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90 Days of Journal


info-gatherer

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Day 46

I didn’t wake up when the alarm rang. It’s the 2nd time this week and it’s not ok. Now it’s 10:45 AM: I wasted all my morning. No wonder this problem comes along with increasing anxiety. Yesterday was a hell of a day and I didn’t feel much motivated, now I MUST do better.

Goals for today: study hard and go to tennis, focus on what matters most, rhe present, without being caught by anxiety

update: nice day, worth living. Mandatory to wake up at alarm time tomorrow, ill put the alarm far from my bed just to be sure.

Edited by info-gatherer
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Awesome you're halfway there!! :D

I think you should take some time to reward yourself however that may be :) not gaming of course. but something to reward yourself for getting this far.

Something to make you forget about your anxieties for a moment so you can come back in, full throttle and ready to go.

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Thanks Bear :) Fluffy as usual. Really, I don’t know how to celebrate. Always hated my birthday parties. Right now I’m very focused on university bc I still need to catch up with the time I lost gaming, and I know that every single day is precious. A good result at my next exam would be the best possible way to reward myself. Apart from that, I’d like to go skiing again, but nobody wants to come with me and I wouldn’t enjoy it fully if I went alone. Also, I used to travel a lot in the past, but I stopped when my grades started to drop. Maybe I’ll plan a trip as a reward for the 90 days mark. I’m not sure if I want to go to a european capital and just be a tourist & meet people&get drunk, or instead to volunteer in a war zone like Palestine. For the 2nd option I’d need some courage, I guess. Anyway

Day 47

Woke up when the alarm rang, studied all day except a couple hours that I used to partecipate to a debate about the political situation in Palestine (hence the inspiration). I did not talk, but it was very interesting. Now I understand that situation a lot better.

After dinner I had a long conversation with my gf about our future as students, the job market, italian school system and my mental health.

Also, I don’t know if I want to go to parents’ home tomorrow. I have to decide. Maybe I can do an experiment, or a challenge: go and try to study there (I usually don’t even open a book when I’m there).

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21 hours ago, BigOlBeartic said:

Aw do you not get spring break? D:

You should do something with your gf! I'm planning to go paddling on a nice quiet lake :^)

We usually get a week of spring break, for some weird reason this year it’s a whopping 3 days & the problem with my gf is always the same money money money oh dear I don’t have money for a coffee money money how silly of you to think we could go skiing money money NOT EVERYONE HERE IS RICH ENOUGH TO GO PADDLING ON THE LAKE, UNDERSTAND, YOU PRIVILEGED F....

Jk, that’s what she usually tells me when I come up with an idea

 

edit:

Day 48

I just had a very interesting and pleasant conversation about politics. The rest of the day went quite well, I didn’t study but I did some cleaning of the house.

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Day 49

Everything going smoothly enough. Absolutely uneventful day but still I had 0 cravings. I played the guitar, watched a movie, slept a bit, talked with my gf.

Tomorrow is Monday and I have 4 hours of lessons, including 2 hours of that very difficult course I mentioned some days ago. I didn’t write an email even if I had to, but apart from that everything is fine. Relaxing day.

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Day 50

I like the courses of this term. I like my life, what I do and how I do it. It won’t be easy but I am putting the right amount of effort into it. I just need to keep doing what I do, slow and steady.

I completely forgot about those yoga lessons I mentioned a couple weeks ago. I will check tomorrow if they still accept applications.

My weekends are too boring. I need to think about it and make a plan. There’s much room for improvement.

I still didn’t write that email and tomorrow my professor will probably publicly make fun of me or get angry at me. I didn’t write it because I don’t know what to write. It’s about choosing a topic for a lesson I must “teach” to the class. Every student must choose a topic, and I’m one of the few that didn’t. That’s because I’m very ignorant about the history of the world after 1945, and the course is about italian politics between 1989 and present day. I think that every thing I choose will be a failure. What I had to do: learn more about the available topics and choose one. What I did: ignore the problem. Fuck me.

