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mattso's late journal


mattso

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Day 34

I started off with being full of scorn towards my life, bored with gaming, and saw a damn clear path forward. That's why so far I haven't had the need to block gaming-related YT channels or websites. Sometimes, in my browser I type "pathofe", look what results come up, laugh at them and come back to what I was doing.

I haven't read anything valuable in over a week. I'm going to start reading "The Slight Edge" again, but this time differently- one chapter every day. And every day I'll have one major thought to take from. What's the point of finishing an entire book in 3 days if I won't remember 2/3 of it?

I need to apply this sort of consistency in more and more areas of my life. I'm used to living in a spiky, inconsistent way, while that's not what it takes to really improve. Now that I can't really say "I can't exercise, I'm still recovering" I'm going to do pushups daily. That's my new discipline. And then when they're not enough, I'll add more things to my exercise list. And also my new daily discipline will be to listen to something valuable while commuting. I can turn my downtime into uptime, so why would I miss an opportunity to do that?

If I didn't start a new life, right now I'd  be refreshing my phone like a maniac and happily preparing to once again beat the same story, go through the same map system, kill the same old bosses, do a few insanely boring grinds only to get another meaningless golden trophy to showcase in my hideout, all of that over a course of two months, while still struggling with loneliness, no perspectives for my future, and no interest in anything in life. I only regret that I hadn't started my journey earlier.

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Day 35

Today it's been 5 weeks. To me that sounds more impressive than the same number in days. How did 5 weeks already fly by? Just a really solid day that I'm happy with. All my disciplines fulfilled, I wasn't grumpy. Found Cam's video on how to make friends- solid stuff, I didn't even realise how simple daily steps compound to reforged social skills. From tomorrow I'll do my gratitude list in the morning, not evening- start strong, finish strong. Or even look at it, should be the same. And then I have an entire weekend to find out how to continue learning to play a guitar. Awesome.

Happy with:

- A nice place to sleep.

- Not feeling like shit because of playing.

- Enjoying social contacts rather than seeing them as an annoyance.

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Day 37

In the evening I went on the internet to read some about exercising, as that's the next thing I'll pick on, and stumbled upon this intriguing video:

This man is basically an extreme version of me a year ago (not that everything matches, obviously), but it seems that he entered a new path, just like all of us did. If anything this makes me grateful that I didn't go deeper into a path of loneliness. And that he stopped too. I'll most likely never meet him and why do I even care, but it's relieving that people around the world decide to put their lives together at any point.

Lately I haven't been writing much about how my day goes, because I feel like I am just doing the right stuff daily. I should still work on being more purposeful with my time, perhaps an agenda, because I still find myself not knowing what to do next from time to time.

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Day 38

Try to find a moment every day to think about what or who you appreciate. Don't try to force this feeling, but rather remind yourself of it. Your mind doesn't have to go very busy, just drop the question into the mind and see what comes up naturally.

I still need to figure out my exercise plan, because otherwise there is nothing I can really work towards. Same with a couple different things. But I think it's okay to have some stuff pending, since introducing everything rapidly would overwhelm me most likely. So as long as I catch up on one thing every few days, I feel okay with it. Better start low and go slow than overdo it in first few days and get put off because I don't succeed in everything at once.

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Day 39

Hm. For the first time in a bit I got tired in the middle of the day, but still did what I was supposed to do. Nice. I should be sleeping rn. My evenings are weird. Tomorrow I'll take my first steps towards a new morning routine, that is having my phone alarm on my other desk so that I have to walk to turn it off, drink a glass of water, splash some cold water over my face, exercise for 5 minutes, eat, meditate, appreciate, brush my teeth, go. I probably won't manage to do everything in my first attempt, but I have to start somewhere. Thankful for:

Putting the effort into having valuable conversations today.

How my friend gave me the impulse to start my journey.

Spending very little time on browsing irrelevant things on YT.

Building a better version of myself every day.

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Day 40

Morning tourned out to be a lot better than I anticipated. The only thing that was missing was additional five minutes for meditation, because I had to kinda meditate in a hurry, which is never a good thing. When I was bringing up things that I was thankful for, I couldn't summon up anything that seemed worth... appreciating... but that's the wrong way to think about it. As I noted on day 38, it's not about forcing the feeling, just remembering. If nothing particularly obvious comes up, no matter. I should just be at ease with my mind.

Our school organises open days in a week. I was thinking of being one to show new guys around the school. But I doubted if I wanted to do it. As soon as that doubt came, I also thought "It's not the first time doubt hinders me. And I'm 99% sure I'm going to regret it if I let it stop me this time." I talked to a friend, who was also considering it, and we both signed up. It doesn't sound like much, but holy crap am I happy about overcoming fear for the unknown. That's bound to be an awesome experience, because I'll see sooo many new people on those two days. So much social skill practice! Even if I stumble here and there, I'll still improve by a bit.

