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WeSufferToSurvive

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  1. Hey there! I'm glad to hear so much has been going so well for you already! I remember feeling really similar the first time I severely cut back on gaming, seeing clearer, having a whole new perspective on how time I have and what I want to do with it, and finally getting to damn sleep haha. What documentary(s) have you watched since quiting? On your realization: I also came to a very similar realization, though I didn't really face it until years after I first stepped away from gaming. Definitely recommend talking to a therapist if you're able to - it's so incredibly helpful to have someone be able to listen to you and then ask questions that you'd never think of to steer you into areas that you might have mentally blockaded or don't quite know how to work through on your own + having someone that both keeps you accountable and gives you meaningful feedback. Either way, one of the best pieces of advice that sticks with me my therapist gave me is to be kind to yourself, the sort of way a parent might to their child, when working through that trauma. It's all too easy to criticize yourself and compare yourself to others, but it'll be so much smoother of a process to give yourself the benefit of the doubt, be forgiving, and just take your time. Hope the good feelings keep flowing, and best of luck on your exams!
  2. Day 2 This one is probably going to be a lot shorter - yesterday's entry took like an hour+ to write, and I seem to always write these right when it's already an hour past when I meant to get to sleep. What I'm thankful for today: Watching this (linked under this) made me reflect on how grateful I am that both my parents are still in good health. It's something so easy to forget, but they won't always be. I feel like I was much more aware of that when I was younger than I am now - I distinctly remember one day that I just burst out crying because my mind had wandered into imagining what like would be like after my dad died and it was just unbearable to think about. Progress on next steps from yesterday: Start the day off with that routine I just put in the calendar Woke up 2 hours after I intended, with my alarm STILL going off. I think the only thing that actually woke me up was that I got paged from work and my brain is a lot more tuned in to reacting to that than it is to my alarm music. I still did robotics (and even continued on for an hour past the allotted time; I've always had a hard time containing myself to only spending *1* hour on things that I really like doing, always seems to have to go on for at least 1.5-2h ... so I should probably update my schedule to reflect that. But that's also from not doing robotics for like 2 weeks, so we'll see whether I'm still pushing the allotted time boundary after consistently doing it for at least a week) After work, get some reading in, go through the WorkOnClimate slack and find something to get engaged with (or perhaps even propose something new to lead), and get more involved in working to combat racism - do more learning, find opportunities to volunteer, go over anti-racist principles again I failed miserably at every part of this 😐 I'm not even really sure when I transitioned out of work - I've picked up the horrible tendency to treat me work computer as my personal computer, so often I'm doing personal stuff things throughout the day anyway and then at some point in the day I just decide not to go back and forth between work and personal anymore. I'm going to start setting a hard boundary on work, and stop using my work laptop for personal stuff anymore. Also watch at least 1 more Game Quitters video Watched "How to stop mindlessly browsing the internet" (which summaries to 1. Choose new activities; 2. Engagement over entertainment; 3. Sit with urges); always helpful to keep this at the forefront because there definitely are days when I've just veg'd out on youtube or reddit for pretty much the whole day. When I "got off work" today, I definitely got side-tracked on the internet but it wasn't so much as mindlessly browsing as it was just unfocused catching up on random points of interest (ex: going through a bunch of fact checking of Biden & his policies, following up on understanding the voter suppression debate, especially with regards to a comment my dad made yesterday about illegal immigrants being registered to vote while getting their driver's license in our home state (summary: sort of true, because the dmv isn't allowed to reject an application, but just because their application went in doesn't mean that they actually get successfully registered because their application is supposed to get cross-referenced with their immigration status ... but I also somewhat believe the counterargument that just because their immigration status is *supposed* to get checked doesn't mean it always actually does. I still don't think it's an issue though, especially not to the extent that my dad raves about it), and also finally watched a