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Jay's Epic Journey


seriousjay

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  • 1 month later...

Alright, I'd just like to post about how things are going right now. I'm also gonna try to post once a week with a status update from now on because the daily thing obviously hasn't worked too well thus far. Although if I really think about it, I'm not even sure why I'm journaling to be honest. It doesn't feel all that important to me at this time. I guess for now I'll just keep at it and see if a compelling reason shows up later on.

Not much to say about the apartment, I've largely settled in and things are progressing quite smoothly on that front so far.

Some big changes in other areas though. I've decided to take a vastly different approach to personal development than I have in the past. Before I would make changes to 1 or 2 things, and when I saw those were going good, I would quickly start piling more and more stuff on top. It would quickly become overwhelming and I would just give up, which was really frustrating for me. Part of the reason for that frustration is because of my age. I want things to progress rapidly because I'm already 30 years old and basically just now getting started on life.

However, I've come to learn that when it comes to major change, it can't be rushed. You still have to take the appropriate amount of time to make changes into habits. So I've decided I'm going to focus on 2-3 major changes at a time and shelve everything else. The reason I came to this decision is because of what happened last Saturday. A few weeks before that, I had started going to the gym again, as well as making some changes to my eating habits, and it was actually going pretty good. So I decided to pile another thing on top of that, and last Saturday I started to feel like giving up again because it was too much on my mind. I actually skipped a gym visit because of that.

There are many things I want to do or change in my life:

- quit video games
- read more personal development material (currently: none)
- go through all of Cam's videos
- go through all the bookmarks of positivity and personal development stuff I've collected
- complete the courses that I've bought
- find a girlfriend
- go hiking at least once a week
- quit drinking caffeine

I'm sure there are a lot of other things as well.. and all of this is going on the shelf for now. Both mentally and physically.

For now, I'm just going to focus on the following (and I know I need to make them a lot more specific):

- control spending habits
- above goes hand in hand with controlling my eating habits, because the vast majority of my spending was on food
- commit to the gym 4 times a week

I really feel I can handle the above with great consistency. So far it has worked. My plan is to make those habits rock solid, and then move on to other things once I am very confident I won't backslide from them. I might set a date of May 31st to re-evaluate how things are going and think about adding some more changes. Even if it doesn't work, I can always do what I did last yesterday: take a step back to what was working to that point.

EDIT: I should probably get into why I chose these specific changes to make. The long and short of it is that they offer the most compelling reasons for me to actually do them.

Spending habits: Should be obvious. Can't do anything if you're broke. I want to take it a step further (and am currently doing so) by tracking exactly how much I'm spending, so I know exactly how my money is flowing. I'm not real great with budgeting up front, so tracking my expenses will at least give me a way to get a great overview of what's going on with my finances. Becoming financially responsible is quite important to me so this was obvious.

Nutrition: Another no-brainer. I want to be like Christopher Lee - be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, even when I'm 90+ years old. That's not going to happen with the way things were going. In fact, with what I was doing before, I would probably end up in a wheelchair with who knows what kind of diseases by age 45.

Gym: You don't necessarily NEED to go to the gym on a consistent basis if your eating habits are rock solid, but I don't believe that eating right by itself is going to make you healthy long-term. Any part of your body that isn't used for a long period of time will eventually atrophy. Going to the gym not only helps to avoid that with certain muscles, but also helps to build up my strength and endurance so I can, again, be like Christopher Lee when I'm 90 years old.

Edited by seriousjay
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- I've come to learn that when it comes to major change, it can't be rushed. You still have to take the appropriate amount of time to make changes into habits. So I've decided I'm going to focus on 2-3 major changes at a time and shelve everything else.

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- Spending habits: Should be obvious. Can't do anything if you're broke. I want to take it a step further (and am currently doing so) by tracking exactly how much I'm spending, so I know exactly how my money is flowing. I'm not real great with budgeting up front, so tracking my expenses will at least give me a way to get a great overview of what's going on with my finances. Becoming financially responsible is quite important to me so this was obvious.

