Hello friends,
its 11:35 am
I joined the forum a few months ago because I wanted to try to share my story. I was going through a really rough time in college at the time. I felt overwhelmed and I realized that my gaming habit was a big (if not the biggest) reason why I was failing. So it was around mid November to early December where I started my game quitting journey.
However, my first push into quitting didn't really go anywhere.
I took a big drastic first step by selling my Nintendo switch and all of my games, controllers, accessories, and stuff ( this was the only console that I've ever owned)
At the time, this felt like a more than necessary part of my attempt at trying to save myself from failing my classes. Since the pandemic started and im forced to stay at home, gaming felt like this thing that was always within arms reach that I could escape to instead of studying. And i didn't like that
So within a mere 3 days I went from having my escape at my fingertips to having nothing. ... or so I thought.
I thought once i got rid of my console I would have all the focus I needed to save my grades, but if I was being real with myself, with the time left in the semester (about 3 weeks), there wasn't much I could do.
I crawled my way through my finals week and immediately started to look for a way to make myself feel better about everything (or really just distract myself from my internal pain). I was watching Twitch Streams throughout this whole story and found myself watching streams of one of my childhood games called maplestory. I had quit maplestory a long time ago for a bunch of different reasons, but mainly because I wasn't having fun with it anymore and all the friends I made in it were long gone. But somehow watching streams of it made me want to play it again.
So I download it onto my computer again. thinking that I could get back into it and become friends the people I was watching playing it on twitch. (all i really wanted was friends I guess and that makes sense given all the painful emotions i was going through). So I end up spending weeks and weeks, and hours and hours grinding and building up a character on Maplestory (specifically Maple Legends a private old school server of the game). I even spent money buying cosmetic items to make my character look cool. not that much money though.
I did find some new friends during this time, but something about me felt like I didn't fit in, or like I couldn't find the space to confide in them like I needed to.
So around New years time I decided to delete my character and all my items and left the Discord server I was in with them, and delete the game off of my laptop, and unfollowed the maple streamers that I had been watching and interacting with.
This was what felt like the real start of my game quitting journey because other than my Nintendo switch, maplestory was the only other game that I'd ever spent my life energy in. At this point It felt like I was finally choosing to not be a "gamer". giving up on needing to identify with gamer life.
however, (another big however) .... Twitch was still hard to stop watching. I spent all of January with my eyes glued to twitch, and I even fantasized and even started to plan out how I could go about buying a new Nintendo Switch. Because again all the friends I made through playing Splatoon 2 and Smash Ultimate were still there having fun without me and I was jealous and sad. but a new fresh semester of College was fast approaching. and I knew that if I kept spending all day watching twitch I was going to end up right back where I was in December. (finally caught up to the current moment in time).
A week ago (monday Jan. 25 2021) I decided to finally quit watching and interacting with Twitch and Discord. I made it a full 7 days away any form of gaming content and it feels really good right now. Although I know that if I really want to make this change permanent I have to find new friends and hobbies IRL to replace the ones I'm cutting myself away from. To help fill the void. Right now I'm trying to just get myself to stay focused on not falling behind in my classes though. its hard to think about anything else without feeling like im wasting my time. i just want to not fail again. I wanna learn from my past. I wanna change. I wanna get better. I wanna feel proud of myself again.
but things still feel heavy and down right scary. Maybe it'll start feeling better after I make it 90 days.
Thank you.