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90 days


sirjk

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Hello guys, long time no see!

Oh man, how much has changed since I (nearly) completed 90 days about a year and a half ago. I attempted again about six months ago; I lasted about a week. I don't think I can ever have a healthy relationship with video games. This year, I have played no more than 80 hours, but it does not count the hours watching Youtube videos on improving gameplay, watching POVs of players. I'm trying to convince myself I don't have a problem anymore. But, deep down, I think I still do.

I am a highly competitive person but I cannot do several things at once. All in or nothing kinda person. This results in self-loathing and depression. What I understood was, I am not necessarily addicted to video games, but video games is the quickest way to make myself happy. But, when you put down your controller or close Stream, you're just instantly unhappy.

I'm am now doing an IT Networking diploma, two years late but I will NEVER repeat those two years again. Life goes on, all I can do is go forward. Literally locking yourself in a room hoping to disappear isn't the answer.

I'm excited to be back. I hope to see you around!

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Day one

Whoo! 24 hours. Am I regretting it? Yes, at least for now. The first week is the hardest part, but this IS for the best. Video games can't be in my life right now. Video games are like a cute girl that always gets you into trouble. I need to unfollow a lot of pages on Facebook, about 80% of pages I follow are gaming related. But, first I need to do a few simulations for homework. I'm kicking myself I didn't start these Cisco simulations earlier, but it could be worse. I told myself there was no gaming addiction because I had low hours on Steam. But, there you go, I'd rather play video games than do actural study that gets me a job.

 

 

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The first 20 days are the toughest for sure, because your brain just wants that dopamine hit. Once you hit the mid to high 20s, you're home and hosed. Your brain has mostly given up and started looking to other things for enjoyment, and depending what your intent was and what hobbies you have inserted into that time, it might be getting enjoyment out of studying and working or spending time with your family.

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Day two

Another day in the bag. I'm quite tired, a whopping six and a half hours of sleep didn't really help last night. It's taken me an hour to write this far, so I might just make today's post short.  I feel a little down so I watched a few computer repairs on Youtube (I'm trying to understand how connectors and such work on Motherboards on computers), and I stumbled on this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCcPA4HuRig

Louis Rossmann explains insecurity and lack of confidence quite well. He mentions that to be secured isn't about your ultimate goal, it's the confidence you get back from helping people. That is true happiness.

What I'm thankful for

  • My dad; without him, I would be lost
  • The future, at least the future can be changed
Edited by sirjk
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17 hours ago, Philipp said:

Hey,

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to improvement. Keep it up and if you regret quitting, write down all the advantages you get from quitting and I'd also advise you to at least spend some of the time you would have spent playing videogames  doing something you enjoy (not videogames obviously).

Hope you achieve your goals :)

Thanks, Philipp!

I don't have too many hobbies outside of gaming. But I will try and find something to replace this insidious addiction. Right now I watch an hour of a TV show, study and read before I sleep. I'm thinking to go to a store that sells and borrow boardgames on Thursday as it's my day off and invite a few friends. I seldom leave the house for pleasure

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15 hours ago, giblets said:

The first 20 days are the toughest for sure, because your brain just wants that dopamine hit. Once you hit the mid to high 20s, you're home and hosed. Your brain has mostly given up and started looking to other things for enjoyment, and depending what your intent was and what hobbies you have inserted into that time, it might be getting enjoyment out of studying and working or spending time with your family.

The first 20 days is definitely the hardest. I'm trying to deflect gaming with whatever else, but gaming has always "supported" me to shut myself off from the world. Finding something else to replace it will be a challenge for me I think because, when I failed the first time, even completing most of it, I had one bad week and I didn't know how to handle it. This time, I want to find it, or may find me. Who knows!!

Edited by sirjk
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That's what you need to challenge - your intent. The intent behind your gaming was to escape reality or escape life or escape your problems, so you're keeping that intent by trying to find something else to escape with. Instead, try to confront reality or life or problems head on. Using the example of my anxiety, I gamed to avoid the feelings of anxiety or the situations that made me feel anxious, rather than dealing with the anxiety itself. The end result was the problem never got better, at best it stayed the same but probably got worse. Years later I am looking more and more to try and escape those feelings, therefore playing more and more. The detox was great to use that time and "sit with it" to focus on personal development and combat those feelings. Like the detox, it will be uncomfortable at first but in the long run it will have a lot of benefit.

