Primmulla

As I mentioned in some of my posts, I love TV series though I never was capable of spending entire day watching them: two episodes a day is the maximum I can watch. But in my case, watching TV series is strongly connected with my passion for learning languages, since I hardly ever watch series in my native language, but almost exclusively in English (which I hope I have mastered, but TV series are my only contact with spoken English, so I consider it a productive activity) and German. There is a great post on learning languages from series on Fluent in 3 month, I will try and find it for you. But I agree that watching series in your native language can be considered a waste of time, since you do not learn anything then. I've found the link: http://www.fluentin3months.com/movies/

Hello Dannigan, welcome to the forum and thank you for your post. I am very interested in what you wrote, because LotRO is also my addiction, though I never cared about the social aspect of the game, what really mattered to me was visiting all places I knew from "The Lord of the Rings" - my beloved book. How did you came to be addicted to the game? Were you a Tolkien fan beforehand and loving Tolkien's books made you addicted to LotRO, or was it independent of your interest in literature? How are you dealing with Tolkien's writings once you've left the game? I am still wondering if I should quit reading all information, forums, websites, scholarly articles etc. about Tolkien so that I would not get any cravings about the game? I was looking for a female accountability partner, but I wonder whether you would like to be my accountability partner? From your post i deduce you are not female, but you are about my age and you had problem with the same game, so maybe it is actually more unifying than the same gender I am constantly deluding myself that I am not really addicted, you can find the links to my story here: http://forum.gamequitters.com/topic/1415-to-really-quit-gaming-looking-for-female-partner/#comment-8345

The course started today, so check it out before it is too late to enrol

I started wondering, what does it really mean to quit games? What can you say that you have successfully quitted games? After you have not played for a year? or is there any particular moment when you can say: "Yes, I have quitted gaming"? How long does it take to do this? I guess you can say that you have quitted games when you no longer experience any cravings and do not miss gaming even one bit, to put it differently, when you no longer have to struggle with the desire to game, am I right?

Hello guys, I want to share my thoughts and reflections with you. As you know, I briefly returned to gaming in February, only to give it up for Lent. So, in a way I relapsed, though I do not call it "relapse" since I associate this concept with unintentional return to gaming, and I define it as starting to play again despite our wishes, and I had planned it beforehand. And now I understand this was where I made a very serious mistake. I would like to share it with you so that you could avoid making the same mistake. Though I was not particularly tempted to game during my 90-day detox, I did not uninstall the games (which would not be a problem in itself, since I was not tempted to play them as long as my detox continued), but my biggest mistake was in my mindset: I did not really intend to give up gaming for good, I considered the detox only a break in gaming, a pause after which I would be "allowed" to come back to gaming as taking such a break would "prove" that I am not addicted and hence can game. This was a huge, huge mistake. Everyone who ever played games should strive to eliminate them from their lives, not for any period of time in particular, but forever. Even if they are not addicted in the medical sense of the word, and if gaming does not have any negative influence on their lives, because later on it may turn out to be a problem, and so it is better to cut gaming in the nip before it begins to cause problems.

Hello Mark, I have just started learning HTML & CSS, though I am a total beginner and do not have any previous experience of this kind of thing; in fact I have always believed it was too difficult for me, as I am much more skilled in humanities and have no maths talent. However, I found it useful for my work, and so decided to learn how to make websites rather than how to program in Scratch (it was fun, but had no practical use). What advice can you give to a beginner learning HTML & CSS for the first time in her life? Thanks Currently, I am doing the Khan Academy course, but I intend to complete the Codecademy offering later on. I love reading, so in my turn I can provide you with book recommendations Is there any particular genre you enjoy?

If it can get you banned from the game, I guess it is ok since it leads to the outcome you want to achieve: stopping gaming

What is boting? I have no idea what it means, and so I cannot really give any advice on the subject though I would like to satiate my curiosity and learn what this word means.

I completed my detox this January, but I decided to give up gaming for Lent, so that I do not play from Ash Wednesday to Easter (27.03.2016). I would also abstain from game recaps and reviews. As I am not really addicted to games, this is because of religious reasons rather than a real need to quit gaming. I believe religious motivation is really strong, so if you are Catholic it is definitely a good idea to try and quit gaming for Lent. It may be just for penance, or it may wean you off games so that when Lent ends you may no longer be interested in them, and in this way it may prepare you to give them up for good.

So, you were thinking more along the lines: "because gamers are considered to be lazy people, they tend to behave lazily because they believe in this assumption"? Do I understand you correctly? Though I still believe that a person who spends most of their time on entertainment is definitely lazy.

