Dear Diary...

[BooksandTrees]

I feel a little better. I watched a feel good movie and am relaxing. It is ok. 

[DaBest]

Congrats, you met a weird chick. You never know what's going on the other side. Assume its for the better.

I identify with a lot of your post, except maybe the anger. You survived on anger, I survived on numbness and believing that the world was out to hate me for no good reason. We survived.

Did you think everything was going to be perfect in 2 years? Nope. Not happening. Is it ever going to be perfect? Also nope. Is it going to at least get better by fantasizing? You get the idea.

Is it going to get better by pushing forward, fixing yourself, getting better social skills, and building a life you want through hard work and effort? Yep.

I don't live in your head, so I can't say if this is true or not, but I'll hazard a guess and say the kid version of you that's still there doesn't believe that things can get better. We put up rules that "the world sucks," "people suck," etc., to excuse ourselves. 

The interesting part of this though is that you are proof that this is untrue. You can get better, and by all standards have. You quit gaming after playing at a really high level. You're one of a select few that had enough sense to give up porn and masturbation. You can connect with people, and don't fucking underestimate us here even if it's just online--we are part of the everyone in "everyone sucks" and I take a little umbrage with that. You were way more active before this Covid shit took hold. You got a place of your own. You took a really fucking hard engineering exam that most engineers bitch out on. And most importantly, you go well out of your own way to help out other people here. Wake up! You're fucking proving all that bullshit wrong. YOU don't suck, so your rule is already wrong. 

Break out of the fantasy. Look at where you were and look at where you are now. Yeah, the lack of connection sucks. But by purposefully engaging in wild fantasy, you just hurt yourself in the long run since it's just drugs and doesn't solve anything. You moved from video games to fantasy. Move back to the present, it's the only place to live where you can fix things. You are much more than a powerless, tortured child. 

You know what you have to do, but if there's anything that might help you, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (link here), and just start meditating yourself. You're halfway there with the journal. If you can catch yourself before you go down these negative thought spirals, it will make it harder for your depression to latch on. When we let our brain focus on the wrong stuff, we feel like crap. 

Matt, I have faith in you, dude. And it hurts me to see you going through this as I write this, knowing what I've been going through and that I'm still struggling with a lot of this too.  Seriously, as with 95% of the stuff I write on these forums is stuff I can be doing better at too. I just know it works since I've caught glimpses of it, and every once in a while everything aligns and it's like a different world. I don't know if you see that yet, but I hope you do eventually. 

[Amphibian220]

I’ll give credit to @DaBest , “break out of the fantasy” is an excellent statement that describes the solution.

I’ll only add to this that music and particular films lead to emotional volatility. One of my great decisions was never to listen to music or watch films for entertainment. This can appear hard, but it makes sense for somebody who is on the road to conquering his weaknesses. 

I found that I had to invest more time in the things that I did. I think @BooksandTrees was reflecting on the same thing when he had said he started taking care of his needs more . After a while I realized that there is way more room for improvement than I initially thought. The less you fantasize the more invested you become in your daily plans, until people start noticing your greater than usual strength, interest and activity.

Edited December 29, 2020 by Amphibian220

[BryanJaz]

On 12/28/2020 at 6:55 AM, BooksandTrees said:

 

I hate that I only rely on anger and hate to push me forward. I have not been happy in years. I remember sometimes as a child I'd wake up with pure happiness. Like I looked forward to the day because I could play with my toys, or maybe see my only friend. 

My rage has only ever brought me more pain. I hurt the ones I love and when I calm down I don't even know what just happened, all I know is that I feel terrible and sick to my stomach. I haven't gotten truly angry like I used to in years and even now I beat myself up for how I acted. My dad made me an extremely angry person, he acted on his anger every day and directed it at my brother, sister, mom, and myself. My brother and I had it the worst but all of my siblings and mom's issues today stem from his abuse. I don't know what you went through nor do you know what I have endured but that pit is something to climb out of not to brood in. I know you can overcome these tough times, you deserve to keep giving yourself more chances to be a better you. Your shadow stays with you but it doesn't have to be who you are. Wishing you well man, keep your head up and if you need to hit something, get a punching bag. It's saved me from spackling any more walls...

[BooksandTrees]

I had a really good therapy session yesterday and realized two things:

1. I'm setting myself up for failure with my decisions.

2. I'm correlating pain with pain from the past.

Discussing Number 1:

I do things that will most likely lead to poor decisions over smart ones. I think there are times where I feel lonely and sit on a dating app vs just reaching out to a friend or family member and calling. The United States is just not safe to date right now. Too many idiots are out there spreading the virus. I also think most women on the dating sites are just lonely and bored and want someone to talk to with no intention of meeting a man in person. I'm sorry if this statement offends you, but it seems to be something I've noticed and I'm not wasting my time on it anymore.

