It's never over. Another afterparty journal

[info-gatherer]

Thanks @Lea ?

Today I had two invitations to go out so I forced myself to accept one of them and I had dinner with people I don’t know. They’re much older than me but I really liked them, they impressed me so much. I wasn’t very talkative so I hope there will be another occasion to have them know me a little bit better.

Tomorrow I have another invitation by other people and right now I feel like I’m going to accept

[info-gatherer]

For the first time in a long while I’m considering going back to gaming. I love gaming and I miss it, I manage to waste my time anyways. I’d like to game in moderation, for example in the evening, since, again, I waste my evenings anyway.

I’m probably too scared to leap back in. I remember too well the self-loathing, the brain fog, the loss of control, the judgemental looks in the eyes of my loved ones, the missed opportunities, in a word: the effects of addiction.

There’s one million reasons why I shouldn’t go back, but at the same time I feel like I’d like to try moderation. But I really don’t want to face the consequences of it in the case I fail.

[BooksandTrees]

On 2/6/2019 at 12:45 PM, info-gatherer said:

For the first time in a long while I’m considering going back to gaming. I love gaming and I miss it, I manage to waste my time anyways. I’d like to game in moderation, for example in the evening, since, again, I waste my evenings anyway.

I’m probably too scared to leap back in. I remember too well the self-loathing, the brain fog, the loss of control, the judgemental looks in the eyes of my loved ones, the missed opportunities, in a word: the effects of addiction.

There’s one million reasons why I shouldn’t go back, but at the same time I feel like I’d like to try moderation. But I really don’t want to face the consequences of it in the case I fail.

Hey, 

Don't fucking give up.  I'm telling you right now you're here for a fucking reason.  It's ok to waste your nights sometimes.  As game quitters, we feel the pressure to succeed and make progress in things at all hours of the day.  We need to do well at work, come home, eat as fast as possible, and play games to progress our characters, story lines, and exp rates.  We need to win and feel progress.  This isn't real.

We're not going to make progress each and every night.  That's why gaming made us sick.  We exhausted ourselves and didn't heal over time.  We kept trying to progress and it took a toll on our body and mind.  Quitting games is knowing that some nights are meant to relax.  Some nights you are allowed to do nothing.  If we want to do something, it's hard to start new things.  I really think you should take the time to find a large picture hobby and a few small picture ones.  I'm producing a full length cartoon from scratch as my main project.  I tried podcasting and didn't like it after a while.  I like to read sometimes, but not all the time, I like to cook, I like watching hockey all of the time, I watch a few cartoons, I write a lot, and I try to see friends.

This isn't the thing I'll be doing forever, but I'm trying to keep doing new things until I do find those things I love.  I still love the gym and yoga, but I haven't had time.  I'm determined to stay the course because I know gaming broke my heart and I know it broke yours too.

Remember the reasons you came here.  Write them down, print them out, and tape it to your wall. Treat yourself like a loved one.  If you saw your brother crying alone in his room and you asked why he was sad, and he says "I regret all of these things in my life because I gamed instead of lived.  I never gave myself the chance to do these things and I am suffering for x amount of reasons..."  What would you say?

I know you're hurting right now, but take 30 minutes to relax, go to bed and start again tomorrow.  Make a commitment to yourself this weekend to come up with a few long term and short term activities to try and jump into them.  Journal about them.

Don't go back.  Do not go back.  Do not give up on that spark inside of you.  We are game quitters, not life quitters.  Moderation does not work.  It will work temporarily and then you'll start to get happier the more you game and you're going to relapse back to where you were and potentially worse.  Don't you dare quit.  Don't fucking do it.

[info-gatherer]

Hey @BooksandTrees thanks, I appreciate it. I don’t lack things to do. I have plenty of work, I exercise, I read and watch movies, and I have this great hobby/obsession with electronic cigarettes. In general, in the last weeks/months, I also got back some of my lost confidence in my skills and professional future, so I started to see progress in my life... It’s just that, as you said, you cannot always be productive. There is downtimes, and I’d rather spend them playing videogames than surfing the net in my bed... That said, if I ever go back it has to be a rational decision. I don’t know, I’m just saying I’m considering it, weighing the pros and cons.

That said, I guess that normal people like to go out in the evening. In this period of my life I even have many invitations (well... many means 1 a week or so, which is a lot to me) but... sometimes it’s social anxiety, sometimes I’m just lazy, sometimes I’m busy, sometimes I don’t feel like spending the money and I don’t go... some other times I accept and I go... and I have a good time... but, and this is my main problem... I am really not able to feel a connection... I am glad for the nice conversation and everything but I feel alone all the time, even when I’m with people... even with nice, caring and intelligent people...  and when I’m back home I’m incredibly tired... As I said to silverlining a month ago, I think that my problem is the fact that I’m emotionally tired... whatever that means...

