Fagus

A good way of life has to cope with adverse fate and fellow men. Hitting rock bottom is part of the game. And Porridge is part of your routine?

I can help you with learning German. I think my German is above average, except comma placement. In return, you could correct my English. I saw your list of books and ordered "A Short History of Nearly Everything". I've just read "A Brief History of Mankind" so this fits in.

Day 13 Gaming is just a symptom. The last days I wrote a lot in my handwritten journal. I began to understand where my present mindset comes from and how it creates the problems I'm dealing with. Tomorrow I want to try meditation with headspace.

Now I get it. But I think there are some things mixed up: Alpha, beta, gamma, delta and theta are brain waves frequencies you can actually measure. Like getting in gamme frequency when you meditate. So this is science.Alpha male and beta male is something in the internet about how to deal with women. Suggesting that women want strong alpha males. Apparently not science.

What's about these energies? Never heard of that.

┌───────────────────┐ gaming free: 8/1000 days └───────────────────┘ ▲ good things I had my first little success with juggling. I went for a walk and took my juggling balls with be, so I could practise a bit. I play the accordeon for about 22 years now, but I was never able to learn how to read notes. This made it really hard for me to learn new songs, obviously. I always thought, that juggling and learning notes is something I just can't do. I tried it several times but always failed.This time I tried again, but with a different mentality. I said to myself, that I really want to learn this and that I will find a way. Now I can juggle for half a minute and I can read, although slowly, all the notes. This evening I fetched all my old sheet music and tried some. It was great! I learned three new songs. ▼bad things I procrastinated again on studying. Hey Piotr, thanks for your comment. It's great that you are my accountability partner! That feeling of getting things done is great, but I don't feel it often, because I procrastinate so much. I would love to learn about your "building momentum" technique. It sounds interesting. My balance of working time and relax time is not good, because I relax too much.

Those photos look really professional and I think it is a big step to show your real profile in the internet. That makes you way more authentic but also prone to attacks. But hey: I also changed my profile picture into a photo of myself ;-)

I've started with a handwritten journal before I joined GameQuitters. Initially I used it to keep interesting thoughts I had, but over the time it changed into a journal about self-improvement and self-reflection. I find it amazing to revisit old thoughts and to check the developement of my own thought process. Now with my journal here at GameQuitters, I still use my handwritten journal, but only for important and private stuff. I mostly write before I go to bed, cause that is the time when I'm most creative. @destoroyah For me, perfectonism has been a big obstacle at starting a journal. I wanted to write only amazing thoughts in perfect handwriting. This held me back for a long time. I had the best results with just writing whatever came to my mind not caring about scratchy handwriting. But it surely is a good opportunity to practise handwriting this way, especially in times of electronic writing devices. You mentioned intermittent fasting. How do you do it? Do you just skip breakfast / dinner? Do you have a special diet too?

┌───────────────────┐ gaming free: 6/1000 days └───────────────────┘ ▲ good things I had this mindset of always trying to squeeze another game into every possible moment of free time. This made me come late to meetings or miss my duties. Today I was able to head to work when it was time, prepare dinner for my girlfriend, do all the chores and head to bed early enough to be fit next morning and even read some pages. This will even affect the next day in a positive way! I would love to do that. I like juggling, because you need to concentrate which makes your mind stop chatting for a moment. It reminds me of my time when I was a healer in MMOs and had to keep a lot of life bars up. Now I changed from life bars to juggling balls ;-)

I own exactly this album of Be'lakor! But the only kind of metal I can hear nowadays is melodeath. I really need the melodic part but also the growling. Real pure Death Metal on the other hand, has always been too much for me. I can listen to it, but it's too rough that I would be able fully immerse myself. The song I love the most and still hear when I need it is this one: Down With The Sun It's the kind of metal that has a lot of energy, but in a positive way, rather than aggression or melancholy. Metal seems to me like a drug. You start with something easy, maybe Hard Rock, Gothic or Nu Metal. Then you want to try something harder and immerse yourself deeper. The more you discover and expose yourself, the more you can listen to even harder stuff. If you start with brutal death metal, you just hear noise think it's stupid screaming, but when your ear is trained and experienced, you can identify the melody and the pattern that has been crafted. It's the same with alcohol. When I drink hard liquor, I just sense the burning of the alcohol while my experienced alcoholic friends can taste the different flavours of sloes and whitethorn. The advantage of metal is, that you can stop whenever you want or when your taste of music changes. It is a bit harder to switch to water or tea when you are an alcoholic. Though a lot of people combine metal with alcohol. Do you think your taste of music will change when you grow older? I know some people of both sides. Those who stayed true and those who changed.

