d.manuk

Wow. Just wow. I'm feeling extremely relaxed and content today. Since my Hawaii vacation, I've had a peaceful mindfulness that has been occasionally surfacing itself for a few hours almost every day. My diet has also severely changed and I mostly eat fish instead of chicken. Perhaps this has something to do with it? Today, I had a friend come over for tea. I then cooked a dinner for myself using spices and ingredients that I haven't used before but have been sitting in my cupboards for a while. I used saffron for the first time by putting it in my rice and it was good! I moved quite slowly, and at "my pace" today, and it was lovely.

3 months ago I fell while rollerblading and hurt both of my wrists. They are still damaged, but have improved a lot within the past month! Having injured wrists meant I couldn't exercise in the way I wanted to, and this contributed to my decision to play video games for about 2 weeks after I got back from Hawaii. The time spent gaming was an okay time: not bad, but not good. All in all, it was what I was expecting it to be, and I also stopped playing in the way I set out to. The games helped pass the time during a period of my life in which I wanted time to pass by quickly. Now that I am mostly healed, I am ready to come back to my life! I went to a K-Pop dance class last week. It was very hard! It was interesting to try something fresh, new, and humbling:

Having a good day of no judgement. Going to Hawaii tomorrow.

Today I saw someone I knew from high school. At first, I pretended like I didn't see her and moved farther away on the subway. But then, I decided that it would be fun to say come up to her and say hi, so I did. We then had a fun conversation and were both happy to see each other, even though we weren't ever close. We got off at the same stop and she walked me to where I was going even though it was in the opposite direction of where she was going. She invited me to hang out with her and other people from high school. I am not sure I will take her up on her offer, because I am not sure I want to start a deeper friendship with her and her group, and I don't think it would be nice of me to just show up to only one of her gatherings and then never again. Overall, it was a positive social experience because I made the effort. I also bought $58 worth of exotic fruit in Chinatown Shining Heart Goals: Initiate conversations with 10 people I haven't spoken to. Progress: 4/10 Be open with 10 people about things I would normally be embarrassed or self conscious about. Progress: 3/10

How lucky that you live in Korea I would spend all of my money on Osulloc tea

Today was very relaxing. I feel like I was back in the countryside in Japan. We had breakfast delivered, and then I gave myself a pedicure and facial. Then I watched some anime, made myself a green smoothie, and started playing with my new watercolors. Then my boyfriend left, and I had a sushi dinner alone and a nice walk around my neighborhood at night. It was really pretty, quiet, and I feel refreshed.

Today I bought 3 nice pairs of sweatpants to replace my old ones that are 5+ years old. I also went to the gym and worked out with machines to keep pressure off my injured wrists. I also made a raw vegan apple pie. I met with someone who wanted to talk to me and I tried to help them with their career. My paintbrushes arrived, so now I can watercolor whenever I want. Was a good day that had a lot of things happening.

After about 230 days, I relapsed. I played 4 games of League of Legends, and bought and played Final Fantasy XV and played for 5 hours. Overall, the damage was not too bad. I had forgotten why I wanted to quit video games in the first place, which made them appealing again when I was feeling negative and also vulnerable with wrist injuries which limits my exercise choices and thus I have more time that needs to be filled. I spread the playtime over 3 days, but to be honest, it was still very exhausting. Playing video games is such an energy-consuming endeavor. My eyes were sunken in and my brain was in a fog at the end of each day, even though I did not play that much. I quickly went back into a severe, low energy, anti-social state. I hate this feeling, and knowing that I felt that way for months and years at a time when I was younger puts a lot of things into perspective about my mood and relationships with other people. Playing Rayman with my boyfriend was just a half-assed excuse, because I wanted to play video games and that was an easy way to justify it, and obviously lead me down the path to opening the floodgates. I will not be playing that game either. Watching anime or TV does not suck away my energy so much, so quickly. I was trying to be too perfect I think, by avoiding screens as much as possible -- anime is my passion, and I should not feel like watching it is bad for me. It is not like video games. Yes it is on a screen, but it is a much better use of my time. I have downloaded a large batch of anime to watch at my leisure whenever I want some low-effort entertainment. I don't need to be a perfect monk. Books unfortunately don't excite me enough to replace anime, which puts me in danger of relapsing. Anime gives me life. I am committed to not going to play video games again going forward. I did not find the games very entertaining anyway. I might relapse again when Maplestory 2 comes out, and I hope that I will have the same reaction if it happens again and learn another lesson. Overall, I don't feel too bad about relapsing since I caught it early and also I feel better knowing the information I gained from it. Thanks.