Good points. I have the same thoughts :)

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Always enjoy your updates. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Cam!

Even if I disappear for a while, I am *never* giving up on this journey. I may backslide at times, but I'm always thinking about a way to push forward.

The way I've been telling myself is that from age around 5 or 6 up until around 25 or so, I pretty much just coasted through life doing the minimum possible with no accountability from anyone whatsoever. Sure, my parents would yell at me from time to time, but they *never* followed that up by actually making sure I did whatever they wanted me to do. I can count on a single finger the amount of times I got punished for doing something they felt was wrong.

I'm not using any of that as an excuse for my situation, but it was always going to take a long, long time to unlearn those poor habits, and failure was inevitable at times. The way I saw it though, as long as I never gave up, eventually I would end up where I want to be. I think where I'm at right now is just a culmination of all the positive and negative things that have gone on my entire life, and for the last few years, there have been far more strides in the positive direction than the negative.. and thus, I'm in a good place.

I just have to keep reminding myself that this is a marathon, not a sprint. I am a little anxious due to my age, but I just have to keep reminding myself that just like training your body, there are no shortcuts with developing yourself. You have to take it one day, one step at a time and keep making all those small decisions in a positive direction. The important thing to remember is that it's not going to take as long as you think it will as long as you keep the momentum going!

Here's to keeping it going! :)

Edited by seriousjay
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OK another weekend update!

It's been a very much up-and-down week. On Monday morning I was very sick and didn't think I'd even make it to work but I did and despite being sick all week, I only took one day off. There were days though, particularly yesterday where I was just feeling really bad..

This morning though, when I got up I was feeling so bad and started wondering if all this really is worth it. I honestly haven't seen a great deal of improvement in any area of my life since I started this about a month ago, and it's a little deflating. I realize that what you get is proportional to what you put in, and I have started noticing very slight improvements in my body, I just wish there was more. I know what I'm doing will get me to where I want to be though so I suppose it's just about continuing to push through it.

On a positive note, I managed to stick to the things I wanted to do and (so far) haven't gotten any fast food (beyond what I've been allowing myself as part of my transition to making my own food), and I haven't skipped a gym session. I was planning on going to the gym today but I've decided to take the rest of the day to relax, so I'll go tomorrow.

I also finally bought a computer chair! It was a little pricey but I figure you only buy one of these every blue moon so I might as well get a good one. I do have 30 days to return it if I end up not liking it, and admittedly so far it's not perfect, so we'll see how it goes.

I also am observing that I either need to stop playing Hearthstone completely or find a way to tone down how much I play when I do. A few times already I've stayed up way longer than I would have liked playing that game. I don't know if it's because I enjoy it or it's that addicting or what.. but it is definitely interfering with real life beyond what I can tolerate so something definitely needs to be done about it. I don't really find this with any other game I play, just Hearthstone.

Anyways, not much else to say! Time to enjoy the rest of the weekend. :)

EDIT: As an added note, I've found that it was a very positive decision a couple of weeks ago to scale back what I've been trying to accomplish. At the time I really felt I was pushing beyond my limit, but since then I've largely been able to maintain my goals. I've set May 26th as the date that I will re-evaluate where I'm at and see about adding some extra tasks to accomplish throughout the week.

Ā 

Edited by seriousjay
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Another week, another round of decent progress I'd say.

It wasn't terribly eventful - I pretty much completely stuck to what I wanted to be doing - although I did find myself starting to lose my excitement for it a little bit. For example, a couple of times when I went to the gym, I didn't really feel much like being there. I still stuck with it and grinded out my sessions though, so that was good.

I also totally avoided all the fast food I've been trying to avoid, save for a carton of jelly beans. I justified buying it as a "reward" for the good progress I had made, and promptly went through the entire 550 gram carton in about 4 days. That equated to about 100 extra grams of sugar per day - insanity, honestly. More than that, one day I ate a particularly large amount and started to get those cravings for more food. I managed to stop myself from completely gorging out though, and have thus decided that I won't be rewarding myself with any type of junk food from now on. It doesn't seem like a very productive reward anyways.

