Dirac 2.0

[dirac]

I already have a journal where I used to write in. However my last entry was over half a year ago and a lot has happened and I feel like its time for me to start a new journal. New journal new me so to say. One of the reasons why I stopped writing was because I was kind of alright with how the gaming was going to a certain extent. It was definitely going horrible in terms of how much I played, but I just didnt really care. Also with the pandemic and lockdowns there wasnt that much to do... atleast thats what I told myself.

But in late january, two weeks into my masterthesis everything changed. I got a pretty bad shoulder injury from wrestling for which I had to undergo surgery and I am still recovering from it. I got thrown on my left shoulder while my partner landed on my right shoulder which dislocated my left shoulder such that all the ligaments that keep the collarbone inside the shoulder joint just ripped. My collarbone was floating around inside my shoulder and I was in quite some pain. One week later I had surgery. In that surgery a rope was attached to the collarbone and the shoulder joint. This rope was tightened so that the collarbone moved inside the shoulder joint, close enough for the ligaments to grow back together.

They gave a little page saying that I have to wear a splint for 4 weeks, then after 6 weeks I am allowed to carry items up to 5kg and after 12 weeks I can go up to a maximum of 10kg. The full recovery is reached after 6 months (august).

After the surgery I was wearing the splint for 4 weeks and I was struggling with basic things like taking a shower or putting on a shirt. I couldnt cook or wash the dishes. I was completely reliant on my girlfriend. In the beginning even walking hurt and doing anything productive was unthinkable. I bought some games that I could play with my mouse only and started gaming all day long. I quite enjoyed it because it helped me deal with the pain better than anything.

The big problem came with the fact that this construct that keeps my collarbone in my shoulder is very fragile in the first 6 weeks so I was extremely scared to go outside. If someone would have bumped into me it might already have been enough to break it again. If I would have been in a bus which would come to a stop suddenly it could have ripped. I started to be very anxious of going outside and basically just hid inside my flat playing video games all day. I had to go to physical therapy three times a week which also kept me from completely spiraling mentally as those 30minute walks were my only time spent outside.

But it did get pretty bad. After about 3 weeks of recovery I started working on my masterthesis again, but from home. I was still way to scared to take the bus. I never really managed to work more than a few hours per day because I just wanted to play video games so bad. Video games basically became my only hobby, now that sport and exercise werent possible and I was too scared to go out. I started to get really depressed also because I saw my body transforming. Without exercise I kept on losing muscle which I could see almost everytime when I looked in the mirror. This hit me hard, because my body was always something that gave me confidence as I developed it over the years of wrestling and lifting.

Over the next few weeks I kept on underperforming in my thesis and just play a lot of video games. At the beginning of the injury I thought this time might be an amazing opportunity to get into reading and new interesting hobbies, but so far I just played video games and didnt do much else.

Luckily I started a small kind of therapy which happens every two weeks and is sponsored from my university which helped deal with all of it. I also decided to quit video games about 5 weeks after the surgery but I only managed to do 8 days. Those were pretty cool days though. Then I continued to play video games because I thought I can handle it and I am injured and I feel lonely and I am too scared to leave the house anyways so its fine and blablabla...

The next two weeks were the absolute worst, I played more video games than all the time before and barely did anything for my masterthesis except of the absolute minimum. I started to feel really guilty and depressed and hopeless. I did no longer have any fun doing anything and it all started to look real gray. It hit its absolute worst point two days ago were I was so full of anxiety that I didnt know what to do anymore and started getting really scared that I might fall into a hole I could not get out of again. A really deep, bad hole.

So starting today I will not play video games anymore. I believe this is the only way out of this hole and even if I watch netflix all day, anything is better than what I did the past few weeks. I am ashamed of myself, ashamed of how I am wasting my life, ashamed of how much I relied on my girlfriend and kind of enjoying it, ashamed of how much I keep underperforming at university and ashamed of how poorly I dealt with this injury. All I had in me in the past weeks is fear. Fear of injury, fear of failure in university, fear of losing my girlfriend, fear of losing myself.

And to remind myself of all this I will post daily on this forum. This is my accountability zone, here I am holding myself accountable for others to see. My goal for now is 90 days. That is three months. By then I will have almost completely recovered from the shoulder injury.

[dirac]

Because the former was more of an introductory post, I feel like I want to make a post about today as well.

I managed to stay away from gaming today very easily. Its always like that when I hit rock bottom and make a commitment to stay away from gaming. Sadly so far this always faded away after a few days. But still day 1 went well and I am happy. I already feel better than I did on the weekend.

Tomorrow I have physical therapy and I will ask how and when I am allowed to go running again. That would already help me a lot mentally. I always wanted to do a triathlon at some point in my life but I never worked on it because I was always grappling and lifting and didnt have time to invest into that endeavour. But now that I wont be able to do martial arts till atleast august and cant really lift weights properly either I might get started on training for a triathlon. I know that I am allowed to run already but my shoulder still hurts a lot when moving and I wanna make sure its ok. I know that I have to wait 4 more weeks until I can go swimming and biking, so that will have to wait either way.

I cant really say that this day was productive because I watched a lot of netflix but I dont care that much for now. At this moment not gaming is the main objective. But I am already working on replacing gaming with other activities. Hopefully running, then I have quite a few books I ordered over the past weeks I havent read and I might get into other things like coding/plants/whatever. I might make a list of activities that I want to go through.

I also really need to buy clothing soon, because I havent bought any clothes since the pandemic started and most of my clothes look like a swiss cheese by now. I am still very scared of going to public places though, I hope my girlfriend will come with me and we can do it next week or the week after. That would also help me with going outside, because one reason why I feel so bad going outside in public places is because I am ashamed of my clothes.

Kind of excited about tomorrow, I feel like I am in somewhat of an uphill trajectory right now

[Amphibian220]

Welcome Dirac, so you are a wrestler by calling, that’s one pf my favourite sports. I wrestled as a kid and loved the experience.

Wish you to recover soon and establish healthy alternatives to gaming. What do you say of Cameron’s 18 healthy replacements? In that list is reading, painting, learning a new language among others. I think there are many healthy habits you can start without going back to gaming.

I don’t see staying at home and avoiding public transport in your condition as you described it as cowardice, I see it as a reasonable and essential decision to recover. When I suffered an injury, I stayed home for extended periods of time, but kept communicating with my friends on the phone to cope with loneliness.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Amphibian220