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Day 51

The professor didn’t get mad at me. Instead, I sadly made the poor choice of making fun of HIM (I swear, just the most innocent of the jokes) and he heard me. Gotta have a hard time at his course from now on if I don’t prove him that I’m a good student & a chill person. This is why I already thought about a question that I’ll ask him as soon as he walks the door of the classroom next monday. Hopefully, an intelligent one, but he’s to judge.

Everything else is fine. I didn’t have the time to call the yoga gym, I just studied all day long. I can see a progress in my social skills. I’m a bit less anxious and slightly more willing to talk to strangers without making a fool of myself. I’m also slightly less in a hurry in everything I do. I usually do things fast, I’m efficient, I don’t waste time, but I’m starting to relax a little bit more.

Also, I don’t know why I’m mentioning it now, after 50 days: I never told anybody that I was a gamer. I was deeply ashamed of it. Now that I closed this chapter of my life, I think that one day, when I’ll be 100% clean, I won’t be ashamed anymore and finally tell my friends or anybody: “you know, I was a hardcore gamer, I spent 12+ hours a day playing online. But now I’m fine, I don’t do that anymore.”

Concluding, I want to thank you @BigOlBeartic for supporting me and reading my poorly-written uninteresting shit every single time, it’s very kind of you

 

edit: I’m spending the evening answering journals and chainsmoking on the armchair. Guess it’s not too late to do something more healthy. I finish this cigarette and clean the mess of my room, it’ll take 1 hour at least. Then I’ll watch a movie and go to bed.

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Day 52

A collegue asked me to answer some questions for a scientific research project about “your ideal psychologist” or something like that. I was very surprised to admit to myself that I was answering very positively to questions about my happiness and personal satisfaction.

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It's really good to hear that you're doing better with your studying and social skills. And props to you about the yoga gym. Yoga is difficult, but I've felt better every time I've tried it.

It'd be cool to hear more about your goals for this 90 day detox. What else would you like to see happen in your life besides more studying and smoother social interactions?

Also, the modern Italian politics project sounds interesting. If there's a political topic that interests you, anywhere from healthcare to the military, I bet there are a ton of examples to choose from in the last 30 years. I know that the refugee crisis is a big political issue in Italy right now.

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20 hours ago, Pierce said:

It'd be cool to hear more about your goals for this 90 day detox. What else would you like to see happen in your life besides more studying and smoother social interactions?

Well I didn’t think about this. More studying and ever-improving social interactions is all I need to be honest. Then I have other goals in my life, but they are more like dreams... I’d like to get a PhD after my post-graduate course and become one day a teacher in university (how curious, that’s my mothers job and I NEVER thought I would want to become like her in any way).

Another goal/dream is writing and directing a film. I’m very into art house movies and I want to make one.

And another dream, the oldest and most important. It shaped my life. When I was 4 I really wanted to become a writer, and that’s been my ultimate goal ever since. But now I don’t see it like that anymore. I don’t want to “become a writer”, writing as a profession, trying to sell my book(s) to publishers, be famous etc. I “just” want to write a great book, sooner or later. In my free time, without a contract, not as a job and not as a slave of the market. And I don’t care if it will get published or not. If not, I will publish it online and free of charge.

Concluding, a real goal I actually have now is to stop smoking. I will do it after my gaming detox, as I decided when I started this journey.

———

Thanks for the tips about my course, but in the end I sent the mail. I choose 3 subject, and specified the order of preference. I’ll get what’s still available. Updates about this will come soon.