Curiously, I have also started to bite and peel off my nails again, and have been doing so mostly without even thinking about it. What's interesting is that I had completely stopped doing this for at least a good year or so. I'm not really sure what triggered this, and I'm not even sure if it's really all that relevant. Just something to keep in mind and to try to stop myself from doing once I notice it.

Lastly, there were some moments when I was feeling really good about myself and started having thoughts of accelerating this process a little bit by adding more stuff to do, but a couple of events brought me back down to earth - namely, the jelly beans and the lack of motivation at the gym. I started thinking that waiting until May 26th to re-evaluate myself was too long, and now I'm thinking that maybe it isn't long enough. I think I'll just stick with the plan for now and keep doing what I've been trying to do - just repeat the things I'm doing enough times so they become instinctual habits that I never really have to think about doing, I just do them. I think I'm still on track for the major ones - going to the gym 4 times a week, staying away from fast food and keeping up with my financial habits.

On the gaming front, I've been playing about 2-3 hours a night and a lot more than that during the weekends. I'm not sure that noting this is terribly important at this time but I thought I'd put it here. I don't feel bad about it at all mainly because I've made the conscious decision that I will not be tackling the gaming thing until I've got those other good habits really rock solid. To be honest, I really don't know how long that's going to take, but I know now that I can't rush this process and it simply just has to run its course.

I guess that's all for now!

EDIT: On a very positive note, I'm starting to see some noticeable changes in my body since I started going to the gym! My belly has reduced in size a decent amount, and my pants are starting to be more loose as well. Looking forward to good times ahead when I don't have to feel so ashamed of how I look! I guess I don't really now - it is what it is and I just have to deal with it - but it'll be so much better when I LOOK GREAT! :)

Edited by seriousjay
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Hi Jay,

You're right about eating unhealthy food as a reward. Eating unhealthily as a reward for eating healthy defeats the purpose of eating healthy in the first place. I don't have any particular solution, but perhaps you could try having a relaxing afternoon walk on Fridays if you've done well that week, and otherwise write a letter to yourself or a reflection of some sort. If you have any better reward ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Good luck with getting your habits rock solid, I'm sure it'll come to you easily now that you've seen what you feel like after doing it wrong. Keep it up! :)

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Right, my post for this week, I almost forgot as I was so busy yesterday!

Hi Jay,

You're right about eating unhealthy food as a reward. Eating unhealthily as a reward for eating healthy defeats the purpose of eating healthy in the first place. I don't have any particular solution, but perhaps you could try having a relaxing afternoon walk on Fridays if you've done well that week, and otherwise write a letter to yourself or a reflection of some sort. If you have any better reward ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Good luck with getting your habits rock solid, I'm sure it'll come to you easily now that you've seen what you feel like after doing it wrong. Keep it up! :)

Yes you're absolutely right, as I learned on Wednesday I suppose. I went to a restaurant (not fast food technically) and justified it by telling myself it's a reward for the progress I had made thus far. To be honest, I didn't really even want to go to begin with so I made up my mind that I wanted to use this experience to see how I'd feel after once more eating how I used to eat. It wasn't a very pleasant experience. I didn't particularly enjoy the food, and I felt like crap immediately after and the day after as well. I don't know if going there added to this issue but yesterday nearing the end of my workout at the gym, I saw a commercial for some new items at another restaurant and immediately thought to myself that I wanted to try it, although I knew it would be a bad idea. I didn't end up getting that particular food, but I did eat my whole sandwich from Subway instead of half of it as I normally would when I got to my mom's house. Ultimately though I think the reason for that was more because I just tried to do way too much in one day yesterday (I was busy almost literally the whole day!).

Despite all that I still think it was a very successful week. For the most part I stuck to all the things I wanted to do and I still feel good about all of it. Next week is coming up the day that I wanted to see about making more changes so over the next week I'm going to be thinking about what to do for that. I have a few ideas already and I'm going to spend some time ironing it all out to see what makes sense.