[BooksandTrees]

I'm emotionally tired as well and it's just reinforced by failures and people exhausting me.  I am struggling to find out how to not be that way.  Like finding a natural way to be happy.

I know if I play video games again I'm going to give up on life and just be one of those people who plays 20 hours a day and hates everyone.  I can't do it.  I want to play so badly, but it's not for a quick fix.  I just miss those long, 4-16 hour binge sessions of feeling good.  Nothing in life is remotely close to that feeling.  Nothing legal anyways.  That's why I never want to try a drug.  I know I'd be hooked.

[Cam Adair]

Check out the book Mindset. One of the concepts in there is about the idea of a growth vs. fixed mindset. Right now you can see that you're focused on "well I am the way I am so I might as well go back to gaming" instead of "this is where I am and this is where I want to be, so I will do XYZ to change and adapt."

Gaming isn't going to fix anything. Nor is simply quitting. It's what you do instead that matters.

[info-gatherer]

Hey just dropping by to say that I’m going to a videogame-based event with a friend of mine. I don’t think that playing is involved, I think it’s more like retro vg music and gameboy related stuff. Will answer comments and give an update about my position in life in the future.

[Hmmge]

On 2/8/2019 at 4:55 AM, BooksandTrees said:

Hey, 

Don't fucking give up.  I'm telling you right now you're here for a fucking reason.  It's ok to waste your nights sometimes.  As game quitters, we feel the pressure to succeed and make progress in things at all hours of the day.  We need to do well at work, come home, eat as fast as possible, and play games to progress our characters, story lines, and exp rates.  We need to win and feel progress.  This isn't real.

We're not going to make progress each and every night.  That's why gaming made us sick.  We exhausted ourselves and didn't heal over time.  We kept trying to progress and it took a toll on our body and mind.  Quitting games is knowing that some nights are meant to relax.  Some nights you are allowed to do nothing.  If we want to do something, it's hard to start new things.  I really think you should take the time to find a large picture hobby and a few small picture ones.  I'm producing a full length cartoon from scratch as my main project.  I tried podcasting and didn't like it after a while.  I like to read sometimes, but not all the time, I like to cook, I like watching hockey all of the time, I watch a few cartoons, I write a lot, and I try to see friends.

This isn't the thing I'll be doing forever, but I'm trying to keep doing new things until I do find those things I love.  I still love the gym and yoga, but I haven't had time.  I'm determined to stay the course because I know gaming broke my heart and I know it broke yours too.

Remember the reasons you came here.  Write them down, print them out, and tape it to your wall. Treat yourself like a loved one.  If you saw your brother crying alone in his room and you asked why he was sad, and he says "I regret all of these things in my life because I gamed instead of lived.  I never gave myself the chance to do these things and I am suffering for x amount of reasons..."  What would you say?

I know you're hurting right now, but take 30 minutes to relax, go to bed and start again tomorrow.  Make a commitment to yourself this weekend to come up with a few long term and short term activities to try and jump into them.  Journal about them.

Don't go back.  Do not go back.  Do not give up on that spark inside of you.  We are game quitters, not life quitters.  Moderation does not work.  It will work temporarily and then you'll start to get happier the more you game and you're going to relapse back to where you were and potentially worse.  Don't you dare quit.  Don't fucking do it.

Damn I should put THIS on my wall lol. I felt every word of it, very true. 

[BooksandTrees]

1 hour ago, JustTom said:

Damn I should put THIS on my wall lol. I felt every word of it, very true. 

Lol was a dire moment! Welcome back by the way. 

[Guest]

 

[info-gatherer]

I’m going out for drinks with people I don’t know, just posting here to give me courage

[info-gatherer]

Shittiest day in a while. Tomorrow is another day though.

[info-gatherer]

So, tonight I tried playing some videogames. Last time was in July, I think, when I played some hours of Yu-Gi-Oh online. This time I played 2-3 hours on a mobile game called Mobile Legends. Honestly, I quite enjoyed the experience. Being a game without a chat, I was “safe” from the social part of it. I played two normal games, then I kept playing ranked games until I lost one.

While I was playing, two friends wrote to me on Whatsapp and I didn’t answer. I made sure to reply after I finished gaming. Now I feel quite tired but emotionally better than before (I said it was a bad day for me). I don’t feel guilty and I don’t think I’ll have any cravings or play again in the next days. Overall I’m happy about it. Being an addict, I’ll however be careful about my thoughts in the coming days, because I know that this kind of behavior can be potentially dangerous (it proved to be so in the past). I’ll keep accountable here as usual.