Does that mean you are learning german? Who wants to speak such an ugly and useless language? I can teach you your first word: Schwanzlurch. That's an order of animals. You call them Salamander I think. It is not a widely used word. But if you call someone in Germany a Schwanzlurch, he will not be happy. That doesn't happen when you call someone a Salamander in England though. Strange. You are listening to Metal. What kind of Metal? I bet it is something like Metalcore or Nu Metal. When I've been in your age, I've been listening to Metal as well. I began with Power Metal and Heavy Metal (Blind Guardian, Iron Maiden) went to Melodic Death Metal (Amon Amarth, Insomnium, Omnium Gatherum, Mors Principium Est) and than even deeper to real Death Metal (Illdisposed, Hypocrisy). This has been my way to deal with my surroundings. I thought that I've needed this extreme music inside me to equalize the madness that comes from the outside. Nowadays I know, that I used this music on the outside to equalize the madness inside me. You are talking about being depressed and depression. Those are two very different things I suppose. Being depressed means you feel an intense melancholy. Depression means, that you feel nothing and is a real mental disorder that needs help and treatment. I've only been depressed. At one point I thought it would be a good idea if every person on earth would die. Then this planet would finally be a nice place to live in. The adult world is different. It is much more diverse. In school everyone does the same thing and has the same goal. In the adult world this stops. But what did you realise?

┌───────────────────┐ gaming free: 5/1000 days └───────────────────┘ ▲ good things I went for a walk in the sunshine. A really good method of clearing the fog of thoughts and to calm down. I checked all my learning material to get an general idea of all the subjects I have to learn for the exam. The exam is on the 23rd of march, so I made a timetable of when I want to have done with preparations and start intense learning. I spent some time learning notes and training juggling. I can juggle for 5 seconds now. ▼bad things I spent too much time on youtube and mindless browsing.

The goals you describe here are the common ones everybody expects you to strive for. But in my opinion this is neither beautiful nor reasonable. It's rather a trap. Let's examine it: You own a nice house in the city outskirts, in a quiet nice suburb. In case I don't inherit a lot of money (which I won't) I will have to take a loan, since property in such an area is quite expensive. Living in the outskirts forces me to commute to my workplace which will still be in the inner city. You drive a nice car. I have to commute and I prefer the privacy and flexibility of my shiny car rather than taking public transport, thus spending quite some hours of my lifetime in the traffic jam every day.Of course I want a comfortable and prestigious car which is expensive, adding more to my loan. You have a lovely wife and two beautiful kids. The order in which my goals are listed here is: house, car, wife, kids. So the wife comes third, right after the nice house and the car and the trait I give my ideal wife is: lovely, not loving or caring. This trophy wife does not work. She provides beauty and prestige, while I provide money and success. The side that can't deliver anymore get's replaced immediatly. Since my trophy wife spents her time in the beauty salon and the shopping mal, I have to hire a nanny for the kids and a cleaner for the nice and big house.I work a lot to earn all the money that is needed to maintain all of this. So I can't spend time with my kids, but since I'm a loving father, I give them more money than they can spend to compensate for this. My kids will be spoiled and expensive. But hey, at least they are beautiful! You're a manager at the company you work. Maybe you chose a Y career and now you're a senior product designer or something like it. You might even have your own estabilished business, employing a few couple of people. So I'm a manager, I have my own business or whatever. I'm in charge, I lead the business, which means that I drown in responsibility and work, resulting in a 70 hour week at least. I don't have leisure time, I don't have weekends, even when I'm at home I'm at the phone or laptop dealing with my business. But I need this job to pay back the loan and I love to feel successful and important.Employing people made the situation even worse. Now I'm responsible for those people too. Someone has trouble at home and is less productive at work. I have to fire him and make his situation even worse, but my company needs to stay competitive. There is no place for altruism. You help. You are loved. So my wife does only want my money and success and my kids don't know me since I'm never at home but they all pretend to love me.I'm in the Rotary Club. I spend money for some humanitarian thing I don't really have time to concentrate on. But I know that the people in the third world I give money to do love me! Or maybe only my money? You feel important. You play golf every weekend. You travel with your family every six months. I feel important. That doesn't necessarily mean that I am important, but with my success with my business, my social status, my trophy wife and children and all my material stuff I can feel this way.I'm playing golf every weekend. I don't really like this sport. It's quite boring, but this is what rich people do. Although it is quite frustating to get mobbed by the really rich guys. But in 10 years, when I'm 50, I will have reached even these people and show them! Isn't this a great goal for a successful life?Every six month I travel to some 5 star hotel. The country doesn't matter because I never leave the hotel. I just sit at the pool with my phone and laptop and take care of my business that can't live without me even for one day. There is no time to relax when you are successful and important. I have a big house, a big car and a big loan. I have a lovely wife that only wants my money and two beautiful and spoiled kids. I lead a successfull business which I need to pay back my loan and to keep my social status and I'm in constant fear that my business could collapse and I lose everything. I want to help, feel loved and important, but all I can give is my money since all my time gets sucked into my business. I have to play golf and travel two times every year, because that's what you do when you are rich and successful. Sometimes I wish back my life when I was a young man. I had a girlfriend that loved me because of how I was and not because of my money. I had lots of leisure time and spent it with ordinary but true friends. I didn't travel further than to the next lake. I went there by bike and not by Porsche and lay there in the sun. Life was simple and beautiful. But I can't go back. I'm already addicted to my success. I would feel horrible if I fell down the social ladder into obscurity again, where no one knew my name and my success. Sounds reasonable, right?