I'm staying up too late at night doing stimulating activities that are deterring my sleep schedule. The poor sleep is making me lethargic most of the next day. Then I want to do easy things, such as mindless, stimulating activities until late at night and repeating the cycle.

I deleted my discord account and traded in my old video games. I was tempted to relapse recently and had to hold back. Most of my old friends were still talking to me on discord. I couldn't handle it anymore. I made a new account to talk to one friend from this website who doesn't use this website anymore and that is it. 

I sold my old consoles and bought a dvd/bluray player so I can watch my dvds without the temptation to game again.

I would rather watch porn for 10-20 minutes per week than have these long sessions of meditative masturbation that take up hours. The time-sync is killing my spirit and I'm not happy with the results. That is also leading to an addiction of its own and it's not a healthy one.

I have not been meal prepping and it has lead me to ordering food again and I have gained weight because it's unhealthy.

I have been reaching out to people who I know can't help me solve my problems and getting frustrated that they never say the right things. I need to be the engineer I am and just talk to people who specifically know what to help me with.

I have chosen to finally abandon all people from my video gaming past. I was holding on to about 20 people from the past 2 decades but felt like they weren't serving me any positives in my life. 

I made these decisions to let go of issues bothering me because I think I'm tearing myself two ways here. I want to recover and lead a new life, but I still hold onto the past. I think I've recovered from video game addiction obviously, but I haven't made a leap towards a new life. I may have started with rock climbing and stuff before the virus, but I've been struggling with the virus to be honest. Most of us have. Isolation is crushing me. It has made me lonely and want to game again. I need to be creative and find other ways to socialize. I want to let go of these anchors. I want to be patient.

Discussing Number 2:

Just because I face rejection or pain in my current life doesn't mean I need to directly relate it to my childhood and associate my current misery with past misery. People have been good and bad since the start of mankind. This is nothing new. I can't have tons of great experiences with coworkers and stuff and have a bad day and just start revisiting my childhood and confirming life is terrible and that nothing has changed. 

As @DaBest stated earlier, I have changed a tremendous amount and accomplished more in the past 30 years than most people have in their lives. It is time to make that an affirmation instead of constantly trying to affirm life's negatives. 

Closure:

I want to take my time and get back to where I was a few months ago. I basically want to have a stable work-life balance again, do a few hobbies a few hours per week, socialize with friends and family safely, meal prep again, and exercise. I find that I'm not balanced at all. It's impacting my work and mental health in a bad way. 

I'm overthinking the steps of life and where they're taking me. In a nutshell, I would like to just slowly study for this exam in April, do my work when I am supposed to work, exercise a bit, do hobbies that I feel like doing, find a competitive hobby to get that craving dealt with (maybe fantasy hockey again), and outdoor sports once the weather is better. 

I've really been suffering the past few months and it finally came out this vacation. I need to be better to myself because I want to be better to myself.

[DaBest]

Good man! A lot of good things in that post. 

Just keep fighting and let the past be the past. Progress forward every day and enjoy it!

[BooksandTrees]

Today is the first day in 3 weeks I'll go to bed before midnight. I feel a tremendous weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. 

 

[BooksandTrees]

I jinxed myself on sleep

[Amphibian220]

@BooksandTrees Don’t believe that stuff man. Your sleep will get better over time, you need time to adapt to  your new sleeping hours. Great to see that you are aiming for a breakthrough.

I can concur on having experienced the cycle of taking good decisions, improving discipline but then slipping back into complacency.

It would be good to study why people want to slow the tempo and give themselves some slack the moment they experience success. Ever thought about raising the tempo and the stakes the moment it appears like you have done enough? I will call this the breakout from the cycle. This new kind of experience is supposed to teach you to keep the tempo up. I would want you to write on this in the coming weeks as you start building a new discipline. 

[BooksandTrees]

20 minutes ago, Amphibian220 said:

@BooksandTrees Don’t believe that stuff man. Your sleep will get better over time, you need time to adapt to  your new sleeping hours. Great to see that you are aiming for a breakthrough.

I can concur on having experienced the cycle of taking good decisions, improving discipline but then slipping back into complacency.

It would be good to study why people want to slow the tempo and give themselves some slack the moment they experience success. Ever thought about raising the tempo and the stakes the moment it appears like you have done enough? I will call this the breakout from the cycle. This new kind of experience is supposed to teach you to keep the tempo up. I would want you to write on this in the coming weeks as you start building a new discipline. 

I wonder about that and think I want to let off the gas because I worked so hard to reach a goal. But maybe I exhausted my fuel to reach a goal instead of refueling along the way. 

