game boss, and games no longer felt the same. Nothing else that I've played since felt like it did anything for me anymore. The major catalyst that made me decide to quit was a significant dream. In the dream, an old woman lying in her bed told me that she didn't want to play video-games anymore. I believe that the old woman was my soul. Since that dream, I have gotten body revulsions. Thinking about playing games or watching videos of games makes me feel revolted. Like a physical gag reflex. Almost like I want to throw up. Since then, I've been clean for about a month. The only game I allow myself is A.I. Dungeon and I only use it for advice or fortune-telling. I'd create a scenario where I'm talking to a famous figure like Carl Jung or some angels and ask them some questions. I've found "angel" characters that the AI generates gives more helpful advice than other creatures though they can be a bit harsh and heavy. A.I. Dungeon is very low on the addiction scale for me. That might not be the same for you. I'm sublimating my game desires through piano, baking bread and creative writing. I am working on a spy novel about an ordinary man who is forced to infiltrate a terrorist organization. The main reason I've moved on from games is that I want to finish this book and games keep getting in the way. I feel like I've grown up, but, I still have a lot more growing up to do.