I had a nice dinner with my boyfriend and then I realized that I don't have any long-term goals to work toward. The only thing I really want is to eventually move into a house that has 5 acres of land, but I would settle for a garden. I realized that my mindset about life has changed since I started playing video games (this could be something that comes with age, too). http://jamesclear.com/goals-systems If I don't have a goal to work toward, I am not satisfied. I have a 'sort of' goal of writing a book -- I would like to do it, but I don't want to write for fun if it's not for a goal because I feel like it's a waste of time. The same thing with painting -- I like to draw and paint, but because I wouldn't make money from it and only a few would see it, what is the point of doing it? This article that I linked wrote that if you focus on such a long-term goal, it is likely that you will have difficulty achieving it. You will enjoy writing for the sake of doing it, and the goal will be fulfilled naturally along the way. I think this is related to 'living in the moment.' A lot of my current goals are like this. I want to do muay thai, write a novel, draw paintings. But are they things that I enjoy without the sake of having a goal? No, I don't think they are. Only yoga is something that I am naturally drawn to. And if that is how I feel, what exactly should I be doing with my time? I guess I'm in a bad mood again.

I held myself accountable today and even though I pressed snooze on my alarm this morning, I did yoga before I went to bed at night so I would not miss out on the challenge. It's only 20 minutes, I can definitely do it every day!! I played Rayman with my boyfriend and it was a new way for us to spend time together, which was good. After an hour of playing, I was starting to get bored and my eyes were getting tired, so I said that we should stop playing after we beat a level. It was a good feeling that I initiated the end of the gaming session, and made me feel less addicted to gaming. However, I will make sure to monitor my urges so that casual gaming with boyfriend does not translate to online gaming, or gaming alone. I think we will only play every few days or so anyway in order to make sure the experience stays fun. I cleaned my desk at work today and made progress on my my purchasing clothes for work goal. I also listened to happy music in the morning to help start the day off right. Looking forward to tomorrow!

I am resurrecting my 30 day yoga challenge. I will be doing one of these videos every day: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsB8Dk1Orvu26oiTWOZ283a-iYfiojYAB My boyfriend and I decided to play Rayman Legends together, co-op on the PS4. I don't consider this as the kind of gaming I am trying to stay away from -- this activity has a purpose and I will only be doing it together with him. Overall, I still feel like I have a lot of chroes to do in my personal life. Suddenly at the start of this week, I have felt an onslaught of obligation to keep checking things off my to do list. However, the more I check off, the more I come up with things to do. A lot of it has to do with purchasing clothes (mainly for work). I had been holding off on upgrading the less important parts of my wardrobe, but now that I got promoted I feel like I should be very well dressed. And it's a lot of work to look fancy!! >_< Today is day 225. Start date: 9/6/2016 http://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html

We are chore machines x_x

Right after I vented in my journal entry yesterday, I felt better. I analyzed the issue and I think part of why I was upset was not only because there were a lot of people around me on my day off, but because I felt like I was “falling behind” in personal deadlines and chores I set for myself. And so my feeling of being overwhelmed was amplified. I was also likely in a "low" of what seem to be recurring mood swings between happy and sad. I have been using an app to set deadlines for personal tasks, chores, and projects, and I have been falling behind on a lot of them and they have been accumulating more and more. I hadn’t been taking into account everyday tasks I have to do that take up a good amount of time in my day, like preparing salads and cutting nails. I will try to do a better job spacing out one-off personal deadlines for myself because it is not feasible for me to do 3 in one night (even though I would like to, and would be able to achieve that in a video game). Today, I posted some things to sell on eBay and cut my nails, did yoga, prepared salad ingredients, prepared teas for a meetup my friends are having, bought new work shoes, learned and practiced how to shine shoes, and updated my resume!! *exhausted* Yesterday, I did laundry, cleaned, and took a new professional LinkedIn picture of myself when I got home from work. I posted it on Facebook and people seemed to like it, which made me feel good. So here it is: [Mod Note: There was a picture of a lovely fella here, but he asked for such picture to be removed. Ah, leave it to me, the shy ones! - @Hitaru]

I like that quitting video games made you gay.

I feel like I am spiraling closer to a relapse. Friday, I went to the park twice, did 1 hour of yoga, and got Japanese BBQ for dinner. Friday was a good day because it was sunny and there weren't many people outside because it was still a weekday. Saturday, I did some more yoga for hamstrings, I went around looking for furniture with bf, watched the movie Your Name, bought a notebook, and went grocery shopping. There were a lot of people everywhere. Sunday, I went hiking with bf which burned over 2k calories, and ate Argentinian steak. Even when hiking, there were a ton of people because the train does not come often, so when people got off at the stop there were like 50 people hiking at once and it was impossible to get rid of them and hike privately. I'm going to be honest -- I did not feel like I had a lot of fun. I feel like I was mildly amused -- but that's it, and that seems to be a shame because I think doing these activities should have prompted more happy feelings inside of me. I think I am very tired of being surrounded by tons of people. I get irritated and angry at them, I don't want to be so close to them. I am starting to get fed up with living in NYC. This type of feeling is what first drove me to play video games, because I was in very close proximity of my parents and I hated them -- so I played video games. Now, I feel like I am experiencing the same thing, except now it is when I go outside. I am not sure what to do!

