90 Day Journal Feb 6 - May 7th

[Malone]

Day 1

Uninstalled Skyrim.  And 10 GB of Skyrim mods.

Spent all night loading mods and their dependencies into mod manager, launching Skyrim Script Extender, and fixing bugs.

Had two appointments with my personal trainer, but cancelled both.  Body aches from sitting all night.

I'm unemployed.  This is unhealthy.  This is why I need to quit gaming.

Got Up: 11:30am

Challenge Faced: Committing to deleting all instances of Skyrim

Learned: Some things that feel good (gaming) are not worthwhile.

[thehondasc00py]

I was this close to posting an ultra lame skyrim joke with "adventurer" and "arrow" swapped out with "gamer" and "gaming detox" or something.

For the benefit of us all I decided against it and just want to wish you all the best on the detox!  

[Malone]

Hahaha thanks thehondasc00py!  An arrow to the knee might stop adventuring in Skyrim, but won't stop gamers from playing Skyrim!

Actual Day 1

I played games yesterday, so that was Day 0.  This is Day 1.

Somewhat productive day.  Became slightly overwhelmed preparing for a job interview, so watched some 1.5 hours of Quill18 playing an early release of Civilization 6 Rise and Fall. 

Would like to find healthier outlets for stress than watching Youtube gaming videos. 

[Malone]

Day 2

Experienced a bizarre job interview.  The interviewers and I had fundamental differences on what was needed.

Resisting the persistent urge to play Rise and Fall, which was released yesterday.  Again seeking better diversions when stressed.  Thinking about goals seems to work.

Minor accomplishment: saw my personal trainer yesterday and today.  Grateful for her.

[Hitaru]

Welcome to the forum @Malone! Got any ideas on new things you'd like to do?

[Cam Adair]

This video can help you:

 

[Malone]

Another Day 1

Thank you Cam and Hitaru for your time posting and support!

Night of Sunday, Feb. 11, I felt extremely unsettled, like I had to take some kind of action, but didn't know why.  My response was to download Civ IV: Rise and Fall overnight.  And play it to the exclusion of everything else Monday and Tuesday.  I binge like this perhaps twice a year, and on weekends when I'm employed.

As I finally started to lose interest in Civ IV, another great game was released, Kingdom Come: Deliverance.  And again I followed that game for much of Wednesday and Thursday.

I think I'm finally back to normal.  Trying to quit gaming is perhaps the most frightening thing I've done, because I'm not fully in control of myself.  Thank you for your support. 

[Cam Adair]

Can you describe more about feeling unsettled? What was going on?