sinirad Posted July 20, 2018 Share Posted July 20, 2018 Day 1 Here I am. My first day. I had actually stopped playing games a few days before but I didn't feel like it would really become real until I admitted to my friends and family that I had to stop gaming. Naturally, everyone was confused, it seemed like I had been able to manage a normal life and play games without a problem. But the problem was that I couldn't look in the mirror without feeling a tinge of disappointment. There are so many things I want to do with my life, but day in and day out I would get by going to work and doing my job, only to spend all my free time gaming. For a long time, I had been trying convince myself that I'd be able to play moderately, but its the games themselves that are the problem. I'm now realizing it actually doesn't matter what that magic number is of what is considered an appropriate amount of time to play games. All that time playing, is time that I could be doing something else. I really can't thank Cam enough for starting this community. I had struggled with trying to quit before and had always made a mental note that today would be the day! All my hopes and aspirations of breaking free were kept to myself and deep down inside at that time, I told myself I just needed to get it together in that moment, and then I could game again in moderation. For the first time ever I really feel empowered in my conviction to quit because it's something that I've put out there on this forum and in this universe. And it's nice to know that in this battle against our temptations, we're not alone! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cam Adair Posted July 21, 2018 Share Posted July 21, 2018 Great job starting your journal. Keep up the habit each day and you'll find a lot of progress will happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinirad Posted July 22, 2018 Author Share Posted July 22, 2018 @Cam Adair Thanks for the motivation Cam! I'm definitely going to make an effort to post every day even if it's just a little Day 2 Leading up to introducing myself on this site, I was already feeling the empowerment of admitting I had an addiction and making the commitment to quitting video games. Day 1 came and went and I was on top of the world, reflecting, seeing clearly, on my way to detoxification! Here we are at day 2, and I've noticed how hard it is to sit with myself in silence. When I wasn't gaming, I was interacting with people at work, talking to students, spending time with my wife, exercising (while listening to video game music), and then when I had any sort of free time, my go-to activity was video games. Today I thought I would try some meditation and it was not at all easy. In the silence, I would close my eyes and get flashes of the video game which had prompted me to quit. I know this is all part of the process, and why I will need the 90 day detox to rewire my brain, but it's interesting to reflect on the fact of how uncomfortable I am with complete silence. As a teacher, I spend a lot of time grading things, correcting, and sometimes writing material. Even in those moments I would play some instrumental music, sometimes melodic rock, chillwave, or classical, but I never really do anything in silence. It's funny because sometimes a track with lyrics would come on and I would find that too distracting, but I was unable to eliminate the noise altogether and so I would play instrumental music instead, you'd think I would have stopped the music altogether! Even as I write this, I'm trying to do it without anything playing in the background and the experience is ... jarring. One of the things I'm also going to try to do going forward is continue to try to spend more time with myself in silence and let this stimulation withdrawal take its course. Now if only I could fall asleep... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BooksandTrees Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 How's the journey going? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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