Edited February 26, 2019 by info-gatherer

[info-gatherer]

What a nice weather today! ^^

[info-gatherer]

I am STUCK in a situation I’d gladly avoid for the next four days. Since two hours ago I was very negative about it, also due to sleep deprivation. But then I managed to rest my head for 30 minutes and what I see clearly now is that my only chance of damage reduction is keeping a POSITIVE MINDSET. So, what happens is that a friend of mine and my sister are visiting me, and they expect me to spend one full week together, morning afternoon and evening. They arrived yesterday. I don’t know why I accepted in the first place. They’re obviously out of place here, they don’t belong here, I feel like they’re interfering with my life and feelings. Also, even if I liked the idea of them being here, I need my time alone nonetheless. So, the plan tonight is having dinner at home and then going out for drinks. I am worried, again, they’ll be out of place and they’ll make me feel out of place too. But if I keep worrying I’ll just have a terrible night. So, what I’ll do instead is trying to have a nice time and (a thing I learned lately) “let other people do the job”. I’m not responsible for them, I shouldn’t feel as an entertainer. I’ll introduce them to people, we’ll get drunk and at the end of the night I’ll go to sleep to my girlfriend’s because I’m not having another 3-people-in-a-bed night(mare) like the one we had yesterday.

Thanks for reading, I really needed to type those words out. Now I feel better after venting. Checking out, i-g

[Hmmge]

I know what you mean. I have friends that would like to come over, but the idea of it actually happening is scaring me a bit. How did it go?

[info-gatherer]

4 hours ago, JustTom said:

I know what you mean. I have friends that would like to come over, but the idea of it actually happening is scaring me a bit. How did it go?

Hey. It went very good. I’ve been introducing them to the few people I know and so far we all had a good time. I just had to stop worrying. You see, the problem is that I felt like I didn’t like the contact of “two worlds that are very distant from one another”, but after allowing it to happen I feel... wholer? Anyway, we had a nice time.

trigger alert

On a side note, my main champion on LoL got reworked

? I’m sad both because the old one doesn’t exist anymore, and because I’d like to try the new one... but I’ve been out of the game for so long that going back would mean to invest too much, too much time in it 

[Hobedaga]

I'm sorry, I'll be blunt. I don't mean to judge or anything like that, I'd just like to know what stops you from quitting video games?

[Hobedaga]

From what I understand you are in an extremely dire situation and it helps you deal with the stress coming from it? If that's the case I suggest maybe changing your environment or somehow dealing with the stressful things in your life

 

[info-gatherer]

7 hours ago, Hobedaga said:

I'm sorry, I'll be blunt. I don't mean to judge or anything like that, I'd just like to know what stops you from quitting video games?

Hey. In the last year I played less than 15 hours total of video games. But I’m starting to consider going back, because I miss them. I’m trying to concile my passion for videogames with what I learned during this abstention journey. As of now, the experience is mostly theoric.

7 hours ago, Hobedaga said:

From what I understand you are in an extremely dire situation and it helps you deal with the stress coming from it? If that's the case I suggest maybe changing your environment or somehow dealing with the stressful things in your life

The dire thing here is my mind, although she’s in a much better shape than, say, two-four years ago. In particular I have/had obsessive-compulsive traits, paranoia, social phobia, depression, anxiety, not to mention gaming and smoking addiction, which all took a toll on me. I have been working on fixing my life and I’m happy about where I am today, with the important exception of the social life I still am not able to develop, even if I know it would help me be happier. As of now, in the last year I never used videogames to cope.

[Hobedaga]

You are an incredibly strong person if you've lived through all of that. I've also had issues on the social part of life but after talking to a psychologist recently I realized that it's probably a lot better for me to cultivate a couple of deeper and more intimate relationships instead of going out and talking to a lot of people since that really proved to be a way to do things that brought about a lot of unnessecary struggle. I've come to accept that a lot of people are going to have a negative opinion about me or not really know me and have ideas of what I'm all about... while not even knowing me ?

[Hobedaga]

if there's any way I can help tell me man. I know how absurdly difficult it can be to deal with so many psychological and emotional issues especially if you feel alone and misunderstood ? it's actually incredibly nice to read that there are other people who have lived through a whole lot of difficulties and struggle and haven't given up despite all of that ? it's incredibly inspiring and personally atleast I don't feel so alone when I hear about that

[info-gatherer]

Tonight I played again. This time I didn’t like it. It wasn’t just for the pleasure or the amusement, I had this sentiment of “I want to climb the ladder” that was seeping in. Also, wifi connection problems made me get anxious. I hate to admit it but I’m not ready for moderation. I’m cutting on videogames again. Maybe one day.

[info-gatherer]

I went out with new people and I just had fun, without back-thoughts or being uncomfortable. I talked too much and was quite selfcentric but I think everyone had a good time. I feel like I’m slowly getting out of my shell, the shell I built myself. Confidence is rising, thankfully, finally...

Also the confidence of doing things that I know are wrong, the confidence of non giving a damn, as it used to be...

Edited March 9, 2019 by info-gatherer