This is actually Day 2 again, which makes me quite proud. I've identified some things that make me relapse again and again: Stress. Gaming is my best method to deal with stress. Since trying not to game stresses me, I need to game in order not to game. That does not work, obviously. So I need to find new ways to deal with stress. There is already some material on that matter from Cam. I tried meditating, which is really hard for me. Going for a walk works much better. I try to do this daily now.Need for challenge and measurable growth. Gaming fulfilled these needs. I've read the 60+ hobby ideas and went for juggling. I bought juggling balls and that's what I'm practicing now. The next thing will be to join a karate club. Is there anything more challenging with lots of measurable growth than juggling and karate? Maybe juggling while punching someone?The fallacy of moderate gaming. Well, moderate gaming is just a lie. It does not work. There is no moderate drinking for an alcoholic. There is no moderate gambling for a compulsive gambler and there is no moderate gaming for a video game addict. That's sad, but I think I've proven to myself that this is just the truth. I wish someone had told me that before... alright, let's be honest here: I wish I were able to believe this before! But no learning without suffering!Chaos leads to stress which leads to gaming. I've never been interested in organising my life. I keep my home tidy and I don't forget any obligations. This is not my problem. But I don't know how to organise my day. I just start doing something, then switch to something else. This does more than often end in doing mindless unproductive stuff, even when I manage not to game. And since being unproductive means to feel unsatisfied, I have the urge to get back to my strictly organised gaming life. Games are organised. They tell me what to do next and show me what I've achieved already. I like that. But now I want this in my real life. Luckily, there is advice for this, too. I've read @WorkInProgress new journal about weekly progress and I want to try this kanban thing. At the moment I try trello. This should be good to visualize not only the work I have to do, but also the work I have already done, to keep me motivated. Connection. I play video games to feel connected. I'm addicted because of a lack of connection in the real world. This is the most important factor and the most challenging right now. I'm a misfit with strange quirks, I have a strong social anxiety and low self-esteem. Tackling this stuff is possible, but stressful... which urges me to start gaming again.Well, that's enough for now. In two days I will start this crazy 1000 day challenge with Mad Pharmacist.

Man I really love your journal! The way you write is so authentic.Your list of achievements is really impressive. Looks like you're on the right way. I wish you just the best, keep going!

What destroys your brain is neither sex nor masturbation. It is endless consume of pornography. Just try masturbating without any porn. You will notice that it is quite harder this way.

Porn is cancer, masturbation is not.

I had a relapse. I played the last two days. During the last weeks I thought a lot about a life without gaming. It seems terrifying to me, because "life" is a long time. So my new approach is to stop playing for the next five days. I'm sure I can do that. This is a much shorter time that doesn't scare me. I found out why I play games. It is because I am scared of my life. Gaming is my safe haven. So for me it is important to improve my ability to deal with my life and reduce my anxiety. I don't find it hard to quit games. There are so many other interesting things in life I could do. But at the moment everything scares me off. I don't feel like I can handle my life. So I play games where I feel safe and everything is simple.