I honestly don't have much of anything else to add so looking forward to another good week!

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Another week, another good step in the right direction!

For the most part, I pretty much stuck to everything that I wanted to accomplish. I've also been evaluating how I've done for the whole month and, barring a couple of spicy situations, I've done really, really good. Every week I fulfilled my commitment to the gym. and for the most part I've been eating very well. I'm actually quite excited to see what the results are next time we take some measurements! :)

For the last week specifically, I have officially discovered that I simply cannot reward myself with any candy or something similar. I simply lack the self control at this time to only consume it in moderation, so that is something to be avoided at all costs. To be honest, that's probably a really bad way to "reward" yourself anyways, as it has no nutritional benefit whatsoever while being very high in calories due to all the sugar. I also ended up buying this special kind of pizza when I went to the grocery store, and while in terms of value, it is excellent, I did end up devouring it in like 3 days when it probably could have lasted a week. For now, I'm going to need to rigorously stick to my eating plan and not deviate too far from it.

One way I've discovered that I probably can reward myself with food is buying these spicy pepperette things. They are very high in sodium, but I am able to only eat 2-3 at a time, and I really enjoy them, so that is definitely something that might work. Over time, I will need to remove such things from my diet, but for now at least, as long as I can control how much of it I can consume, I think I can allow myself that.

The other thing I was thinking about to reward myself with is going to this one restaurant called Gate of India. Indian cuisine is honestly one of my favourite and they have a few dishes there that I really like. It *should* be reasonably healthy to eat there, even if I eat too much, and it isn't too expensive. There's also enough of a barrier to actually get there that there is very little danger of me binging on something like that as well, so that is an option. The idea would be to allow myself to go there at the end of the month, provided I did really well in fulfilling my commitments. It won't be this month, but something to think about for June.

Now, as I mentioned previously, I did some thinking about stuff to add in terms of things I want to be doing and I've come up with the following:

Personal Hygiene

Unfortunately my personal hygiene in some respects isn't the greatest. I don't shave, trim my nails or brush my teeth consistently. My goal for every week going forward will be to shave and trim my nails at least once a week, and brush my teeth at least once a day for starters. The reason why I want to do this should be fairly obvious so I won't go too deeply into that. I think the reason these things aren't a habit for me at this time is simply because I didn't care enough about my appearance. I still kind of don't, but I think as my body begins to look better from the training, I will value my appearance a lot more. Afterall, there's little sense in having a great figure if you otherwise look like a medieval times thug!

Coffee

In short, I consume too much of this in my opinion. I drink 2 cups a day, which isn't really THAT much, but I want to cut back on it because the way I get it is rather unhealthy (280 cals per cup), and it would save me about $40/month if I went down to one a day. I don't really *need* it to function, and quite honestly I don't believe anyone really does (a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast should be enough honestly..), so that's something to do as well.

Sleep

I'm doing very well in getting to bed on time (about 10:00 PM) on weekdays, but I am horrible about it on weekends and days where I am not working the following day. I want to be in bed at the same time each and every day in order to make sure I don't have trouble falling asleep when I really need to go to bed, as well as to make sure that consistency in sleep is there so I don't have situations of varying amounts of energy each day. The time I want to be in bed by is no later than 10:30 PM, and I want to be waking up at 6:00 AM daily at the latest.

Success Triggers Course

Previously I had tried to incorporate the Earn1K course into my routine and I quickly realized it wasn't going to work. I think part of the reason for that is the Earn1K course requires a long term commitment to spending a substantial amount of time in the week to it, and I think I was just really uncomfortable and scared about that. The Success Triggers course doesn't have such a commitment, and it will still accomplish certain things in terms of personal development. It won't *directly* affect my career path, but it will certainly help with my mindset and hopefully also prepare me better for tackling other things like this that have a higher degree of commitment.

So, I want to be doing one module of the course 3 times a week. The reason I chose 3 times a week is because I pretty much have 3 days during the week with nothing going on, so I should be OK adding something to those days. I have learned from previous experience that trying to do too much in one day leads to burnout for me, so I'd like to avoid that.