———

Day 53

At the tennis lesson the other 2 guys made fun of me, again. The whole time. I don’t get whether they don’t like me/my attitude or they’re just taking advantage of my remissive personality. I’m very sorry about this because I thought that I was being quite a decent human being with them, acting properly, being sociable, and so on. Today I realized at least a part of the truth. It was so obvious, all their jokes were about it! How could I miss that??? They think that I am gay! Joking about gay people is so out of my sphere of consciousness that I didn’t realize it!!! Lol I have this quite high voice, and it gets very high expecially when I laugh. I have some feminine traits and gestures. And!!! they talk about pussy the whole time and I never joined in the conversation because I’m not 12 year old. Well I guess I’ll explain myself next time, maybe they don’t like me just bc of this :)

I now go watching the movie that I didn’t have time to watch in the previous 2 days, good night everyone!

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Those are some excellent goals. Enough to last you a long time, and I think it's wise that you're working on one detox goal at a time.

Too bad about the immature guys. I got bullied for having a high pitched voice when I was younger. Looking back, I pity those people. It may sound arrogant, but I see them as lower consciousness beings for caring about such things. Like part of them is still asleep, and they haven't woken up to the more beautiful and interesting aspects of life.

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Day 54

Today I had a... major... minor...? everything is relative, I guess I’ll just say that I had a *edit* breakdown. It was as if my depression and anxiety were trying to come back to the surface, emerging from the unconscious. I thought my hearth would explode, I was scared of anything, suspicious of people, disgusted of everything except my girlfriend. I had this strong headache and nausea. Cigarettes made it worse. I can’t wait to finish this detox and try to quit smoking forever. Your guys’ posts helped me though a little bit. I thank you.

I decided to come back to my parents’ home for the weekend, chilling a bit, trying to heal. Now it’s 10 PM and it already got somehow better.

Everytime I take the bus on my way home (1 and a half hour) at some point I see this yellow square house. Every time I see it, I imagine Lee Sin, a character from League of Legends. Next to the little yellow one there’s another house. I imagine Swain, another LoL character, looming over it, menacious. That’s every time I take that bus. It started as a mental game, because I couldn’t wait to be home and plug in my pc and play some lol. Now it’s just surviving images, printed in my mind, without any link to reality. It’s strange, and beautiful. I see them and I realize that I’ll never be free, I’ll never be completely free, because they’re watching me, judging me, and finding me guilty of bringing them alive, once again.

During that hour I also listened to Cam’s TEDx talk, podcast episode 7, and found it refreshing and brilliant. It had a clear political stance, it could change something in the way things work in our world.

Edited by info-gatherer
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Day 55

I won’t lie, I spent the morning on the movies tracker. Even if the tracker I use is explicitly against every kind of gamification, (no bonus points system, no ratio, broad rank-up criteria and so on), I’m very hooked by it. I check it continuously, even if I don’t need to. I can feel it’s an issue and I should take it easier. The “quests” there are not daily, but monthly. I am just required to login every now and then, leave the pc open and seed my files, respect the rules, upload something if I really want to. BUT I am so scared to get banned that I stare at the screen for hours, watching the download/upload bars going up and down. I know that the more I am active, the less are the chances that my account gets disabled for inactivity/low contribution. I could just turn on the pc and walk away, it would be the same, but I don’t.

I set this goal: tomorrow I’ll check the tracker ONCE in the morning, and ONCE before going to bed. Tomorrow will be a different day.

In the afternoon I made a checklist, so I was sure to stay away from the pc. I got a haircut, went to my grandma’s, tried some vapes at the vape shop, bought a new pair of shoes (so strange, I went to but them with my father and we had a good time togther, like a real father and son relationship. We singed and talked). Checklist completed, I came back home and watched a movie. I say it again, tomorrow I won’t waste my day in front of a screen.

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Going out to socialize and taking care of other positive to-do's like getting a haircut and browsing vapes are a great way to recover from a breakdown. You're doing it right man. Also, glad to hear that you had fun hanging out with your dad.

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Day 56

Goal more or less accomplished. I read a 170ish pages novel, so I didn’t have much time to browse the tracker. I logged in once in the morning, once after lunch and once in the evening. By the way, the book was Il Giocatore, an italian translation of Dostoevskij. “Giocatore” translates in english as 1 player 2 gambler 3 gamer. It’s a story of compulsive gambling (I’m making it short and simple) and had many points in common with compulsive gaming. I underlined a couple sentences that I’ll post here as soon as I have some time.

