John Keel's Journal

[JohnKeel]

Hi,

my real name is David and I'm a 44 years old, long time Gamer....more on my background in my introduction post.

This is my journey letting go of my passion of (excessive) gaming...

I started three days ago making my decision to quit gaming after stumbling over the stopgaming subreddit. Right before quitting I still played Stardew Valley until midnight...

In the last years I almost never played for extreme lengths like some of you did. So I always told myself that it wasn't really a big problem... But then I decided to be honest with myself and realized, that the only reason that I didn't play for 10 hours a day, was that I simply didn't have the time between a job and caring for two little kids. But most hours that I had alone for myself I played.

So on monday morning I deinstalled Steam and all others games, blocked my most viewed gaming sites and decided to detox. Since I already did some short detox breaks of 30 - 60 days over the last years the first days were not that hard. Also the last two days were really packed with work, so that helped too.

But even if I had no problem with not gaming these last days, my mind always came back to question my decision to stop gaming forever...It's just that being a gamer became such an integral part of my self image that makes it hard of letting it go. It feels kind of weird, but not bad.

As I mentioned in my introduction, the only exception I will probably make in the future, is that I will play some video games together with my kids. Of course I will keep an eye on them to not let them make the same mistakes as me, but I also don't want to demonize games for them. As my extensive gaming was almost only on PC and never on console, I'm positive that I will be able to handle this. But I will never play games alone anymore...Only together with my kids and in moderation. And if I realize that it has a negative impact on me, I will find another way...

So what will I do with the free time i gained? Well, at first, I will take better care of my work and our household. But I realized from Cam's Posts and Talks, that I can't just replace gaming with work without setting myself on the quick path to relapse...

Therefore I need another passion. I always wanted to learn to code but only ever dablled a bit here and there and quit after a few weeks or even days. I always loathed myself for spending so much time on computers (more than 30 years) without learning any real skills.

That's why two hours ago I enrolled on the Harvard CS50 Online Course (Intro to computer science) and I am determined to finish it. About a year ago I already started a similar online course from MIT and really enjoyed it. But I missed the last few weeks of the course because of holidays and never picked it up again...But this time it will be different, because I won't fall back to gaming to keep me occupied...

I guess thats enough for today. I will try to post regularly, but perhaps not daily...I will appreciate any feedback and will gladly try to answer any questions....

See you soon!

[Cam Adair]

Good job starting your journal!