In summary, my new commitments for June:

- on Sundays, trim nails and shave
- brush teeth before bed every day
- be in bed by 10:30 PM
- have only one coffee a day
- complete one module (and all follow up work) of Success Triggers 3 times a week

As before, if I start to feel like I'm burning out and heading back towards how things were before, I will attempt to figure out what's causing that and remove it from my routine. As I mentioned previously, this whole process is going to require a certain amount of time to get it done right and I don't want to compromise my progress. I just have to take the slow and steady approach and constantly push in the right direction, and I know that will take me to where I want to go.

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Time for an update!

Things went pretty well this week overall, and for the most part I was able to accomplish all my new goals. I did run into a situation last night where I didn't go to bed on time nor did I brush my teeth before I did. I don't know if it was as a result of that, but I also felt really hesitant about going to the gym as well, but I managed to push myself to do it. I wouldn't call this a point to re-evaluate what I'm doing to see if I'm taking on too much, but it is something to keep in mind. I largely did what I wanted to do and that's all that really matters.

Additionally, after going through one of the modules of Success Triggers, Ramit talked about the idea of creating a mindset of abundance instead of scarcity. The idea is that instead of completely cutting out something you want to get rid of that you actually like, just to accept that you really do like that one thing and allowing yourself one "cheat day" a week to indulge in whatever that thing is guilt free. I don't really want to completely adopt this idea, but I am allowing myself one day a week to have 2 coffees a day instead of just one - as long as it doesn't compromise what I'm trying to do otherwise. That day was yesterday.

Speaking of Success Triggers, I am skipping out on doing the 3rd module today, but I made a conscious decision to do that because I did start to feel a slight bit of burnout due to having already worked 4 days in a row with another 5 ahead of me, so I just want to pace myself and not end up taking on too much at once.

Aside from that, not much else to say!

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Yet another update!

So for the most part, the week was pretty good, albeit somewhat grueling. I'll start by saying that for the last two weeks, I did only 2 instead of 3 modules of Success Triggers. I don't see this as a failure however as previously I had been doing nothing at all. I see this as a building block towards getting more comfortable tackling these personal development exercises. The end goal I guess is that I want to figure out what to do with myself long term through the Earn1K course, so this is a good start. There are a few follow-ups from these modules that I haven't completely done yet, one of which I am not 100% comfortable in pursuing, but I will make it a goal to make sure I finish all of that by next week.

The last couple of days however have been a bit rough. Essentially I've just been hit by a number of unfortunate events basically all at once. I learned that the government didn't receive my income tax payment. Long story short, I ended up paying my taxes to my dad's government account instead of mine so I have to deal with that.

I also injured my hip or glute or something that has caused significant discomfort the last couple of days. Due to that, I didn't go to the gym today and I'm just going to take it a little slow for a bit and see how it progresses. If it gets any worse, I'm going to need to see the doctor about it.

Lastly, I broke one of my molars, so I'm going to the dentist tomorrow to see what can be done about it. My hope is that he can repair it and all will be good.

I also went to bed way too late the last 2 days.. nearly 2 AM. I "justified" it by saying I wanted to watch a couple of late baseball games but I ended up staying up nearly an hour after the games both days. So I will need to double down on my efforts to getting to bed on time this week.

All in all it was a good week with a couple of rough patches, but I am confident that it will not hinder my progress at all.