Big goals are what I need. Right now I only have one that is vivid, has a timeline, and I know what steps to take that might bring me there. Something that I can look at every day and think "Today I did this and that, which brought me closer to that big goal! Awesome!"

Things that went well:

- It was a really good day of programming. I didn't improve much knowledge-wise, but solved a couple practical problems. Such a refreshing feeling.

- Plenty of energy to do everything.

- Morning was a blast, sleepiness didn't exist.

- Overcoming fear of social interactions. I told myself some time ago that I'll need to take the opportunities to meet people. I finally made a step towards this goal of becoming more social.

- 40 days of no gaming. 40 is a nice number.

Day 41

Morning was even better. I woke up an hour before my alarm went off, tried to sleep but it didn't come. And in that way I had time to everything I wanted. I honestly don't remember much from today's events, but I listened to GQ podcast episode about productivity, and I really took it to my heart. Not that I'll do everything it suggested tomorrow, but I can definitely see the benefits of applying visualisation, writing down goals and breaking them into small ones. That topic was really what I spent most of my day on. I also had a lot of energy, but today it seemed to almost get out of hand and turn into... aggression. It's not the first time that it happens.

This week's goal is to contemplate on what I want to work towards and put it in words. I need this always available reminder of why I'm doing the things I do. Really badly. And to know which things are worth doing.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

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Day 42

I'm lost. I'm lost in the woods. I didn't meditate or exercise in the morning. I don't remember why. I had some unreasonable feeling of stress. And I think I ate something bad. It's 8 PM and I don't want to do anything. My daily disciplines, whatever they are, are futile if I don't know what they are supposed to lead to. I am repeating myself, but this is crucial for me. A bad day, whoop dee fucking doo.

Am I the only highschool student around here? Why does everyone seem to be in college or working or even having kids?

Edited by mattso
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Most people don't have it catch up to them or realize that it is a problems until later in life.

I can't sit around and spout inspiring stuff, but there are always bad days.  Accept them and move on.  They happen and the next day, they are history.  Just learn from them.  

I can suggest reading my post under general discussion "Be Bored".

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13 minutes ago, SilentQ said:

Accept them and move on.  They happen and the next day, they are history.

Well that's why I threw a whoop dee doo at it. I know my journey isn't going to be only sun, flowers and rainbow-farting unicorns and I'm okay with it.

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Maybe change the mind set.  Don't consider the things that you are losing or how difficult it will be.

All I can think of is how good it is that I sold all of my stuff and how much better things will be.  Clean house, more piano time, healthy dinners cooked, books read, more workouts completed, more time on my road bicycle, kayaking on lakes from my childhood.  All of these things that actually mean something.  It will be great.

 

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Day 43

I did my morning things, but later I got hit by a stress attack. I have self-destructive thoughts when under those, the most common one being imagining jumping out of a window. Then I started to feel my symptoms of loneliness, aka seeing hostility everywhere and focusing entirely on negative interactions. After coming back home I knew I wasn't well, and decided to simply put my thoughts down on paper. As I got to the interactions, I stopped for a moment. At this point I already knew how loneliness distorts my view of others, and with that in mind I reviewed my day once again. Turns out that there were actually only 2 negative interactions, and many more neutral and positive ones. And that alone managed to cheer me up enough to take some action, which is exercise and vacoom the house, and I returned to a functional state. I am so damn proud of myself that for the first time in ages I managed to deal with loneliness instead of succumbing to it or escaping it.

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Day 44

I spent an entire day fulfilling many different duties. A few days ago I mentioned setting goals- well, I did something related to that, I just wrote down all goals for the weekend and really enjoyed crossing them off.

Day 45

I had a dream about gaming. And I stopped after some time because of guilt. Day's been pretty similar to yesterday, but almost everything was schoolwork. And 2 hours on a new GQ video. Didn't manage to do everything I planned for the weekend, but no crucial stuff was left behind.

I noticed that I only need 7-8 hours of sleep to be comfortable, down from 10. I should experiment with not using technology for 3 hours before going to sleep. And in general going to sleep earlier, because I still do it around an hour later than I'd like to.

@fawn_xoxo Does "Mind Over Mood" cover the topic of cognitive distortions? I'm planning to check out that book soon.

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Day 46

My phone is weird, it just removed a big chunk of my post for no particular reason. A bad day, who cares. Does it even matter outside of my head? I don't know if I mentioned it in my posts but on some days I get so stressed out that I have an irresistible urge to wave my hands and head like a maniac while making undefined noises. That's how I let go of pressure that's been collecting inside me. Or hitting various objects works too. I did very little today, spent lots of time on YT/pointless internet browsing. Did next to no reading. I might have underslept.

