Pochatok

Yes, very much. I think that a way to track progress and actually see it is to look at things month-by-month or even year-by-year, this way I can actually tell that I've improved at least to some extent. Keeping goals helps too because whenever I complete one, it feels like I made a large step forward.

Second this issue, heh. My gaming urges are usually strongest around this time and early summer. Not over-relying on my own discipline and instead using a lot of blocking/restricting tools has helped me get through. Currently blocking Netflix as it seems to be replacing my urge to game.

I think that the two are completely different. A few months ago there was a similar post, I think that folks posted some helpful things in there too:

Oh, I see! I definitely agree more with you on this point; I do think that there are both negatives and positives to marriage rates and signle-parent household % changing in the recent decades, but I definitely agree that the government should take better care of single-parent households' financial wellness. I do think that there are some good reasons for people to avoid marriage, but I also see its benefits. I don't think anyone should be pressured into marriage, and rather government should try to make it more appealing rather than pressure folks into it, and/or support single-household parents better. Ye!

Haha I totally feel you! I think that I feel a lot of frustration, quite often, when I am not learing or "succeeding" at things as quickly as I'd like to; it's so much easier to measure progress in video games. Life is much less linear 😠

Oh yes! I try to limit myself as much as possible in art sometimes too, it really forces you to think more creatively!

Please keep us updated on your journey, and thank you so much for coming to GQ and sharing your own story- it helps others grow, too! It's never a bad time to quit gaming 🙂

Day 147. Doing better today overall! Here's a bit more to building discpline: Continue to build concrete, goal-oriented habits. Something I have attempted doing, but not nearly enough. Here are a few NOT-TO-DO: No phone 30 minutes before bed. Anything else is okay, but no screen time outside of texting my partner! For the first 30 minutes I am awake (probably driving my sibling to kindergarden and walking the dog), I also should not be using any devices for procreation. Same goes for the following activities: bathroom breaks, being outside, eating, and talking to my partner. Avoid screentime usage at all costs Stop watching Gunpla videos. I honestly have no reason to- I'm not considering purchasing any at the moment. In general, avoid planning purchases unless I am completely sure that I will be placing it. Here are a few TO-DO: Do my bed every morning! Journal every day somewhere to some capacity. It's extremely important to continuos habit building. Practice art and music every day at least to some extent- even 5 minutes a day counts. Consistency is what builds habits Exercise every day to some extent- not every exercise gets me tired, some genuinely feels good and simply reliefs stress In general, I need to shift my "restful" activities from screentime to something more beneficial- something that is helping my wellness, or offers a learning experience. I will achieve this by replacing my habits- for example, instead of watching another episode of my TV show, I am continuing to write this journal 🙂 I should make sure to balance my activities with actual rest too, though. IT'S ANALYSIS TIME!!! Ahh so excited to be looking over my recent stats again- I think that I will look over the last two months and compare each other. "green" is the overall wellbeing Time Management As usually is over break, my time management does get a bit worse. However, I do think that the falloff is less dramatic than I believe it to be; my perception is a harsher- I have more trouble justifying restful activities, and think of them more as "procrastination". The last week, I've allowed myself about 1-2 hours of free time, which is not much more than it was in prior month, when I rated my time management much higher. Stress Management Happy to see that the break is not severly affecting my coping mechanisms. There was an initial drop about three weeks ago, but since I have been improving continuosly. Eating Habits Without having a concrete eating schedule, I tend to skip meals and snack throughout the day more often. I've been making more time to cook lately. Hope to keep improving here, not eating well makes me really unhappy! Social Interaction Quality This is a bit difficult, but overall I think that I've been pushing myself to talk to both family members and high school friends more often. This break, I don't really feel the need to meet up with anyone- family is keeping me busy -but I feel socially happy! Mindfullness Uhh this one is a struggle. With how chaotic things are at home, I only have time for mindfullness when walking the dogs or putting my siblings to sleep. I hope to find a way to carve out some individual time for this activity in the coming weeks. Feeling optimistic for next term, though- my goal is to have this match the "overall" by end of March. Happiness Also glad to see this one holding up despite being at home, where I generally feel quite more depressed haha. Though, I do think that this is a fault in self-perception, too! There is a lot of things that make me sad pn campus too, but I don't think I mind them so much. My coping strategies at home are definitely less effective. How often I am feeling that what I do and care about matters Yay! This one has been pretty steady, and it will definitely be rising in the coming weeks- I've been meeting up with a lot of people and improving networking; so much encouragement from folks to keep doing what I doing 🙂 This is it! I think that I'll switch from Fortify's wellness tracker to my own, but I am yet to design it haha. Will get around to it sometime tomorrow. Hope you've found some of this interesting, Po

OH my I feel you so much! That's totally my experience with Art. This is super insightful into bettering my own process and approaches, thank you so much BooksandTrees!