 

I went to bed at 9 am today so realistically I'll sleep around 4 or 5 today. It will take time to fix. I'm committed though. 

[BooksandTrees]

I went to bed before new year's and got about 3 hours of sleep before waking up. I had a full dream and everything. I was very thirsty and remembered I ate a lot of pancakes before bed. 

This made me start recording my diet again and I'm noticing I'm eating lots of simple carbs, sugars, sodium, and not much protein and complex carbs and healthy fats. I have those in my house but I'm avoiding them out of laziness.

I think the plan tomorrow will be to cook more balanced meals again like I did before October. I'm also going to limit the sodium and drink more water. 

The diet retooling will provide me with more energy and more food variety. 

I'm hoping this positively impacts my sleep and daily wellbeing. 

The rest of my goals this weekend will consist of shopping, going to the bank, doing 1 drum lesson, and spending 1 hour on animation. 

The remainder will be for rest. 

Happy new year everyone. 

[BooksandTrees]

I couldn't fall back to sleep so I decided to wake up at 6 AM and just start my day and see what happens. I tried to sleep til 9 but kept waking up.

I made a nice breakfast, cleaned my kitchen, did the dishes, and registered for that exam again. I also ordered my correct drum pedals because Amazon never sent me the ones I ordered and I haven't really been able to practice because of it. 

It turns out that most of the stores I wanted to visit aren't open until tomorrow so I will do my shopping on Saturday instead of today.

I fell asleep for hours today. I was so tired. I think the stimulating activities I had been doing were exhausting me. I'm still very tired. Either that or I have narcolepsy or something stupid. I doubt that though. 

I woke up and watched a very good documentary and ate 2 meals before and after so I've eaten properly.

I guess we will see what tomorrow brings. I feel kind of anxious without being able to do stimulating activities before bed, but this is showing that my mind is craving stimulation when it should be craving sleep and rest.

Edited January 2, 2021 by BooksandTrees

[BooksandTrees]

I woke up very early again but I got more sleep than yesterday so I'm making progress. Once again I am meal prepping and made 4 meals of food. I now have 2 or 3 days of prepared food so I don't resort to ordering out. 

I also took some time to stretch this morning. I think this might lead to me doing yoga in the mornings. We'll see. 

I'm going to drum this morning and do a lesson. I also either plan on doing art or writing. I am going to shop today as well once the stores open. 

It's a challenge for me to be this awake so early. I don't like waking up sometimes because I'm not excited to do anything. Maybe this will get me to wake up with intention in the future. 

Edit 1: I actually did yoga and meditated this morning for about an hour. I feel really happy for once. It's strange and I appreciate it.

Edit 2: I also did my first drum lesson for over an hour. It was a lot of fun but now my forearms are sore. It feels strange being this productive in the morning. I'm now going to relax before going out to the stores.

Edit 3: I went to the stores and bank and got every one of my chores done. I got my DVD player and some DVDs that I enjoy. I traded in all my former games and consoles that I used as DVD players. I was getting some cravings because of holding the controllers. Now I don't have that issue. I'm pretty tired now.

I still wonder if I should continue to try dating online or wait til the virus is over. I'm not super comfortable being around others yet. I think I'm just lonely. I don't know. I'd like to have some intimacy with a woman though. 

Edited January 2, 2021 by BooksandTrees

[BooksandTrees]

I woke up at 3... again. I thought I could go back to sleep but nothing so I went to get breakfast at 530 and am relaxing now. 

I think today I'm going to do a 1 hour drum lesson and then either doing art or writing. I might watch a movie too. 

[Mohammad]

On 1/1/2021 at 1:54 AM, BooksandTrees said:

I went to bed before new year's and got about 3 hours of sleep before waking up. I had a full dream and everything. I was very thirsty and remembered I ate a lot of pancakes before bed. 

This made me start recording my diet again and I'm noticing I'm eating lots of simple carbs, sugars, sodium, and not much protein and complex carbs and healthy fats. I have those in my house but I'm avoiding them out of laziness.

I think the plan tomorrow will be to cook more balanced meals again like I did before October. I'm also going to limit the sodium and drink more water. 

The diet retooling will provide me with more energy and more food variety. 

I'm hoping this positively impacts my sleep and daily wellbeing. 

The rest of my goals this weekend will consist of shopping, going to the bank, doing 1 drum lesson, and spending 1 hour on animation. 

The remainder will be for rest. 

Happy new year everyone. 

Wish you a happy 2021, @BooksandTrees

 

[BooksandTrees]

2 hours ago, Mohammad said:

Wish you a happy 2021, @BooksandTrees

 

Thank you and you as well. 