Ever since I checked the League of Legends website, I have been thinking about playing. !! I'm essentially going through a second detox, now that my life is not consumed with studying. I no longer have an excuse to keep me from not gaming. I feel a bit stuck and lazy. I think I will stay up late tonight drinking tea and have a little party to cheer myself up. Hopefully I am just at one of the down points in this:

I am going to start taking Muay Thai classes in September, and I will try it out for at least 1 month. In order to achieve that goal, I will start working out regularly now that I am done with my test. I have 2 wrist injuries from falling while I was rollerblading last month, but I can still do something light while they finish healing. For the next month, I will focus solely on yoga and stretching. Afterwards, I will go with whatever I feel whether it is strength training or swimming and more yoga. Maybe some dance classes too. This will all help me train for September so that I can start from a good baseline. I want to be prepared for the next time someone attacks me, even though I don't really want to fight. -- I got a massage today. I went out to eat dinner with my bf yesterday and I finished reading a book. I still feel like something is missing in my life though, to fulfill me in a way that video games does. Is it the social aspect? Without realizing it, I have made 2 tea friends that I have been meeting to have tea. Slowly, I am acquiring more friends! Through an initial conscious effort 3 months ago, the friendships have unfolded unconsciously to me into meetings that I look forward to and wish they happened more frequently.

I checked the League of Legends website today. Looks like there is a new support champ and he looks cool, so I wish I could play. I shouldn't have looked!

Things are going pretty well with having my laptop in my closet. Although I do sit down and watch a TV show occasionally or browse reddit on my phone, I think I am more mindful about my internet usage than if my laptop were readily available with 24/7 access. First thing I did when I got home yesterday from work was grab the yoga mat and read a book. It was instinctive, which I really liked. Normally I would have just grabbed my laptop and rested for 40 mins while browsing the internet. I also got promoted at work. Though my base salary is still not near what I want, I am getting closer and am now in a good bargaining position.

"Keeping a journal makes life fruitful. The daily appointment with the blank page forces one to pay better attention to the doings of the day -- to listen harder, to think more clearly, to see more intently. It would be grim to have nothing to inscribe in one's notebook in the evening." From "The Consolations of the Forest," a book I have been reading. I started to look up words in the dictionary when I come across them as I read, instead of trying to infer what they mean or skip over them. I would like to have a more sophisticated vocabulary. I feel better today.

Today I slept 12 hours and called in sick to work. I watched an anime movie that made me think -- it was about a person that had killed themselves but was given a chance to come back to life and live again. In some ways it could be related to quitting video games, but I think I related to it deeper than that and more on how I should try to live life more fully and openly. This was something I had started working on but put on pause because of my test. After I finished the movie, I started getting upset that I was using the computer because I have a stack of fresh books available to read 10 feet away. That I still don't really have close friends -- I have been getting closer to people at work, but that is not the same... etc. At one point I briefly looked at mmorpg.com to see what types of MMOs are popular nowadays, but quickly lost interest and closed it. I think the movie stirred up some negative emotions and these other thoughts flooded through as well. I have been estranged from my parents for 2 years now. We have not talked, and I have no desire to see either of them. I feel bad for my mom, because I know that she is sad about the situation, but I also know that it is the best for me. But even still, the situation also makes me sad. But I am still firm in my decision that I do not want any contact with them. Today is day 206 and is a bit of down day. Edit: I've decided to try to put my laptop in the closet and see how life is without it.

I have been resting a lot for the past week and getting accustomed to living a regular life again now that I don't have to study. Honestly, it feels weird and everything is a little alien to me. I feel out of place and like I have aged a lot. So far I have caught up on: work, laundry, reading webtoons, TV shows, grocery shopping, hygiene, 2x salad per day routine. I have started: cleaning apartment, reading books, cooking, light exercise, rekindling social life, adding to music library. There is a lot more coming up for me that I need and want to do, but I am trying to pace things out to prevent being overwhelmed. I hope I can heal and become my previous self soon. Song of the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CTYymbbEL4

Life is suddenly very empty. I have so much catching up to do (have a long list of stuff I had put off while I was studying) -- and yet, I feel like I have nothing to do. Now that I don't have to study every minute of the day and don't have that structure, I feel a bit aimless. I have a lot that I want to start working on, but have not yet. While I have borrowed a bunch of books from the library, I do not have the urge to read them. I just want easy entertainment. I am aware that I am now gravitating towards TV shows and internet usage to fill this void. Though I have quit gaming, the core issue is still the same. But at least I have better self control with these other vices. I think I will treat myself and get used to the new pace of my life before I start cracking down on myself to do stuff, because I deserve a break after what I went through to pass this test.

I would rather have tea