Hmmm, I hear you! I do believe that quite a few of the more mainstream games are indeed designed like that, but certainly not all; some games are meant to be short experiences (like "Before I Go") or are simply a medium for creation of art (I vividly remember reading about a game that was made by an art student, but I cannot find anything about it- the game was never ":published" in the traditional sense). Neither of these games were considered in the research, btw. But, since most video games are, at the base, made to be entertaining, I do think that they can be addictive simply because of that. What do you think?

Haha I went down that path, and it wasn't very fun in the long run- I think that I ended up working myself up into a corner where every single activity that was not "work" (as in, hard effort with not that much fun) became associated with "procrastination". I had to force myself to rest, to read books, to sleep in on weekends... Not saying that it cannot be beneficial- it was very much for the first few weeks; for me though, in the long run, it simply pushed things out of balance. Hope you'll be able to balance it better than me! Good luck 🙂

Day 146. Gaming desires are very low, partially due to the fact that I've been developing unhealthy obsessions with other things haha. Wanted to journal because of that. Decline in Discipline I very much saw this coming- the last few days (and on a smaller scale, the last week) I have been getting less things done, and getting things done slower. There's been more inclination to relax for longer, to watch more TV shows and surf YouTube more often. Though this has, fortunately, helped me decrease the amount of time I spend on social media to pretty much 0, my overall procrastination has increased. I think that I am used to rely on external factors for disciplining myself- things like deadlines, forced responsibilities, and discpline-encouraging working environments (people around me being productive, for ex.). This week, I've been largely free of any strings, and not in the "best" working environment. The things I am currently attempting are entirely self-motivated, with no deadlines set for me by anyone other than myself. I need to figure out a way to discipline myself for my own sake and pleasure, rather than anyone else. Will come back a bit later with more thougths! I think I've spent a lot of time on this forum today.

To answer your Q: Yes, kind of. She can be really closed off sometimes, especially when she is not doing well. And, when not doing so well, she also tends to get very mean but in a way that actually bothers me (a superiority complex, kind of), and then I take some distrance from her, too. Fortunately, I've been able to connect with her really well over the last few days as my parents were off in NY. We had some good small talk, and a couple deeper convos too. I feel much better now <3 As specifically to your opinion on the modern obstacles to familial relationships at this age, it is somewhat factually incorrect. Let me just verify some information for you: divorce rates are at ~30% overall in US and declining since 1980s, not 50%, and is lower amongst younger generations (1, 2). And, overall, America's divorce rate is highest in the world (3). Though consumerism (re-purchasing rather than fixing things, like you said) is a common cause for decline in family relationships, I couldn't find any evidence for anti-familial propaganda; at least, it is not primarily associated with either decline in family quality (4) or divorce rates (5). Haha sorry Ikar, I kind of love researchig from time to time- this is a lot to digest, imo. However, I do hope you'll find this information useful- I learned a lot from these articles 🙂

Haha, that's good! For me, the alternatives to video games have been board games and 3D puzzles (like Lego/Gunpla), but it also can get out of hand sometimes 😞 Thank you for your suggestion, but I find jigsaw puzzles oddly unsatisfying for some reason- I think that I secretly crave more complex mechanisms that turn into something completely functionally different once assembled together. Oh, that's really cool- must have been such a different industry to work in back then; it has changed a lot this decade, and not in the best direction imo. Yes, I think that independent could be better, or at least working for indie games, where I could have more control over my work and time. Hmmm, keep me updated on your musical journey! I hope to publish a composition by the end of March (hopefully it will open up some doors)- do you have any goals, too? Po

