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awcy_h

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Everything posted by awcy_h

  1. March the 14th. Hello all. Today has gone well, which I am thankful for. It's only been three days but I think I can feel some withdrawal symptoms starting to appear. They are very minute at the moment and I expect to deal with them full force in about a week's time. Though I may be wrong on that front, I don't know how the 'withdrawal symptom timeline' looks. Today was far from a perfect day; just as nearly all one's days are imperfect. But I didn't make anything worse for myself. Which is something I'm happy with. There were points during the day I wanted to start mindlessly surfing the web, and points where I caught myself starting to surf aimlessly. But to a large degree I managed to push these wants aside and complete today's big goal of finding out how bad my situation is academically and financially. To my surprise it is not as bad as I feared it was! I can squirrel together enough state loans to keep my apartment and food on the table for four months in total; enough time scrape together the university course credits to be allowed to apply for loans again next semester (source of cash for the summer months which the state does not provide student I'll have to find elsewhere). The studies required to alleviate my situation and catch up with whom I hope to be my peers once again are daunting. I've calculated it and it is possible, but I've not yet mapped that whole thing out. Just logging into the university website caused great anxiety within me. So having done that is something I am tentatively proud of myself to have done. I have a bad habit of lying to others in real life, where I pretend to be someone I'm not. I don't think I'm ready to tell them the truth. But I think I'll try to stop lying to them. Things done today: Went outside and on three short walks. (10000 steps in total!) Went to the gym again. Cooked and ate mostly healthy food today. Logged into the university website and; Surveyed where I am currently in life academically and financially. Went to the CGAA meeting. Read a book for about 2 hours (will read some more before going to sleep). Emptied one of my accounts banks on runescape (can't remember the password to the others) These things may seem small to you. But to me; they are large hurdles and I am glad to have overcome this many today. Best Regards, A Fellow Addict
  2. March the 13th. Hello all. Today has gone well for me. I joined up with the CGAA and think that sticking with them and their program will be of great benefit to me. It is very difficult to speak honestly about my issues in life to those around me; but being in a group of people that understand one's struggles and shortfalls make it a lot easier. I think they'll make me stay honest to myself on how I'm doing, hopefully assist in keeping on track as well. Admitting one's failings, shortcomings, and yet still hope to change in front of others feels relieving; like the stone in one's stomach shrunk a bit in size. It feels like I did well today, which is a nice feeling. I try to think of this as a journey of small, incremental steps towards a better life. My progression is far, far from a running speed but at this moment, crawling in the right direction is something I am happy to accomplish. After writing this, I'll try to figure out if my studies can be salvaged. My gut feeling is that the finances are in ruins but can be rebuilt enough that I don't need to drop out over them. I hope that I don't have to re-do the first year of this degree again; but that I can somehow squeak together enough knowledge and completed 'course-points' to keep up with what are supposed to be my peers. I'm not sure if posting updates in the 'reply section' is correct. I spent a minute looking for where to post updates but couldn't find it. If this is incorrect, can someone tell me how I'm supposed to do it? Things done today: Precooked several home-made dinners and lunches. Ate a relatively healthy set of three meals (instead of a pizza and icecream). Blocked the fastfood delivery site. Almost finished the deep cleaning on the appartment. Went to the gym for the first time in months. Admitted to my failings in CGAA. Best regards, A Fellow Addict
  3. Hello all. I'm a 22 y/o student from Sweden. Yesterday I decided to fix my life. I intend to keep a 'progress' journal on this site both to keep myself honest and as a way to not forget why I'm on this journey. Written below is a rambling summary of my experience with games, and how I fell down into what today seems like a near bottomless well of my own creation to drown in. It is my intention to make daily updates to this journal for the foreseeable future. Should I fail, then I hope that some others can use this as a record of what not to do. For I fear that there are no second chances for me this time. I've been having a love-hate relationship with games as far back as I can remember. In the beginning it was mostly love, in the last 5-6 years of my life it has decidedly turned into a most sour and bitter relationship. To find a starting point for where games began to take over my life is impossible. They have been with me my entire life, yet as I should have grown out of them I learned that I couldn't. Games and escapism made me fall behind on my grades in pre-highschool and landed me in a bad highschool. Gaming during highschool almost sabotaged my chances to get into university. The state exam we have here in Sweden allowed me to slide into one of the more prestigious engineering schools (KTH or Royal Institute of Technology) without having more than middling grades. It has never been my ability to perform that has been the issue, but my tendency to procrastinate, escape into games, putting my head in the sand, and what seems like a will-to-self-destruction have made me always fall short in most things in life. In University, I promised myself to turn my life around and to become something. I tried to leave games behind and largely succeeded at this. But instead of studying, making real friends, getting into fun and productive activities I replaced games with endless scrolling through fanfiction websites. When asked by others how I was doing in school or life in general, I made up lies to hide my lagging grades and other failings. At all points, I had a plan on how to fix my life; yet I never acted on them for more than a week at a time and the mountain of lies kept on growing. To keep up the illusion of all going fine, I moved out with little in ways of supporting the new expenses. Almost immediately after I moved out, I returned to games and it devoured me. Still, I told lies and pretended things were fine. Lies to my family about how I was doing. Lies to the friends I didn't deserve at University, where I pretended to be someone I was not in an attempt to fit in. Lies to myself, where I pretended I was on top of the world when in reality I was only stacking the house of cards ever higher. Eventually the house of cards fell down, as they always do. Had to quit University early into the third year after I hadn't even finished the courses for the first one. The small trust I was given by my parents to help me when I moved out had been spent on bills and all manner of unhealthy activities. I managed to get into about £10000 of debt with the state in an attempt at keeping the charade going. My grandparents who lived in a different province took me in even after my behavior and record of failings, which I did not deserve. There under their supervision, I managed to get a semblance of structure and stability back in my life. After a few months, I obtained the prerequisites in order to start attending the same university again last autumn in pursuit of a different engineering degree. I moved into a new apartment, this time living on handouts from my parents. The idea was to achieve the prerequisites to get back on the state's student loan program and fund my living expenses by these. I succeeded on that point, unfortunately that allowed me some breathing room from reality and I took the opportunity to get into games again. Here I am, about six and a half months later. Back into my old habits, the first opportunity I got to procrastinate was used to plunge myself head first into destructive habits. From my previous unhealthy 92kg of weight I've gone up to 101kg. I lost the right to student loans again due to failings last semester. My apartment for the last five months can best have been described as a miniature junkyard. My friendships have completely sizzled out. Family relationships are damaged. My studies are almost down the drain. Finally my finances are at the spot where I can only keep the apartment and food on the table for another month. As you and I can see, this is not a good situation. A situation entirely of my own making. Sporadically I scream out of nowhere, I sometimes think I am going insane. I'm not sure if I hate myself, sometimes I think I do but to be honest, I'm not sure if I'm able to summon up the necessary emotions to hate myself for long. I've decided that I cannot go on like this. That change is required in my life. Today I've taken the first few steps to stop the inpouring of water into the ship. Tomorrow I'll do my damnedest to plug the holes in the ship and see if its course can be corrected before it hits the rocks. I hope you'll forgive the poor formatting and storytelling-ability in this first journal entry; it is 3:00am here in Sweden and I'm not sure if it'd be wise to wait for tomorrow to write. Things done today: Cleaned the apartment (mostly). Cleared away the mountain of dishes. Payed outstanding bills. Blocked fast food delivery websites (so I start eating healthier). Deleted all my games on my laptop and phone. Sent in request for the deletion of all my gaming accounts. Made the first of hopefully many journal entries. Best regards, A Fellow Addict
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