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You're posts are inspirational and so insightful my dear friend! You make me ponder over my experiences and how I shouldn't pile up so many tasks where I feel overwhelmed and give up. I love the fact that you reevalaute your goals instead of seeing them as complete failures and throwing in the towel! I find myself, the times I have attempted to quit, or on Flow, that I pile up tasks and then get overwhelmed and beat myself up for not accomplishing tasks. I will follow this approach and come back to accomplishing 2-3 tasks daily and work towards making this a habit! Then, I will build on one task per month. My goal too is lose weight by bicyling on my personal in door bike (everyday for 10 mins), engage yoga practice (10 minutes in the morning x3 times a week), and lastly, go to the park or gym and play basketball with others (maybe x3 times a week as well). I'm not so good at planning and creating goals. It gives me a great deal of anxiety because how many times I've failed. I guess, I like flexibility and am more in the moment type of person, but can find the benefit of setting goals!Ā Thank you for sharing with us! Sending you my prayers that you can easily resolve some of the unexpected issues.Ā 

Ā 

Ā 

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You're posts are inspirational and so insightful my dear friend! You make me ponder over my experiences and how I shouldn't pile up so many tasks where I feel overwhelmed and give up. I love the fact that you reevalaute your goals instead of seeing them as complete failures and throwing in the towel! I find myself, the times I have attempted to quit, or on Flow, that I pile up tasks and then get overwhelmed and beat myself up for not accomplishing tasks. I will follow this approach and come back to accomplishing 2-3 tasks daily and work towards making this a habit! Then, I will build on one task per month. My goal too is lose weight by bicyling on my personal in door bike (everyday for 10 mins), engage yoga practice (10 minutes in the morning x3 times a week), and lastly, go to the park or gym and play basketball with others (maybe x3 times a week as well). I'm not so good at planning and creating goals. It gives me a great deal of anxiety because how many times I've failed. I guess, I like flexibility and am more in the moment type of person, but can find the benefit of setting goals!Ā Thank you for sharing with us! Sending you my prayers that you can easily resolve some of the unexpected issues.Ā 

Ā 

Ā 

Hi ha535065, thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Yes, it is much better in my opinion to set smaller tasks, accomplish those and feel good about yourself for doing so than setting yourself up for failure by piling on a massive list and ending up not doing anything at all. As you've noted, you can easily build on your success to - one day - do more than you have been. For me, it's just a matter of the process that I have to go through because I haven't practiced these habits until recently. My entire life, I've been accustomed to doing things the easiest way possible, and now I am teaching myself how to do the things I need to do to get what I want out of life.

As far as goal setting, in my opinion it is extremely important simply because it gives you something to work towards. It's so easy to feel lost and directionless if you don't have something you're working towards, and that in and of itself can be very demoralizing. I would start small - in your case, you seem like you've already set a couple of goals there. Now just follow through on them! Once you get into the habit of setting smaller goals and making them happen, you can start tackling larger and more complicated tasks, and feel confident that they will get done instead of being left on the back burner and creating mental baggage that you have to carry around.

On that last note, it is very important to realize that tasks left undone are still creating a strain on you - a mental strain. It is so easy to always look back and think about the things you haven't done, and that can become an anchor when it comes to pushing yourself to do other things. If something feels like it's just too much to handle, there's a good chance that it is, and it would be best to make the conscious decision to leave it for later. Obviously this has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, but so far this has worked very well for me so hopefully it's something that can work for you!

Lastly, as far as goals that don't get accomplished, it is always best to look on it as simply an area that needs to be improved upon rather than treating it like a failure. There is always something you can learn from not getting something done, and there is always something you can hang your hat on.. you just need to find it. :)

Have a great day!

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OK then..

Last week was quite up and down. And things have started to quickly spiral out of control for me the last few days. I ordered chicken wings the last two days, and I've neglected my hygiene and haven't been to the gym since Friday. I think it's just been a combination of a bit of extra work at work and all those unfortunate things that happened to me recently. I'm removing doing the Success Triggers course for the immediate future, and just going to focus on getting back to my good habits that I've been working on the last couple of months.

Here's to a much better week this week!

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Yeah I tend to neglect my hygiene when things get tough. Sometimes a simple shower and shave can start the day off right. Stay strong you.can do it!

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. We startedĀ building ourselves and changing our minds. We must do everything that is good for us. We are good enough!

Thanks for the encouragement guys, I think I've got somewhat of a handle on it. Just scaling things back a bit until I get my shit together. :)

By the way, Onlysoul, I love your signature!