single episode of Fox New's The Five just to understand what the hell my dad is watching ... sometimes he makes me so angry, but it's moreso that I'm just angry that the political propaganda machine he's been sucked into is so effective and prominent, not so much at him specifically. Figuring out whether I'm upset at a person or a decision a person makes specifically vs the systems that shaped them/that decision is something I often struggle with because I always keep in mind that it's just as probable that I had been born in their shoes and ended up the same way / making the same decision, not everything is fully within our control). Tangents aside, the point I was trying to make was that I feel like my issue is much more about just making sure that I don't *start* on an internet binge, not necessarily because I'll get trapped into mindlessly browsing but rather because a lack of structure becomes really dangerous because I'll go down all the rabbit holes and not notice the time. I could tackle this by trying to schedule every second of my time, but that 1. doesn't sound sustainable and 2. feels like it'd lead me down the path of becoming too rigid with my time. Maybe if I'm just more "loose" with what the scheduled blocks are, and just call out at least what I'm definitely *not* going to do during certain periods of time, maybe that'll work. Notes about the day On the robotics front, did a Voronoi graph exercise (well, really just used the scipy Voronoi library and then did some fairly simple interactions with the outputs) and then also converted the original A* path planning exercise from being grid based to graph based which was actually a nice challenge that required going back over previous material and putting it all together. These first 2 sections of the course have been pretty programming heavy, which is the easier part of the course for me, but I presume soon enough it'll become more controls/physics/engineering heavy and that's when I'll really need to pour more time into it so I need to be wary of getting overconfident It was rainy all day today, so no real outside time 😞 Work was fine, only one meeting and then the rest to myself. I had a good productive start of the day, but then progressively got more and more distracted. I think it's because one of the larger tasks on my plate right now is just writing up and organizing some documentation, which I really don't enjoy so I end up procrastinating it. I need to commit to and do it though, that's the only way it's gonna get done No gaming urges, though I did talk to my old Amazon coworkers / gaming friend group a bit over discord today, just meme'ing and talking about the state of software engineering promotions / ladder structure. The latter I don't have much interest in, yet whenever it's talked about I get really engaged as if I am interested in it 😐 but it was fun to just joke around with them and remember that our friendships aren't entirely based around gaming. I don't think I'll ever have a super strong connection with any of them, and that's perfectly okay - not every friendship has to (or even should) be a super tight bond. I've found myself playing around on guitar a lot more, it's becoming sort of the default thing I go to whenever I'm feeling stressed and just want to channel that energy into something. Might bump guitar into the rotation of things that I schedule practice on my calendar for as well. Goals for tomorrow Setting some "easier" goals for myself tomorrow just because I really want to nail getting my sleep schedule back in order, as I know that really helps set everything else up for success Ideally: actually wake up at first alarm At a minimum: just get to sleep by 11pm - getting up early starts by getting to bed early Still kick ass at following the schedule I set up yesterday
  3. Day 1 What I'm thankful for today: I love that there is a tennis court within ~10m driving distance that has a ball machine I can rent with pretty good availability I love even more that it's finally warm outside again. This experiment with Denver in the winter to take advantage of snowboarding season has been hell for me - I hate having to always be wearing so many layers, gloves, beanie, and how cold it is even inside. I'll be leaving here this weekend anyway, but at least it'll be warm here until I leave (although it's been throwing me through a loop that it is warm outside yet still cold in here - I practically have to rush straight from my bed to outside otherwise I'll get locked into thinking it's too cold and I need to stay in bed longer) Progress on next steps from yesterday: Schedule recurring time on my calendar for all of the above activities so I know exactly when I'm going to be doing them Mostly done - I got singing (T/Th 8-9am), robotics (M-F 9-10am), and workout (M/W/F 8-9am) on the calendar. For WorkOnClimate, I know there are groups working on things there so I need to spend time looking more into that. For the additional social activity, still need to figure out what that'll be Identify potential gaming triggers that I need to eliminate (ex: remove gaming Youtube channels) I removed the gaming youtube channels, changed my news feed interests in my phone to block video games, and deleted the video gaming discords I was in. I can't think of any other major triggers (salute) Watch up to 3 videos from the Game Quitters Youtube channel and make an action plan of how to incorporate the lesson from them Watched "7 things to expect after you quit gaming" and actively took notes + tied in how that lesson specifically related to me Comment on at least 1 other person's journal/post - I've always been a lurker in communities before but I want to be an active participant now Done, and read through a few other's journals. It felt kinda forced, like I was just looking through journals and intros *specifically* to find something to comment on, which in my head seems like a bad thing (forced social feels like bad social to me, I guess would be the way to explain why?) but maybe that's just another wall I need to learn to break down. Link to notes taken for the "7 things to expect after you quit gaming", for those interested Notes about today Luckily, no real urge or interest in gaming today. I did catch myself mindlessly thinking over things I wanted to do with my Everquest character last night as I was getting to sleep, but actively stopped that line of thinking and tried thinking about the new hobbies I wanted to pursue instead. Today was a pretty difficult day at work - I just felt so drained and unable to focus. Plus, I had to conduct an interview, which in and of itself isn't too bad but then it just takes so much time for me to get my feedback condensed and written up. I often feel like I lose pretty much my entire day whenever I have to conduct interviews because I have such a hard time getting my head back to thinking about engineering again. I was feeling drained even before the interview though, so that wasn't the only issue. I think it was mostly due to how my sleep schedule had gotten wrecked over the weekend - I'd binged on Everquest both Friday and Saturday, staying up until 4am both nights (Saturday I let myself sleep in until 3pm, but Sunday I forced myself to get up by 10am), so sleeping from 2am to 9am last night didn't provide me the best of rest. Hopefully tonight will be better. I also had a 1:1 with one of my coworkers, and it was a conversation that just really made my heart sink. She was raised in Hong Kong and moved here to the states for college + her career, and lives in one of the areas where Asian hate crimes have been running rampant. She's scared to go outside, and is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with just how much racism really exists in this country, even in the "progressive" areas that are supposed to be leading the charge on combatting it, and she's been thinking about moving back home partially because of it. She's also thinking that she wants to pivot her career more in the direction of mental health services instead of just the finance-related workplace we're currently at, and that makes me happy to hear that she's been really thinking critically about what she cares about and is willing to consider making that what she works on instead of getting drowned in the sea of corporate ladders and "solving hard problems" that is all too common in tech. I'm also so grateful that she was willing to open up and talk to me about her fears wrt racism in this country, and it really makes me want to be a better ally. In the wake of the George Floyd protests last summer, I pushed myself to do a lot of reading and learning, worked with other coworkers to push our company to do more (which resulted in restructuring our hiring practices, a large donation, dedicating a day every quarter to volunteering in the community, and a book club where a large portion of the company participated in really useful dialogues around how to be anti-racist), but justified not actually protesting because of the pandemic; I'm ashamed to think that in the wake of these Asian hate crimes, the only thing I've done this time is donate but I haven't been putting in the work to learn, to find out how to contribute (and then actually do it), to spur conversation in my company and with the few friends I do actively talk to. I need to do more. On a lighter note, which feels really difficult to transition to because I feel like transitioning after writing all of the above out is like I'm already compartmentalizing those issues away and moving on but I'm not - I'm just being comprehensive in this journal post while also being chronological which means that the most important things might actually be in the middle rather than at the end - so on a lighter note, after work I got out to the tennis courts with my roommate to hit against the ball machine. That damn machine is so inconsistent some days. I went over the weekend, and it was perfect, but today.. Dumb thing kept shooting balls too high, then too low, then too far to the right, then too far to the left. It was still good practice overall but I just wish I remembered what the settings I had been last time. I'm