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(I'm writing this with a broken space bar and the letter "P", sorry ! I'm using On-screen keyboard}

day three

I spent most of the afternoon and night bringing life back to my old latop. A few weeks ago I did a clean up; threw half of my things out. I found my old i5 laptop I used back in mid highschool around 2013. I took out one of the SSDs out of my gaming comuter and placed it into the laptop. DuaI installed Linux Mint and Windows 7. was talking to my friend about I had a pet project and he said he has a spare RAM stick and said I can have it. Ill now have a total  8GB of RAM on Monday. All I need to do is buy a new keyboard. I saved $1000 AUD lol I wanted to buy a new laptop for collage. Now i just need to spend $20.

day four

Lazy day! Didn't help I went to bed at 2am again. I configured and installed files and the updates in the morning then watched about 5 hours of an anime series. I broke my toe a week ago (you guessed it! Furniture) only until today it hurts a lot less. I want to go for lunch tomorrow hopefully it feels okay to walk on.

 

What I'm thankful for

  • The human body. Thanks for the healing superpower
  • Music, I could not imagine it not existing

 

 

Edited by sirjk
i cant spell Furniture
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day seven

I decided to write this with my phone instead.I still haven't bought that new keyboard yet lol

Hang over after hang over. Enjoyable weekend overall. I went a little too hard on Friday but I'm alive! I believe I have a long week ahead, Ill try and write here when i can.

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day nine

Called it, I had a feeling that this week would be busy. I have a second and final attempt on a Privacy, Copyright and Ethics test tomorrow. I had three questions wrong two weeks ago, I believe I have the knowledge to pass it. I am quite nervous, the test has to be 100%, I am not sure if I have to sit the whole test again, (it is 20 questions) or just reanswer the three questions again. Who knows?

I want to look into Cyber-security. The future is Cloud, and I think investing my time into learning these two things may help me in the future. For a first time in maybe years, I see the light in the distance. There are a few things on my mind to help me achieve this; this includes changing a mindset of mine

 

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day eleven

My second last assessment is done today! I love to say I'm feeling happy about it, but it was due tomorrow. 12 hours of writing has given me a staunching headache, I should've honestly started this last night.

I believe I passed the test yesterday, our teacher was kind enough to allow the test semi-opened book. We were able to see our old answers so we didn't have to write the whole thing again.

After some thought, I'm not sure because it was caused by video games, but I have to keep my mind active most of the time.Watching a movie, doing assessments, talking to people. Anything that I can absorb knowledge from, I am happy. I'm upset that I didn't find this about myself in my first attempt of the 90 days. Back then, I just replaced gaming with Youtube. Anyways,I am scared of the school holidays coming up. I seriously can't believe this term is already nearly over. And just when I stop playing video games, I have friends I haven't talked to in months asking me to play with them. The timing is always off, every time I want to do something like this, old friends message me! Ahh whatever, I told them, I'm down to chat but video games is not an option right now.

Edited by sirjk
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day fourteen

I feel drained, and it's getting to me. Day after day, 12 hours of revising test one day, 9 hours of writing assessments the next.I left everything to the last minute AGAIN. I don't know what is wrong with me, WHAT IS IT!?!? I've stuffed half of the terms knowledge in my brain today, I had to use the Pomodoro technique to keep myself from 'crashing' and procrastinating. Why didn't I stop video games earlier? Hence, why I believe I'm completely going to fail tomorrow.  If I did this over a few days, my brain would've stored the information. I know all this information will just leak away, there is no point of trying to progress right now, I have an hour before bed, I might just watch an episode of a TV series before I have a panic attack.