Tomorrow I must wake up a couple hours earlier than usual, so I’ll go to bed right away. I don’t want to miss the morning course. In the afternoon I must go to the other course with the scary professor, wish me good luck

@Pierce Don’t worry about my “breakdown”, it happens to me quite often, destroys me for a day or two and then I’m brand-new

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Day 57

Today I did the usual routine, went to the courses and studied in my free time, had a dinner with friends in the evening, had a good bit of discussion about italian history and then about berlin’s clubbing culture. I realized once again how far I got since I quit gaming. My life and my motivation have improved, and I feel validated from other people. Oh, I almost forgot. Today I approached this girl and we had lunch together, I found her not so interesting in the end but I’m honing my social skills anyway, so it’s definitely worth it.

Pierce, do you know what’s the matter with Dostoevskij? Incoherence. His characters have the right to be morally and psychologically incoherent for the first time in the history of literature. I read this in a book and I found it to be true. He’s so modern in this regard. Not one of my favourite writers but nonetheless a very good one.

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Day 58

2 things happened:

- I learned how to make sushi (and spent 20€)

- A group of friends that I don’t hang out with anymore had a dinner together and nobody told me anything, I wasn’t invited. Now, I’m happy to be finally apart from them because that’s what I tried to do for a long time (there’s a couple very toxic individuals among them), but 1 or 2 of them are still friends of mine and I feel betrayed. I mean, I’m happy about the missing invite, but I’m definitely not ok with the silence & secrecy.

Another thing that bothers (haunts) me is that one of the toxic individuals mentioned above knows my secret life (gaming 12+ hours a day) because I was so stupid to tell him while drunk, and now there is a high probability that everyone knows it. Even if I don’t game anymore. Is this fair? I guess I just need to accept it and deal with it. Accept myself and forgive my past self and care less about other people’s opinions. But I’m not ready to do that. It’s been only 50 days... Forgiveness and acceptance can wait...

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6 hours ago, info-gatherer said:

 A group of friends that I don’t hang out with anymore had a dinner together and nobody told me anything, I wasn’t invited. Now, I’m happy to be finally apart from them because that’s what I tried to do for a long time (there’s a couple very toxic individuals among them), but 1 or 2 of them are still friends of mine and I feel betrayed. I mean, I’m happy about the missing invite, but I’m definitely not ok with the silence & secrecy.

Consider that maybe your actual friends had nothing to do with the invites. For them its just as awkward. They for sure knew you weren't invited, and for them it's not nice trying to force the rest of the group to invite you just so they dont have to carry the guilt of you not being invited. It's an awkward place for multiple people here, and i suggest you dont put too much thought on it. There's also the chance that they know you well enough, that you wouldn't be interested. All in all dont blame them too much.

 

6 hours ago, info-gatherer said:

Another thing that bothers (haunts) me is that one of the toxic individuals mentioned above knows my secret life (gaming 12+ hours a day) because I was so stupid to tell him while drunk, and now there is a high probability that everyone knows it. Even if I don’t game anymore. Is this fair? I guess I just need to accept it and deal with it. Accept myself and forgive my past self and care less about other people’s opinions. But I’m not ready to do that. It’s been only 50 days... Forgiveness and acceptance can wait...

I think you should own up to it, you don't have to forgive yourself of it, but atleast recognize this is something that you have done, and you aren't proud of it. Maybe you still feel a lot of regret, but don't try and supress your past and imagine it never happened. Fact is that you gamed way too much for way too long, and thats just how it is. Whats wrong with people knowing that about you? There's multiple flaws that pains people's past, some are gambling, some are addicts of different kinds and probably many more things. That doesnt mean i judge them, if they actively know it was bad for them and have quit.

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