getting *much* better at actually keeping the ball in the lines of the court, which is really encouraging. Sometimes my grip slips in mid swing, and I haven't been able to really put my fully body energy into every stroke like my roommate does, still plenty of room to grow. Lastly, it's been kinda annoying working to stay anonymous - had to create a new discord account because I wanted the username of that to match what it is here/reddit, but friends and family are connected to my existing one so changing it would mean they'd know about this username, and creating a new discord account means I'll be trying out using Shift for easily switching between the two accounts without having to sign in and out. Also got paranoid with sharing that notion link because it's attached to my main account, but, as far as I can tell, making a page public on notion doesn't link back to the creator. I mean, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if my name and this account were linked publicly, but also I like being able to have a separate place where I can share my thoughts and having a name attached that doesn't correlate with my real name - so that its never something I'm worried gets stumbled upon by like a future employer or a random family member or just some person who is mad at me looking for dirt and to reduce the possibility of doxing generally. I trust the internet for the most part, but there's several incidents that make it hard to completely trust the internet (and also especially having to be mindful that what goes onto the internet can stay there "forever", outside of your control). Goals for tomorrow Start the day off with that routine I just put in the calendar After work, get some reading in, go through the WorkOnClimate slack and find something to get engaged with (or perhaps even propose something new to lead), and get more involved in working to combat racism - do more learning, find opportunities to volunteer, go over anti-racist principles again Also watch at least 1 more Game Quitters video Being a parent to myself (Adding this section as a way to practice being kinder to myself, forgiving my mistakes and praising my achievements) Good job on making it though the first day without any struggle - I'm so proud of you for being courageous enough to face your fear of figuring out a new identity without video games after all this time you've lived with video games as a core part of your personality I'm proud of you for wanting to do more to combat racism and for continuing to think critically on it - even just a year or two ago these issues weren't nearly as pressing in your mind, you never even considered protesting, realistically you never really got past just reading the headline and thinking "why are people so shitty", but now here you are looking to go beyond just the headline and to engage more deeply with it. Don't beat yourself up too much that it took you this long to get here, and that you still don't feel like you're being effective. You have so many years ahead of you to make a difference as long as you just don't give up. This isn't a competition on who is the most woke, this is about just being better than you were yesterday and continuing to do so until you die. Don't give up, don't get discouraged - these problems aren't going to go away if you just bundle up in a ball and whine about you're not helping enough, and other people aren't going to judge you nearly the way you think if your heart truly is in the right place and you've done your research to make sure you're doing the right things for the right reasons. It'll take time, and that's okay.
  4. Hey there @ILoveBirds, hope you've still been keeping strong to your commitment! I too remember being really nasty to my parents, especially in the middle of a raid when my mom wanted me to take out the trash and I just couldn't get her to understand that I couldn't "just pause it". I also remember the deep shame of looking at my GPA and realizing that I definitely could have done so much better. I'm glad to hear you're coming to the same realizations and, most importantly, are committing to quitting! On drawing: this is something I've been thinking about picking up as well, especially with all the buzz around NFTs recently. I haven't yet made any steps towards learning though, anything you've learned so far? On software development: I *am* a software engineer, so let me know if I can point you in the right direction on anything 🙂 For just picking up languages and concepts (and also interview prep), I love https://app.codesignal.com/ - gives you a nice set of well defined "tests" to put your skills up against and there's also a community competitive aspect to it (though something like https://www.codechef.com/ might be better if you want to really focus on competition). I also spent a ton of time with http://coursera.org/ , https://www.freecodecamp.org/ , and https://udacity.com/ (although, sadly, udacity now requires paying for their nanodegrees; you used to be able to just take courses for free 😒). Best of luck, and hope to see you around!