Since I started reading the forum, I am more sensitive to symptoms of addiction in myself as well as in other people. Now I am afraid my dad may be getting addicted to the simple game Solitaire. He does not play every day, but when he starts playing, he cannot stop for hours on end. He loves watching television, so when I want to see my favourite series, I start the game for him so that he would not pick something else to watch, since we have only one tv set and in this case I would not be able to watch the episode. So in a way, I contributed to his addiction The problem is, my series starts at 8 p.m. and lasts an hour, while dad continues to play Solitaire almost until midnight He can play a lot of Solitaire matches one after another, he is pretty fast, but hates to be interrupted while gaming since he wants to get the best time possible. When Mum asks him to do something while he is gaming, he says he would do it later and does not want to stop playing. He usually has to finish a match even before he goes to the toilet, hates leaving the game for a minute because he would get worse time record for completing the Solitaire. Is my daddy addicted to this game? Or is it simply his way to relax and I should not worry?

Hello Cam, I have listened to your talk and sadly I do not agree with you. First of all, why do you use phrase "we gamers" since game quitters do not identify as gamers anymore, it is the whole point of quitting games is to find a new identification rather than a gamer. Secondly, I do not know how you define laziness, but laziness does not equal lying on the bed staring on the ceiling If we define laziness as devoting one's time to unproductive activities, then gamers definitely are lazy, since gaming is an unproductive waste of time. The way I see laziness is that a lazy person spends most of their time on entertainment, be it games or TV series, as it was in my case. Entertainment is OK, as long as it is used as it should be, that is, as a way to rest after work, not instead it. Entertainment is entertainment, and people who spend most of their time on entertainment, no matter how dedicated they are to it, are simply lazy. This is of course only my humble opinion, though I would like to know how you and other members of this forum define laziness.

Hey guys and girls, I've just discovered that a free online course about addiction has been announced on the MOOC website FutureLearn: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/understanding-drugs-and-addiction I have not taken this course before, but I've done many others on FutureLearn. The courses here are free, you have to pay only when you need a printed certificate, but listening to all lectures and taking quizzes is completely free. I like the courses on FutureLearn because they can be completed almost on you own pace; the only date you have to look out for is the day the course officially ends, because after this day you can no longer enrol and have access to the course materials. But if you enrol before the course ends, you do not have to stick to the course schedule and can listen to lectures long after it is officially finished (providing you enrolled when it was still going on). So it allows for a very flexible schedule. Most lectures have transcripts in pdf files, which can be easily printed out. From the course description, it seems that it deals with addiction to substances, such as alcohol and drugs, rather than behavioural addiction such as gaming. Though I guess it is still worth looking into. Anyway, it is free, so you can always quit the course without any costs.

I'm going to be a devil's advocate here, but I'm speaking from experience. I think that it's important to create time to rest and recuperate. This shouldn't be games, but stuff like social events, reading less demanding books, hell, even TV from time to time. I'm saying this mostly because whenever I raised my expectations too much, I couldn't sustain the level of performance and got burned out. I'm not saying don't raise your expectations, the opposite actually, but on the other hand, expectations can be realistic or unrealistic. Just something to think about. Maybe your experience will be the opposite and if it is, great! If less so, then there's this post Good luck! I agree with @Suritus, you should not expect from yourself to be perfect and productive all the time, since it is impossible and in this way, you are setting yourself up for failure, because no human being can be perfect. If you aim at being constantly productive, it would not happen either, there is always stuff e.g. you may feel tired or be sick and then your productivity would be very low Your self-worth does not depend on your productivity, each human being is priceless because they are humans, and not because they are productive or not. And we human beings do rest and recuperation. If you want to perform well, you have to take a rest and relax, or otherwise you would be tired and not able to work as well as you would if you are well-rested. So, eliminating rest from your life is in fact counter-productive, and it would make you less productive, no more. You should avoid this trap, just like @Suritus says. The website Blinkist was recommended here on the forum, and in one of the book summaries on how to make your brain work better and how to unleash your creativity, there was an important piece of advice that we have to spend at least one day a week doing totally unproductive things we enjoy in order to let our brain recuperate. Often, when we are not thinking about a problem, e.g. how to write another chapter in a dissertation, and do other unrelated things, the answer comes to us naturally when we return to work after the break. It is because our brain was analysing the problem in the background, when we were relaxing. By not having rest, we prevent the brain from doing this. I would also like to tell you all on this forum not to underestimate fiction books nor outright "curse" them as escapist activity. It is important to read fiction, particularly if you want to make a career connected to writing, reading self-help books alone won't help you much, if you are not well-read in literature. Of course, there are a lot of worthless books on the market, but what I can definitely recommend is reading classics - these books are not timeless without reason, they are artistically valuable and deal with important matters of human condition, their message is also often universal. If you neglected e.g. Shakespeare at school, you can make up for it now. It is a very pleasant way of spending one's time, and at the same time, helps you grow intellectually, so it is a win-win. Fiction books are also indispensable if you are learning foreign languages, as reading books in the language you are learning really aids you in mastering it. If we condemn all fiction as escapist activity, we have to throw the entire history of literature into the garbage, and that is not the wisest thing to do