Day 143. Felt like journaling again because I have been very unproductive so far and it's getting out of hand. Spent ten minutes watching game trailers just now. I've also spent about 30 minutes just relaxing, but I did not intend to do it for that long, and honestly shouldn't have- 20 was the initial goal, and I went about 10 minutes overboard. Though I am on break, I want to keep some sort of discipline and stay motivated and excited for things that I am passionate about. Break is both for me to get rest and also to learn and do things I am not able to do during school time. Here are some things I have been doing: 1. Learning and playing Volleyball. Played an amazing game yesterday, where I was the youngest AND the least experienced/skilled player by far. It was so fun, despite the fact that I barely contributed to my team- I've scored 1 point myself and have lost at least 10. But, I learned so much! 2. Bettering my practice habits with trombone. This one needs more improvement- I am not doing super well lately, and have been not feeling super motivated during my practice routines. I think that I am not super engaged with what I am learning. I should try either trying out composing again, or start a music instagram where I could post stuff to keep myself engaged. 3. Bettering my exercise routine. I still can improve my goals here, too, but so far I've learned exercises to deal with my back injury (they've been very helpful), and am in the process of exploring calisthenics. 4. Improving myself artistically. Same thing- I need more concrete goals, visions, deadlines, and such to stay more motivated to keep making progress. I have been learning for about 20-30 minutes every day, but I need to do more to meet my career goals. But, I don't really have concrete career goals oops- should set those too! 5. Hmmmm, I think those are the main 4. They're more than enough for me at the moment, too. Here are some things I would want to learn in the future: Learning 2D animation on procreate (debating to pay for an online class for this atm) Learning sound design and composition Learning to cook better Main issues with motivation and passion from the points above: I don't have concrete goals for some of my activities. Setting them always helps- I am learning volleyball faster than ever thanks to knowing exactly what I want to improve and why. Ahhh my serves have sucked so badly yesterday... I should rewrite and remind myself of these goals frequently. Looking not only for inspiration but for solid learning opportunities is important too- I need to track my improvement and be able to see it in order for the activity to feel more rewarding Being more consistent- I should set some daily goals to simply build the habit of practicing learning. Ultimately, consisten learning will lead to improvement. Woah, this was highly helpful. Very glad to have taken the time to complete this. Will proceed to set goals now!

Gotta love this one, yes haha 🙂 I feel very grateful for this too

Ooo, never heard of this before, but looks interesting! I'm simply using Ableton Live + Massive Native Instruments since I could get them fairly cheap a few years ago. I have only produced a couple recordings and a few unfinished compositions using those two, but hope to carve out more time and money for composition in the future. I think that working as a video game composer could be one of my dream jobs haha. I feel you- I've had to cut out so many triggers too! I have a long web-block list of very specific YouTube searches on Cold Turkey haha. But ultimately, reminding myself of why I want to have a life without gaming and really getting deeper with those thoughts helps me deal best with cravings. What about you?

Day 140 (only 3 more weeks to break my previous streak!). I have been reading a lot of video game composer interviews, and that is itching my urges. I do think that, sometime in the longer-term future (no earlier than this summer haha), I'd like to compose for video games; that will involve me playing games, most likely. But at the moment, I am doing other things, and they have nothing to do with video games. Gaming would serve no purpose in my life at the moment. Journaling Things have been doing fine. I've been working a lot on both art and music, and it's been a challenging but very rewarding learning process. Excited for what's to come, given that it has only been 2/6 weeks of my break so far. Being at home offers me a nice mix of household responsibilities to water down my own projects. Besides some usual family tension and just all the perks and cons of living poor (which again reminds me of how priviliged I am to be attending one of my state's more expensive universities), I've been feeling much better compared to last week. What's still bumming me is that my partner is rather the opposite; they are not having a good time at home. I am sad that I cannot offer all that much support and have to wait until Christmas to see them. Hopefully they will be able to learn to cope with their struggles more efficiently. Oh, totally forgot about Volleyball- I've found a few places to play/practice at and will be going out in a couple hours. Super excited (but also there is a bit of negativity attached to volleyball now- since I am treating it more seriously it is no longer a "just for fun" activity, I must seek progress -_-). Good things from last week I attended my very first "pro" Jazz Jam and did pretty poorly at it haha. However, I did not let that get in my head too much and have worked hard to improve! Hope to be able to go and play again tonight... I've been exercising more regularly than usual, and it feels really nice to be so in touch with my body. School doesn't allow that, really Almost every night, I've been going to bed earlier and earlier. Two weeks ago I was waking up at 8:30 the earliest, today my alarm rang at 7:30. If I'll keep going the same route, I should be able to start my day around 6:45 😃 Bad things from last week: Though I've happily rediscovered my childhood hobby of gunpla, it's been taking up way too much of my time, especially right before I go to bed -_- Family can still be stressing me out at times, and I find it difficult to connect with my sister, which is a bummer 😞 I still have the habit of pushing undesirable/difficult tasks into "tomorrow"; though I have been working on it, it's still present\ I think that this is all! Next week I will review my wellness tracker again hehe, excited to see what has changed during the month of November. Stay well, kind reader! Po

Congrats on the one month mark, that's a huge achievement! Hope that you'll be able to keep this pace up for a couple more months hehe 🙂

Hi! Happy to hear that you're doing well and continuing your detox 🙂 Hope that the rest of December will match the positive energy of November for you!

