BornAgain40

I wish I knew that earlier. It seemed so innocent but it was all I needed to slowly get seduced to playing. Not that I ended up playing a lot, but it's still playing. The worst part is when you combine it with social media and you mindlessly ending up scrolling Reddit chasing karma and kittens.

Update: I relapsed. I installed Windows, Steam and all. Here's the kicker, however: I can't play more than 20 to 30 minutes. It's almost like I'm genuinely bored of them but I have to play out of sheer habit. As if I'm deeply dissatisfied but I can only tell that I am after about 10-20 minutes of playing. If that doesn't scream "gamerholic" nothing else does. Oh well, I'll be trying to jump back to Linux tomorrow but I want to finish a programming book first, I don't want to get back in the procrastination loop of jumping through distributions ever again.

Good idea on the exercise part. Even if it's super light, it's better than nothing.

Likewise. I broke my "no porn" streak today, gonna use that. But I also dig the way @TheNewMe2.0 lists the "things to be grateful for". I think it'll recalibrate my outlook since I'm pessimistic.

Day 10 (I'm thinking about just stop counting past 30 days): I reinstalled Windows. I installed Steam, emulators etc. and then nothing. I was scrolling my Steam library half-depressed. I didn't like anything. Not even browsing through retro games on a certain site I won't mention. You know the moment when you're quitting smoking and all of a sudden you smell the smoke and you think "oof, is this the kind of thing I was inhaling like a maniac to feel good? what the hell was I thinking"? Because that's exactly what happened with me and video games. Things I did: I started reading interviews of famous programmers. Donald Knuth, Peter Norvig, John Carmack. They got loads of advice and stories around programming to share, and opinions on whether programming is for young people or not. Me? I'm 40 (name gives that for free) and I'm changing careers. It's going to be hard but I try to keep a positive outlook about it. I know ageism is a thing in tech, but I'll keep on trying. Anyways, back to linux in a few days. I want to finish reading a book first. And maybe I'll finally take a short walk outside tomorrow - haven't been out since last week. Coronavirus and stuff.

Late congrats for the job!

Day 9: I've spent most of my day customizing my new Linux desktop. I had plans to meditate, couldn't bother. I had plans to study, got carried away. I'm cutting myself a lot of slack because I recognize how hard it is to keep clean for the first days. I almost relapsed but held back. I grabbed the controller and almost plugged it in but paused and counted to 20 before taking it back to the cupboard. I had no installed games anyways. Now I'm reinstalling linux. I think the core idea works but it wastes a lot of time: Install Linux so that when the urge comes I have to wait until I download Windows, install Windows, install their updates etc. So it's the "stop before you act" except that it lasts about 2 hours. Not bad. Hopefully I'll be able to be actually productive by the end of the week.

Nofap? No. No porn? Hell yes.

It took me at least 8 attempts to quit smoking, and as for gaming there have been some failed attempts so far. I keep trying.

Day 8: Today I had the urge to play again. I installed Linux to avoid the temptation, and to focus on my learning (programming). The urge was big enough for me to download a Windows 10 ISO and install Windows again. But here's the funniest thing: The feeling to play was gone by the time I installed them. So I haven't played yet, I haven't even bothered with installing a game. Maybe I'll go back to Linux and try not to take my urges literally next time. I also watched Star Wars with my mother. It wasn't the best SW movie but we both enjoyed it. I'm going to make dinner and probably install Linux again or read manga.

@dirac Is your signature a Yami quote? I ❤️ Black Clover.