[BooksandTrees]

This sleep issue is really eating at me but I'm thinking it's caused by napping during the day. 

Edited January 4, 2021 by BooksandTrees

[BooksandTrees]

I could have sworn I woke up at 7 but it's 5. I actually got 6 straight hours though which hasn't happened. Usually I sleep from 11 to 2 and try to sleep but can't. 

[BooksandTrees]

I actually enjoy waking up this early. Half my work day is over, I do yoga in the mornings, less tired at lunch, and I'm getting more energy after work. 

[BooksandTrees]

I went to bed at 930 being naturally tired and woke up at 4 without an alarm clock. It's the most sleep I've gotten in one sitting in weeks I feel. I relaxed til 5 and got my day started again. I'm feeling better overall about being an early bird out of nowhere. 

I also resolved a major family issue that was causing me a great deal of stress. I confronted both parents and defended myself and resolved the issue. I think it's important to always defend yourself and understand the situation from both sides of the spectrum. 

[BooksandTrees]

Today I'm 115 weeks free from gaming and 117 weeks free from social media. I've been waking up early every day this week and feel so much better. I'm finally getting 6-7 hours of consecutive sleep each night. I'm dominating at work and I'm doing my hobbies etc. I feel a lot better.

I finished a difficult project this week at work and I took some time to just randomly play the drums because I like the noise. I wasn't trying to play a certain song or anything. It was fun. I've also been doing some yoga in the mornings and watching my tv shows at night. I've simplified life a bit and feel better. Also did some virtual chats with friends.

I wanted to talk about what happened in Washington this week, but I want to uphold the rules Cam set forth on this website and not discuss politics. I just hope everyone is safe and doing what they can to maintain mental sanity during this time. Having that drama on top of the coronavirus stress is not very good for our health. Hopefully positivity will come soon. 

I have strong opinions about it, but once again will not discuss as per Cam. I also don't want anyone talking about it on my forum. Thank you.

[Mohammad]

1 hour ago, BooksandTrees said:

Today I'm 115 weeks free from gaming and 117 weeks free from social media. I've been waking up early every day this week and feel so much better. I'm finally getting 6-7 hours of consecutive sleep each night. I'm dominating at work and I'm doing my hobbies etc. I feel a lot better.

I finished a difficult project this week at work and I took some time to just randomly play the drums because I like the noise. I wasn't trying to play a certain song or anything. It was fun. I've also been doing some yoga in the mornings and watching my tv shows at night. I've simplified life a bit and feel better. Also did some virtual chats with friends.

I wanted to talk about what happened in Washington this week, but I want to uphold the rules Cam set forth on this website and not discuss politics. I just hope everyone is safe and doing what they can to maintain mental sanity during this time. Having that drama on top of the coronavirus stress is not very good for our health. Hopefully positivity will come soon. 

I have strong opinions about it, but once again will not discuss as per Cam. I also don't want anyone talking about it on my forum. Thank you.

Congratulation on 115 weeks! That is so amazing. how does it feel to be free of gaming for this long? I mean, isn't there any temptation? Is relapsing something of the past for you? I am not sure how many times you have relapse coming this far! I am asking this question because, as you know, I am having difficulty sticking to my detox for too long. After a few months, I feel good enough to get back to gaming and that's when the dissatisfaction starts to kick in and I start a new detox.

[BooksandTrees]

27 minutes ago, Mohammad said:

Congratulation on 115 weeks! That is so amazing. how does it feel to be free of gaming for this long? I mean, isn't there any temptation? Is relapsing something of the past for you? I am not sure how many times you have relapse coming this far! I am asking this question because, as you know, I am having difficulty sticking to my detox for too long. After a few months, I feel good enough to get back to gaming and that's when the dissatisfaction starts to kick in and I start a new detox.

I tried quitting ever since 2008 and couldn't do it. It took until 2018.

That's a long time. 

I get urges sometimes but I just change the conversation, calm down and realize the day will end and tomorrow is a new day, and try to force myself into a different mindset. Enough pain is enough. 

[Mohammad]

2 hours ago, BooksandTrees said:

I tried quitting ever since 2008 and couldn't do it. It took until 2018.

That's a long time. 

I get urges sometimes but I just change the conversation, calm down and realize the day will end and tomorrow is a new day, and try to force myself into a different mindset. Enough pain is enough. 

Wow! it took 10 years for you to get here. That's right. I have been trying only for two years. I've got to try again.

[BooksandTrees]

3 minutes ago, Mohammad said:

Wow! it took 10 years for you to get here. That's right. I have been trying only for two years. I've got to try again.

Take your time and have some compassion for yourself. It takes everyone a different amount of time.