After my detox was ended, I did go back to games, or rather to the Game, I do not call it relapse since quitting playing for good was never my aim. I enjoy the game moderately, less than it was at the beginning, but I also understood something about my gaming. I am not interested in gaming as such and often I find it rather difficult, I would rather watch my favourite tv series or read a book than game. I have a couple of tv series which I enjoy watching very much, such as Doctor Who (the best one for me), and recently Marvel shows such as Agents of Shield and Agent Carter (and others, mainly fantasy ones). Unfortunately, these are not easily available in Poland, so in fact I use gaming as a replacement of these tv shows, so that I would occupy my free time with something and would not think about these series and their characters, and would not be sad because I do not know what happens next and I would probably never learn it. If I could have easy access to these series, I would probably have no need of gaming whatsoever. So, after thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that I have problems rather with tv series than games, I wonder how could I get rid of the need to watch them? I do not spend all my free time watching tv series, not at all, the highest number of episodes I could watch is two on a Sunday, but I hate not knowing how a given tv series ends and what happens to the characters, it is like leaving a book unfinished before you reach the last page, maybe I am a completionist but as far as games are concerned, I used them mostly as a replacement for the tv series I cannot watch.

Your art looks great and really professional I am impressed by how talented you are. I would like to see more of your works, do you have a gallery on websites such as Deviantart? I do not draw myself, but I love browsing artworks on Deviantart, and I remember that you can enable a critique on your work on this portal, so that people could give you some feedback and useful advice. For me, your pictures are very beautiful and stunning

It may seem funny but I first became interested in games after reading an article about game translators in a magazine for linguists, and another one telling how lucrative this gaming industry is. I was wondering whether maybe I could also look for a job as a game translator. The problem was, I did not know anything about games, and it would be hard to translate games without any experience of playing them (as I saw sample texts a game translator has to work with, it is true that at least general knowledge of games is necessary, since translators often get only e.g. dialogues between characters without any context, needed for translation, so they have to guess on the basis of their knowledge about games what the context may be). But now I believe that even if I could secure such a job, I should turn it down since working in the gaming industry is very immoral, taking into account how many people get addicted to games and how hard is to break with this addiction. By translating a game, I would contribute to the growth of this addiction, as the game would be then available to more people, and those who would not play because of the language barrier, might engage in this dangerous behaviour. What do you think about it?

Paul, have you found your hobby yet? You are still very young, and now school should be of the highest priority for you. Certainly, there has to be a school subject you particularly like or are good at. Instead of looking for a hobby, determine which school subject is your favourite and try to excel at it. Aim at getting straight As, master not only what the teacher demands for a good grade, but go beyond the curriculum and learn more about the subject. It seems to me that it is the best way to proceed, taking into account your current age and circumstances. As far as your gaming siblings are concerned, you should not give in to their demands to help them with their games. Judging from your description of their behaviour, they may soon be addicted to playing or are already addicts. You should talk to your parents about it, maybe refer them to one of Cam's articles about gaming addition? I saw that Cam also wrote an article addressed to parents, though I have not read it since I am not parent myself. Maybe reading more about the problems of gaming will help them understand and support your decision. And never give up We all here keep our fingers crossed for you