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Hi guys, just a quick update since I missed it during the weekend. In short, last week wasn't any better than the previous week, but I think I've got a good handle on it right now. Yesterday turned out quite well so just looking to build off of that.

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  • 1 year later...

Hey guys, so I'm giving the detox my First Serious Shot ā„¢ , but I don't think I'll be making long, detailed posts like I used to. I'd like to use this mostly to track my general progress and canvas for help if needed.

The reason I'm calling this the first serious shot, is because in my previous attempts I'm not totally sure that I was truly ready for it. I was still watching gaming videos and other such things. More importantly than that though, this is about much, much more than just a gaming detox. This is about evaluating who I am and what I want to be, and re-inventing myself as a human being, as almost the entirety of my existence has been, up to this point, intimately connected with video games.

I suppose the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, is an experience from yesterday. A girl had contacted me in January on Meetup because she was beginning to date again and remembered me from a previous experience. I didn't see this message until 2 days ago. I met with her, and due to various reasons that aren't terribly important, there is a chance that I may have missed a really great dating opportunity here. It wasn't gaming directly that caused this situation, it was because I gave up on Meetup.. because of gaming.

This isn't just about one specific girl or anything like that. This is about constantly missing excellent opportunities because things got too hard or I told myself I would rather just game, or whatever excuse I came up with.

I've had temporary success with this a few times in the past, so I know I can do it. I'm going to try putting a lot less pressure on myself to go and do things. I think I need to start allowing myself to spend time just doing nothing, otherwise I'm just going to burn out again. Speaking of which, I also need to make sure I have a plan in place to try to avoid burning out, or deal with burning out if I start to feel it coming on. Whatever I do, there is only one rule that I must strictly adhere to: no more gaming, or anything related to gaming in any way, no matter what. I won't say it hasn't helped me in any way in the past, but its usefulness has run its course, and it's time to let it ride off into the sunset.

I think one of the first things I need to do is find some close real life friends to do things with. I think that's going to go a long way to making this attempt successful, so that'll be a priority. And so, today marks day 1 of this journey.

Edited by seriousjay
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So I ended up going out to play volleyball tonight with some people (including the aforementioned girl) and while I found it exciting at first, it didn't take too long for it to feel mundane. I attribute this to video game addiction symptoms. I also tried my best to talk to other people in the group but I felt very awkward. If I asked them pointblank, they probably would say there wasn't anything out of place regarding how I behaved but I clearly have a lot of work to do socially. It's only going to get better if I continue to go out and do things with people I don't know.

I really regret one thing I didn't do tonight though. I was alone with Katrina (the girl I mentioned) and simply forgot to offer to walk her to her car. That really bothers me. I intend to apologize for that oversight when I see her tomorrow.

So far so good in any event.. nothing so far has surprised me at all. I feel a lot more empowered and informed this time around with respect to how this is going to go and I think it will enable me to be a lot more successful. I at least know a lot of what to expect and I have plans in place to deal with those situations.

One thing that I think should be EXTREMELY helpful this time around as opposed to last time is because even if Katrina and I don't start a relationship, she is very clearly interested in being my friend, and if all I get out of that situation is a really amazing friend, there's nothing wrong with that. This is basically the first time in my life a non family member has shown this much of an interest in me and it feels amazing.

All of this because I managed to convince myself to go out to Niagara Falls to meet her in that social gathering.

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10 hours ago, Cam Adair said:

No need to apologize bro, it's a small thing you're making a bigger thing in your mind.Ā 

Thanks.

I'm also starting to feel like I'm making too big of an effort to "make this work". I'm putting way too much focus on this situation. Need to look more at the big picture..

Just have to be myself, work hard at improving myself socially, and the right people will come my way. I just have to seize the opportunities as they arrive. Just have to do that and let the chips fall where they may.

Edited by seriousjay
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Hey guys, this is the third night in a row I haven't been able to fall asleep upon getting into bed because of anxiety. I just have so many thoughts racing through my head about.. well, everything. I realize this is probably withdrawal symptoms kicking in. Would appreciate any advice. Thanks.

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