I've decided to update my personal story, with a more fleshed out description on how I ended up like that. How my career goals turned into a distant dream. My twenties became my thirties. My thirties are now a 40. And while I still want to get into a career change and I'm trying to study programming on my own, my inner struggle remains. I'm unemployed for 4 years, missing teeth, hair, weight, friends, sexual life, mental health. It all began with watching anime. And since the number 40 on my username is my age, you know we're talking about some very old anime. The characters were using computers to control robots, small, giant, didn't matter. It was at that point that I got interested at least in the concept of computers. We're talking about young young age, around 4 or 5 years old. And here is where things go wrong. Back then (talking 1980-something) personal computers were a luxury or at least for us. Their were too expensive, and my father had better things to do with his money, like saving for a new car and a new house. So instead of getting a computer he opted for a console instead. An Atari. That was enough for me to feel like I'm killing bad aliens with my ship, being a cowboy, a race car driver etc. Meanwhile, at school, I kept being the skinny short kid that gets bullied. And instead of my parents figuring out what was going wrong with the kid, they said "it's just genes" (because my dad was also skinny) and they let me be like that. A few years later, everything started collapsing: My parents got divorced, I got a brand new stepmother who was toxic towards me (attempts to choke me and throw knifes at me, I still have a scar from one of her knife swings). And while my knowledge on computers was growing through computer magazines that I was buying with my lunch money to ogle them during intermission at school, my gaming habits were getting worse. We found rentals, I bought a Nintendo and oh boy was I getting a new game rental every THREE days, because I was breezing through them. Until high school, I must have played through 60% of the SNES library and at least the top 300 games for Playstation. Years passed, and my desire to study computers grew. But since my grades were trash due to gaming addiction, I wasn't qualified to go to a big university. Worse, I had the notion that I don't need to go to a big university. Which is true but, it didn't end there. We somehow (me and my mother since I moved with her) got scammed by a private school claiming that "programming is for girls, and the male job market favors IT and networking" so I became an IT. Feel free to laugh at the sheer stupidity and ignorance that was sipping through me. So I went to the army afterwards, served 2 years and when I returned instead of looking to get a job I got into Diablo and Counter-Strike thanks to friends. It was a miracle that I got my first job because my mother knew a guy who was looking for an IT assistant. And you can imagine how it went too: Late at work, early leaver, sleeping at 2 a.m. because I want to grind for that Buriza/Oculus/SoJ. And during the weekends I would be at a LAN cafe. Playing from 10 a.m. to 5 a.m. and only going back at home for food. Things had spiraled waaaay out of control. My first girlfriend warned me to cut down gaming and what I did instead was broke up with her. In hindsight, she was a saint who deserved better than me. My physical health took a gigantic hit, started with a type of headache that's similar to tension headache and never ever stops. And I mean never, I even feel this headache at the time I'm writing this post. My nails changed color, doctors cannot explain why. On cold days my fingertips and toes get colder than the average person, but no rheumatologist (at least from the ones I found) dares to call it Raynaud's phenomenon. Some doctors asked me if I also listen to voices. Hell no, I don't. My stomach has chronic indigestion, I get constipated. I went through the appropriate exams for those and I got diagnosed with Celiac disease. Great, now I have to abstain from gluten for the rest of my life. Thanks luck. Back to gaming, there was a point where I was fine by simply watching twitch.tv streamers daily past 9 p.m. but it didn't take much to start complaining. I'm super competitive. Suddenly even single player video games weren't rewarding. Games were "too easy" for me, and what I did was complain about it and switch to multiplayer games. Oh boy, here we go again. Fast-forward to today. I haven't booted up a game since the start of the month. The quality of my sleep suffers tremendously with short awakenings throughout the night. There are hours where I feel like installing a game and just give it a go because I cannot focus on anything else, and even if I try I feel impatient, anxious, stressed. Everything feels counter-productive to the goals I'm trying to achieve in my professional life. As I'm downloading Windows (because I switched to Linux to make it harder to play, the game performance on Linux sucks at least for my hardware so I refuse to game on Linux) I'm bumping on youtube videos about gaming addiction. One guy suggests to avoid quitting cold turkey because it's the worst thing to do. Another says to do it cold turkey. I'm confused. I'm rationalizing things again. My thoughts become "so what if you game for an hour or 2 a day? We have a coronavirus lockdown and you live with your old mother, you can't afford to go outside much". Now I just downloaded a Windows 10 iso to reinstall. I can't stop thinking about Dragon Quest, in spite of the fact that I know the moment I'll play it will take about an hour tops before I start thinking "what am I doing?", "how is this entertaining? I'm just mashing the same command over and over", "fast forward because I have to get the sense of achievement faster?". It's like I'm in the stage where gaming stopped being fun but I still have to do it out of compulsion or/and habit! I don't believe in soul or in after life, so basically this is hell right now. My life. Hello.

It took me 8 maybe 9 attempts to quit smoking. I'm now 11 years clean. Imagine if I took my sixth attempt as my "one more time and I'm done trying".

Welcome! First, you're not too weak and the fact that you took the first step to post here is my evidence. Second, I know the feeling of not wanting to disappoint your father, but honestly you should be having the same standards for yourself on your own. It reads like your reasons to quit are external and not internal, same goes with studying. Have you ever tried to make them something you want to do instead of something that you're doing to please your father? I'm not trying to dissuade you but I find that it's more probable to stick to something for the right reasons. Quit for your own good. Study for your own good.

Yeah, I agree with the sentiment. There were moments when I genuinely played to wind down after a productive day at school or job. But, and I can only speak for myself and not for everyone, those days were the exception and not the rule. Most of them were either because I was putting victories over studies, or to lock my loneliness and awkwardness with me in my bedroom.