My detox is coming to an end, and soon the total ban on gaming would be removed, and I would be allowed to play if I want to. After reading your confessions here on the forum, I came to the conclusion that I was not really addicted to gaming. Games was not something I grew up with, in contrast, they were (or rather, the game was, since it was primarily only one game that I used) a relatively recent addition to my life. I can imagine living without games, though I do not have to imagine it, since this is how my life looked like for the most part of it so the game was rather an anomaly, an aberration in my life and not the normal state of affairs, and in contrast to most people here on the forum, my default behaviour is not gaming I know and enjoy many hobbies and activities, most of them give me much more joy than the game. For instance, if I had to choose one activity, I would definitely prefer reading to gaming. I like gaming, but there are a lot of activities I like much more. Also, I was interested only in one particular game, and mainly for reasons not related to gaming itself (because it was set in my favourite Middle-Earth, and not because I liked getting points or killing mobs - in fact, I did not enjoy these activities). Here on the forum, many people explain that they were switching from one game to another, and if for instance their parents did not allow them to play a given game, they played another, or if they could not afford a certain game, they chose another similar to it. This is not the case with me, since I tried other MMO games, but was not interested in them at all. I also tried Dragon Age but my interest in it was abysmally low, and I played it once in a couple of months Today my attitude to it is that I want to complete it one day, to know what happens to the characters, but, to quote movie!Aragorn: Before I even started the detox, I noticed a steady decline in my gaming, I played less frequently and for shorter amounts of time, and I was getting slowly bored by the repetitive nature of the quests (I particularly hated killing mobs). From the perspective of time, I can now see that the game was indeed a passing fad as I thought at the beginning. I was attracted to it so much because it was something new in my life, something I have never experienced before, and this made the game so exciting, but as the newness of it wore off, so did the excitement of gaming. I like the game, but there are some quite irritating aspects of it, such as aforementioned slaying mobs. I often could not complete the quests without reading the solution first, and in worse cases, I needed to watch someone else doing the same quest before I could attempt to do it myself. So, gaming is not something I was particularly good at; in fact, on the contrary, there were many other things I am much, much better at than gaming (all other things ) Another thing I hated about the game was that it took so much time to reach a given destination. The only thing I liked about the game was the landscapes and the opportunity to "meet" and interact with some of "The Lord of the Rings" characters. The game was giving me joy, but not as much as other activities, such as reading. I may put it this way that the game's time-joy ratio was not very good, since I had to devote a lot of time to achieve something in the game, while I could get much more pleasure from other things such as reading. So now, though I still enjoy gaming, I believe it is a waste of time in comparison to other activities, since I have to invest more time into it, and I do not get as much joy and fun as from other activities. So, I guess I am not really the target group of this forum, since I can stop playing on my own accord, and I do not need any additional "push" to do so other than being bored by the game. I can play or not, and I do not care about it either way, and the fact that I am not longer obsessed allows me to play, since when one is very passionate about gaming, it is the reason to stop playing, while when one is not interested in games, it means that they can play safely without being addicted - the so-called gaming paradox So, now I had my detox, I guess it would not be the end of the world to play once in a blue moon, now I have the attitude to the game that I can play, but I would regret it if I play not because gaming is evil or something like that, but rather because the time devoted to the game could be used for activities I enjoy much more, such as reading or translating. So it is not that I am not allowed to play or I have to abstain from doing something I like for some arbitrary reason. Rather, because each of us has a limited amount of time, it is only reasonable to choose the activities we enjoy the most, and not others which give us less joy. After my detox ends, I want to play a bit, do one quest just to find out how I feel about the game, whether I still enjoy it and want to play it from time to time, or whether I am totally indifferent to it. However, these are only my reflections, and if you are really addicted to gaming, like the majority here, I do not think you should follow in my footsteps

I have the same experiences as Laney My gaming dreams are based on the game I was playing but my dreaming mind completely redesigns the game in question. I wonder if it would be a good idea to transform these dreams into short stories? They do not really make me want to play since they are so much better than actual game.

The key to changing a sedentary lifestyle is to start small, with short and easy exercises which help your body to get used to more activity. If you over-trained yourself, no wonder that you've got problems. Also, from my experience it is the regularity of sport which counts much more than its intensity: it is much better to exercise for 30 minutes but do it every day than to train hard for three hours once a month and it is definitely healthier to train in small doses but frequently.

I would like to finish my Italian course on Duolingo, and reach the 365-day language learning streak

I have never used them, but I read about some console games that teach you fitness, e.g. Zumba or some dances. This seems cheaper than gym, since you pay once for a game and not every month as it is the case with fitness classes. I wonder if it would be ok to play these? after all, the player is not sitting on the computer, but has to move, and what you can learn in such a game can also be useful in real life. What do you think?

I was wondering about the books and online tutorials which are meant to teach how to draw. Are they really effective? I mean, can they really teach you to draw or only to copy the drawings made by the book's (or website's) authors? I believe that in order to draw, one has to have at least some talent. What if someone has never had either inclination or talent, just like me? Can they still learn to draw? perhaps, but only after putting a lot of effort into this skill, and the end result would never be half as good as drawings made by really talented people. Taking all this into account, is it really worth trying? Isn't it better to stick to something one is talented for?

Another option would be to use Linux, I have not tried it but I've read that Windows games do not work well on Linux. I have also came across some information about Windows 10, some gamers complain that after updating to Windows 10 they cannot play the games they used to, the update is blocking the games somehow. So maybe upgrade to Windows 10 if you are eligible for a free update.