Edited by sirjk
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day fifteen

Whoop, sorry about yesterday. It was just one of those days, the anxiety about the future got to me. I failed the test today! But, it's okay. Four questions wrong. Two of them were because I read half of the question (got it right but was the other way around) I need to study more about throughput/goodput and hubs. And the omen of networking students, Subnet Masking. The teacher said not to worry about anything below /24 subnet sizes. Of course, there's a question about /22 networks, so he lied. It's annoying because I found a way to calculate them past /24. I never considered anything below /24, so everything I did on Saturday was a waste of time.

Sorry if that made no sense, I'm just trying to let everything out, I know I could've done better. I try and be reserved, and most of the time I am, but what I did in the last three days, I don't want to do again. My goal next term is to study what I am learning, not study what I have learnt.

@Cam Adair Thank you for the video. I'll try and plan it tomorrow. I'm currently living on the Gold Coast in Australia, and the Commonwealth Games are coming up, so traffic is going to be horrendous. I'm not too sure what I will do, it's a three week holiday, but I guess I need to work it out. Leaving the street will be a task, not alone going out of my Suburb. 

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day sixteen

Aced my network simulation and subnet masking test today, I'm quite happy about it,

On 19/03/2018 at 6:31 PM, sirjk said:

so everything I did on Saturday was a waste of time.

No, Saturday was not a waste of time!!!! Without grinding for it I would've failed two test, not one.

I regret starting the 90 days later than I should've. It was on my mind for a while, "It will be okay" "You don't need to do it again" "There is always reseats in assessments and test"  that sort of thing. This downfall could've been so much worse, but I just need to handle this "Let's watch video game videos on Youtube" I've been catching myself doing it the last 2 days, mainly watching nostalgia videos. I'm doing this as I procrastinate and I don't want to lead this into a bad habit, again.

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On 21/03/2018 at 4:53 PM, Cam Adair said:

Speaking in Brisbane on March 28th and May 1st. Let me know if you want to come to either of those.

Otherwise can try and meetup for coffee when I'm in GC. Hanging out in Byron/GC/Brisbane/Sunshine Coast mostly.

@Cam Adair that sounds good! My friend and I will come to the next weeks one on the 28th of March

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2 hours ago, sirjk said:

that sounds good! My friend and I will come to the next weeks one on the 28th of March

Ok dope. Plan to come for my talk from 6-7pm (Brisbane time). Send me a text so I have your number and can send you any other details: +61 420 279 271

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day(s) seventeen-eighteen

Currently waiting for my friend to finish work so we can go to the movies. I'll make this quick as he may be here at any time haha.

I passed the presentation on Wednesday, that means I have only one more assessment to do before Friday afternoon. It is another group assessment, so after the movies, I'll just smash it out before bed, I'm watching a new TV series (A German series called Dark), I wanna watch a few episodes of it tomorrow, if I finish everything before midday tomorrow, I'll me happy. Now just for the reseat of the test next week, I should be fine. This weekend I will really study Subnet Masking the way he showed us.

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day nineteen

I feel complete anguish. I thought everything was going well at TAFE, I got my final mark today on one of my assessments and it was a fail on the last attempt. All because I misread a question.

I'm going back on Monday and explain why and how I messed up. I understood the question and got it correct but I only quoted two sources, not three. It hurts because I didn't get anything wrong, it's just because I'm an idiot and didn't read it properly,

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day twenty-four

Drove to Brisbane with my friend to watch and meet @Cam Adair who did a talk about how addictive video games can be. I'm glad, so many concerned parents showed up. I think Cam mentioned there were maybe 500ish parents who showed up. What Cam was saying in the talk, it sounds like an outbreak has occurred; way beyond what I thought. Non-gamer kids are playing video games because they didn't want to be an outcast, stealing their parent's credit cards/unauthorised use and payments for skins, gambling, micro-transactions. It's almost mirrored with drug addiction. What I briefly mentioned to Cam, I WISH my parents gave me more rules. Be allowed to play for an hour a day, if you have no assessments or homework, 2 or 3 hours. But, instead, I used their system against them, I protested stubbornly and acted like a headless chicken, my mother used to say. In the end, now I'm paying for it.

I'm glad we went today, Cams talk was very informative, and my friend gathered some information about his gaming addiction. Thanks, Cam for coming to Australia and talking to students and parents.

Edited by sirjk
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