  5. Day 0 What I'm thankful for today: I'm so glad my brother saw on Discord that I was playing Everquest and decided to call me to tell me to stop playing. It might have been weeks or months before I stopped myself if he didn't do that. Actions taken: Joined r/StopGaming and gamequitters communities Uninstalled all of my games from my computers and phone Watched "What Triggers Should You Watch Out For?" Goals I want to pursue from here on out: First and foremost, as this will ripple into the success of the other goals: get back into falling asleep and waking up naturally (no more melatonin, no more alarms) Re-start and commit to a fitness program (likely r/bodyfitness' routine again) Re-start the vocal lessons course from Chris Liepe that I already bought Get back on the Udacity nanodegree for Flying Car and Autonomous Flight engineer (submitted the first project way ahead of schedule, but I'm at risk of missing the scheduled date for the second project) Get back to being active in the WorkOnClimate slack group - book club finished 2 weeks ago, and I haven't talked to anyone new since then Find another social activity aside from WorkOnClimate, especially something that is more hobby oriented - already been playing tennis and want to get involved in rock climbing so maybe those are contenders Next steps (do these things tomorrow at the very least) Schedule recurring time on my calendar for all of the above activities so I know exactly when I'm going to be doing them Identify potential gaming triggers that I need to eliminate (ex: remove gaming Youtube channels) Watch up to 3 videos from the Game Quitters Youtube channel and make an action plan of how to incorporate the lesson from them Comment on at least 1 other person's journal/post - I've always been a lurker in communities before but I want to be an active participant now
  6. (Found this forum from r/StopGaming, and I had already written an introduction there so just copy/pasting that here, especially since it's getting late and I just wanted to make sure to get at least a first intro post in before going to sleep lol) The beginning - Everquest I remember my first raid in Everquest so vividly. I was 12 years old, around noon on a Saturday my dad asked if I could play his alt account, it took over 9 hours. Several times my best friend from next door came over asking if I could come out to play, but my dad needed my help, the raid needed my help. It was the coolest thing ever, and it was so much fun getting to play with my dad who I only got to see 2 days a week because my parents were divorced (and it was also a great ego boost to have all these adults complimenting how mature and good at this game I was, given this was back when MMOs were still pretty new and Everquest especially was primarily an older crowd). Several months later, my dad gave me the account, and I started my own character. For the next 4 years, Everquest became my life. I became a class leader in one of the top raiding guilds in the game, routinely spent 60-80 hours a week in the game during the school year and closer to 80-100 hours over the summers. There's still a deep pit in my stomach when I think about how I had logged 1.5 years of in game time in 4 years. I slept through nearly every class, just barely passing most of them, and my social circle was practically non-existent. My mom was rarely home, and I was supposed to be taking care of my younger brother but I often would just tell him to go watch tv and leave me the hell alone. It felt so good to be so well recognized and praised, the few friends I had made in school lived too far away + I had to be home to watch my brother, and my parents didn't seem to really care about my grades, so I didn't think twice about it for a long time. Luckily for me, I did eventually quit - right near the end of 10th grade. Some mixture of peer pressure from concerned class mates and teachers + my realizing that if I ever wanted to become a game developer (my aspiration back then, naturally) I'd need to make it into college, and all that time in Everquest wasn't going to get me there. I managed to quit cold turkey and focus on school through junior year and most of senior year... The first relapse - Starcraft ... And then came along Starcraft II. More specifically, first came along a girlfriend who played Starcraft II with a group of friends, and then of course I had to join in. I had learned some things from Everquest, so Starcraft wasn't nearly as bad, and it sure helped that it took me a long time to pick up the mechanics so I'd get frustrated with the game before it could really absorb me for a while. Slowly but surely, though, it did get me. I made out of high school, and reluctantly went to the college in my home town (in hindsight, I really wish I knew someone who could have helped my explain all of my in-game achievements in college admission essays but maybe even now I'm still just clinging to meaningless achievements that wouldn't have impressed them anyway). I didn't "excel" in Starcraft II like I did with Everquest, but I became so engrossed in following all the pro play. I changed my sleep schedule to watch the Korean tournaments, missing classes in the process to make up for it, eventually dropping half of my classes in the first semester because I knew I wouldn't be able to pass them. I joined several organizations at college, and burned so many bridges because I would just ghost them after I failed to fulfill a promise because I was so ashamed that I'd let them down just because of a video game. Day9 and the beginning of a redemption story Then, my girlfriend and I broke up for reasons unrelated to gaming, and that only sent me deeper into the Starcraft community because it was the only thing I knew how to connect with, which led me becoming obsessed with Day9. Up until this point, my main interaction with Starcraft had been tournaments and playing myself, and of knew of and enjoyed Day9 a fair bit already, but during the winter of that breakup the positivity that Day9 radiated became addicting. On some days, the only thing I could say I did was watch episodes of Day9 