It is Day 5, the day I wanted to play games. I really did. But then I didn't do it, because I imagined how it would be to play and how I would feel afterwards. And I'm sure I wouldn't feel good. Rather bad. Pretty bad. I know what gaming does and why I need it. I don't want to live my life because I can't deal with it. So I play games. But I feel that this is not the solution but rather an escape. So I play even more to drown this feeling. This way I lose all the time I need to unravel my mind. Why am I afraid of living my life? It is not a bad life afterall. If I look at Cam and imagine what he would be like, if he had continued playing games... The worst part about gaming is the loss of time you could spent for personal developement.

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. I really appreciate it to be back, even if that means having a setback. I already made it to day 3. So I am super excited. I met two old friends yesterday and we went eating. During our conversation I realised, that I am really content with my life. I can enjoy all the upsides, while I accept the downsides. Haven't been so happy in a long time. @hycniejsy I can't game in moderation. That's what I tried during these 45 days of relapse, so I might join you in your epic quest of 1000 days. The real trigger of the relapse was, that I have still been thinking, that gaming is an important part of my life and I should try gaming in moderation. Even now, I can't imagine to leave gaming behind me completely. But for now it is more important to get a clear head during the 90 day detox and figure out how to deal with this problem. The rpg I might play is called "the dark eye". This evening I'm going to leave my parents house and drive to my girlfriend and her parents. I wish everyone a nice day

At the moment I feel great. I relapsed for about 45 days, but I kept doing my healthy eating. Even during christmas holidays I refused to eat processed stuff, junk food, sweets and all kind of animal food. It takes quite some willpower to resist a huge plate of sweets, but I did it. I wonder, why it is so much harder to resist gaming. My body seems to be thankful though. My chronic disease is in remission for two or three weeks now. This may be the best moment to quit gaming and try real life again. I know my problem is my social anxiety. I know how to deal with it. I just have to do it. I made an appointment with some friends to play a pen and paper rpg. This can be a part of a sufficient replacement for gaming. Last month I celebreated the 5th year that my girlfriend and I are together. It is still a really good relationship, though I know that gaming takes quite a toll on that.In 3 month I got my final exams. I know that I have to start learning intensly now. If I don't, I will fail the exams and getting a job will be really hard. If I pass with good grades, it is sure that I get an appointment. This should be encouraging enough.I am reading a lot of stoic literature lately. It really matches my thinking. Gaming is something I can't bring in line with a stoic way of life. After all, it slows down my personal development by a great deal.So let's start with Day 1 now once more. I will try to write in this journal daily.

So I've hit Day 90 at 1st of november and then tried moderate gaming. It turned out that there aren't many of my friends left inside the virtual world. Almost everyone moved on and only the higly addicted and permanent unemployed stayed. Not the company I'd like to join, to be honest. I tried online games and single played. While it was fun at first, it seems that the detox has impaired my ability to enjoy gaming to the fullest, cause I know how it feels to be "sober". I may have wasted some days, but I think this has been really valuable, because I know now, that the glorious image of gaming I had in my head does not match reality anymore. So, let's start with Day 0 today once more.

I've read some books about ACT - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, but this has been the first time, that I've able to implement what I've learned in these books. It is a more advanced form of the common Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, where I try to accept my current situation and anxieties and still follow those goals that are important for me.

I don't understand your current situation. You say that you had big issues with your health until 3 years ago and surgery removed those issues and gave you a new perspective on life. You say that you got social anxiety now and apparently you do not work or go to university, but you worked and had no anxiety back then when you still have been troubled by those colics regularly. Why this? I have problems comparable to yours. I am sick as well and it is hard to understand for someone who does not experience the pain. But I suffer from anxiety now and would be completely free if there was an equal surgery available in my case. So what is holding you back now that didn't hold you back when you were still suffering?

I miscounted. I've started the detox at august the 4th, so today is already Day 87. Good news: I had a major breakthrough. The last three days, I tried a new approach on fighting my fears: I surrendered. I accepted my fears and flaws as part of myself, as something that accompanies me rather something I have to get rid of. This shifted my focus away from myself and on my surroundings. All the years I was sure, that I can only start to fully live if I get rid of those fears and flaws that cripple me. Now I take them with me on my journey to see how they react to everything we encounter and how everything else reacts to them. Fear has transformed into curiosity. I'm just a spectator.