Hmm, I agree with your perspective on this a lot, this is very good insight that I will use to apply these to my own experiences and situations~ Thank you so much for sharing!

Oh my goodness congrats!!! I know how much and how long you've been studying for it, this is such an awesome achievement. Hope you'll be able to celebrate in some way 🙂

Yes, this is definitely a problem for me too haha. I am not really focusing on the issue itself, but rather find a way to tone it down by doing something else. I have been trying to address this issue more lately by journaling and developing more concrete strategies, but I don't think I am doing enough yet. Thank you for reminding me about this! Hmmm, I think I am overall familiar with this pattern of thinking- I also think that something is trying to "trick" me into playing, but rather than it being Mara, it's my addicted stoopid brain. However, this coping strategy is new- I'll try it out! I'm not super sure what compassion and self-soothing means for you, but I think I know what I'll do. Awhhh thank you so much! Though I am actually not very active here, I really appreciate your input on this forum! Your entries are helping me- and others- resolve our addictions.

Day 131. Getting closer to beating my previous streak. If I manage to get through the entire break with no gaming, I will be close to 170 days, and once school starts it will be a no-brainer. Some things that might challenge my ability to get there: Some of the video games I am interested in are having releases during the break, duh. Holiday season! I am on break and have less things scheduled by others for me (classes, work, etc.). Less things are "mandatory" Being at home triggers memories of previous relapses- a year ago at this time I was still playing, and two years ago... uh ewwww don't event want to think about it! I am away from my partner and a lot of other responsibilities and interests too- social interactions, volleyball, music, and classwork is all gone at the moment. What I am doing to challenge those issues: In general, staying away from getting invested in those games: Keep my social media usage to a minimum, and avoid doing activities that increase my interest in playing rather than simply the game itself, like checking out detailed playthroughs and/or reviews of the games. Continue to journal here, perhaps twice a week, to remind myself why I do not want to game. Lately, I've been in the mindset of "I shouldn't" more than "I don't want to" Schedule my day more! Already have started that to some capacity, and need to simply keep my to-do list full and active. Remember the bad memories, duh. Thinking of how much I also struggled during those "good" times helps me remember why I am different now. Create a schedule for myself! Make a musical goal, and create a schedule to achieve it Join a volleyball club- already am on the lookout for places to go to, but nothing found yet Make a list of things I want to "learn"- as if I am in class! Perhaps, I could get ahead on some school reading, or just take notes and quiz myself on a personal topic of interest. Reach out to friends and write letters to others 🙂 I need to make goals regarding my social interactions and that should keep me going. Journaling Since the break started, I've been doing pretty well. I've had a lot of anxiety in the days leading up to my return home- it's not always the best environment for me to relax and have so private time in. However, I feel like if I take better initiative and react to things that happen at home in a more positive way, my- and my family's- wellbeings improve. I'm pretty happy so far. It has not been that way for my partner, sadly- their home environment is extremely toxic and isolating; they are not feeling well and their mental health is diteriorating very quickly (we're less than one week into break...). Hope that I will be able to do more about it in the coming days. Distance sucks. Other stuff So far it's been a lot of relaxation and small tasks, but there are some things I'd like to highlight: 1. I've made an awesome painting. Thanks to continuos feedback from my father, people online, and my resilience, I've been able to create one of my best ones so far despite a 3 month break. Onto the next project- I need to think of what kind of paintings I want to do, what subjects I want to depict... 2. I've been practicing fairly consistently on trombone, but can do more. I still don't have a very stable goal in mind, though find more value in it. Will tinker more on this tomorrow. 3. I'm much more invested in a lot of my hobbies, especially volleyball- I have already seeked out multiple games to attend, and will continue to look for better opportunities. It is such an amazing activity- when I do well, it is incredibly rewarding, motivating, and reassuring. Playing volleyball makes me feel like everything is within my reach- I just need to stretch my hands more and jump higher. Excited! That's about it folks, thank you all for reading and I hope that you'll have a nice week! @pdallair91I appreciate your message and willl reply in some time- I think I need to gather some thoughts first... Po

Hey! It definitely took me a long time to figure out, and partially it was simply due to the fact that my brain was so used to games. Nothing felt as fullfilling or interesting for prolonged periods of time for a while. Even now, sometimes I have trouble getting into things I'm usually passionate about, like music, art, or movement. What helped was to simply challenge myself to stick with an activity that was interesting at least to some extent for 2-3 weeks to see if it would get more rewarding over a longer period of time. Quite a few of them did.