and *maybe* eat something. I watched every episode of Day9 religiously, to the point that I *almost* tried creating a Day9 club because I was convinced there must be others as obsessed as me that'd want to meet up multiple times a week just to watch the same stream and talk about it. I didn't create that club, but Day9 became a turning point for me. I cut down my Starcraft game play a whole lot, and got heavily involved in other organizations on campus. I ended up transferring colleges, having a long term relationship that lasted until several months after college, became the officer of multiple organizations on campus, including the president of the engineering honor society, and left college with an internship + signed job offer to work at Amazon as a Software Engineer. I'd pretty much stopped playing games except someone specifically asked to do something. Life after college - the fall from grace But of course, if that's where this story ended, I'd probably not be here on r/StopGaming, huh? Following graduation, I moved out of my home state to an area where I knew no one except for my coworkers. My girlfriend at the time was a year below me, so she was still finishing things up and we were trying to work long distance. I didn't have any real idea of how to meet new people outside of college, and I spent all my time in college heads down in my studies or with my girlfriend so I didn't really have any hobbies to look to. So, of course, I booted up games again. Primarily League of Legends, but occasionally storyline games like Borderlands too. I didn't become quite as obsessed as I had in high school, but it was certainly worse than the smaller relapse I had in college. My girlfriend broke up with me because I spent too much time on games and never really talked to her, and I was shitting the bed everywhere with my projects at work. I managed to find a slack group for new grads in the area, and made some friends through there but most very shallow connections because I'd see them once then not speak again for weeks or months because I was engrossed in some game. And this is essentially where I've been my entire post-college life. I'm 4 years out of college, and I've gone through so very many cycles of quitting gaming (more than just the few times mentioned above, they just aren't as eventful to make a story out of). I still have an extremely tiny friend group, even fewer of which I actually have a decent relationship with. Throughout the times in this pandemic, when I wasn't using gaming as a coping mechanism, I've finally started to build an identity for myself outside of games - learning more about climate change, taking Udacity's Flying Car and Autonomous Flight Engineer nanodegree to potentially transition careers so I could one day program drones for environment restoration, bought a voice lesson course from Chris Liepe because I've always wanted to know how to sing/scream safely and dreamed of being able to create a Youtube channel doing vocal covers, and most recently started using the ball machine at my local tennis court. But I keep relapsing. I keep going back to gaming whenever something gets too hard, or when the loneliness gets too powerful. My sleep schedule gets torn apart, my productivity at work drops to 0, my progress on my personal goals gets set back weeks or months. I just can't take it anymore. Moving on I'd like to start by saying how grateful to video games I am for what they provided me - they helped me build such a stronger relationship with my dad, they set me off in the direction of software engineering and taught me so much about technology and logic in the process, they helped me to cope with having to spend so much of my youth unsupervised and unable to meet up with friends in person, they got me through extremely difficult break ups and low points of my life. As dangerous of an addiction as gaming has been for me, I still consider it to have been a much better alternative than to turning to harder drugs or alcohol, and certainly better than any suicide attempt that I might have made without gaming. That said, I also have to admit that gaming just isn't healthy in the ways I've been using it. I've neglected responsibilities, I've thrown away connections and relationships, I threw away the opportunity to build a meaningful relationship with my brother as we grew up together (we've started to rebuild it recently, but it is noticeably strained), I missed out on learning how to really properly build new relationships and make friends and a whole slew of important social experiences. For so long I've told myself that I'm okay with how few friends I have, that I'm comfortable with loneliness and solitude, but I think that's only because I've always had the distraction of gaming to lean on. I still deeply believe in the power of video games as a powerful tool for allowing distanced connections to be made, as an interactive story-telling medium, and as a way of making less-fun learning activities more fun, and more. And maybe gaming was among the least harmful of coping mechanisms I could have employed for the various problems I went through, but that's not where I want to be anymore. I want to build a richer set of personal connections, I want to become so much more involved in combating climate change and improving our world, I want to finally get my body into good shape (there's so many days that I get into bed and realize I'd forgotten to eat anything, and I've never been able to stick to a workout routine for longer than like a month), I want to finally be able to start up that dream Youtube channel, and so much more. And gaming, I'm so sorry to tell you that I just can't keep lying to myself and saying that there's a healthy way for me to incorporate you into my life, pretending that every relapse is going to be the last. It terrifies me to say that because for so long you've been the central part of my identity, but I've got to trust that I'll be okay with you - that I'll be able to fill that void. Thank you for everything, but it's time that I finally move on.
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