Thoughts about gaming have been coming lately. Is relapse inevitable? If so, should I just make it happen immediately and get through it?

Tomorrow is a pretty important day so I should do my best to set myself positively for it.

- My maths test went exceptionally well today.

- I guess I can go to sleep and that's cool?

- Tomorrow will probably be better, I can't see it being worse than today.

Nah, I just need to go to sleep, it's the best antidote. No more thinking.

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Day 47

I did something with my back so I took a break from exercise for now. The first of two open days. I was pretty nervous because I'd never walked anyone through, and I got fairly discouraged after my first visitors who weren't very interactive, but as time went on it became easier and easier. Apparently I walked over 10 000 steps that day. Pretty much no free time, but I'm glad that I decided to go into the unknown.

My emotions don't define me.

Day 48

The morning was pretty chill, we went to the cinema, and after I came home I started working on my values list. I heard of it, but didn't pay much attention to it. Now I think that I really need it to always remind me what is the purpose of all that I'm doing. I wrote down a few points, and then went for the second open day. I felt really chilled compared to the day before, because I knew well what to do. Talking to strangers was much easier, as well as keeping up a conversation, I felt no tension... Does it mean I can actually not be a socially awkward person? Came back tired as all hell and went to sleep almost immediately.

I can't get rid of a feeling that others don't care about me writing this.

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Day 49

I can't get rid of a feeling that others don't care about me writing this.

Another bad day. Apparently they just come and go. That's what I've been told. I went through a few hours of feeling distgustingly lonely, add some anger and aggression to that, and then apathy. But why am I even writing this, it's just a bad day and noone cares, because they pass. You're some unknown teen from God-knows-where, you don't even live on your own so your problems are irrelevant compared to others', because your life is so easy right now. You seem to have nothing to do, get your ass up and do some work. That's what I've heard today. Stop bitching, successful people blah blah blah. You can't know the good without knowing the bad.

Except I've had it up to here with bad. I don't need reminders of how it feels, because I know too well.

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I get how you feel. People (for whatever reason, I'm no psychologist) like trivializing the problems of others. It sucks, but you must learn to ignore it; these peoples' opinions don't matter. And as for having no one on this forum to care about you, you have to adjust your expectations. How could we really, genuinely care for you when all we know about you is a few short snippets of information that you have posted on here? We don't know you in person and without you revealing deeply personal information and/or having one-on-one conversations with us, it is hard to develop a sense of care for you as a person. I promise you, though, that I recognize you as someone who is trying to improve himself and I care for you as much as one person can care for another without knowing them. Stick with what you're doing, try to find good and caring people in real life, and your situation will improve.

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This post was filled with my frustration at that moment, while writing it I knew that it seems childish, but I couldn't stop myself from doing it. It just reflects the state of my mind at a certain time. Perhaps my feelings make me act unreasonably at times, what a surprise. And apparently doing something else than sitting and battling my thoughts really makes them just go away. I already knew that, but it's still not easy to not be overwhelmed by my emotions. I really do feel embarassed right now, and hopefully this will help me remember that I'm my greatest enemy, and that a simple act of doing might change my mood entirely.

@cammyhammy Thanks for your post too, it wasn't pleasant to read but I needed it.

Edited by mattso
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Day 50

That's a lot of days. For the past week I haven't really done much, mostly due to being really busy on two days and feeling awfully on the remaining three, including yesterday (it's day 51 as of writing this). It was going fine, until I realised that, for no particular reason, I'm going for my bus as quickly as I can, passing everyone I knew, not wanting anybody to pay any attention to me. When someone poked at me, I said I was in a hurry (which was actually true, but it definitely wasn't my motivation). I felt like I was in danger. I remember that when approaching the stop I literally thought "Finally, there is noone around. I'm safe now." I mean, I can imagine not wanting to talk to people, but feeling threatened? Can anyone tell me if I should be worried? And it's not the first time either.

Later I decided to put down a list of how my social contacts were for the past few years. Without going into much detail, not so hot. I can only tell that last time someone invited me to hang out outside of school was around 2,5 years ago. The only way for me to improve is to actively seek new contacts, because noone is going to come and help me. And I can't come to this forum and say "boohoo, help me someone" because that's not how it works. Unfortunately going out and meeting new people is something unfamiliar for me.

And I started to turn aside from new hobbies. Guitar has been sitting in a corner for more than a week, and I don't really do anything new outside of programming. I enter the weekend with no idea what to do. The hype has officially worn off.

I'm the man who sold my world.

Edited by mattso
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Day 51

That was a truly unproductive day. All day nothing was done. Just rolling in my bed or looking at my phone. I had ideas to code, or go to my first geocache ever, around 10 minutes away from my house, but I couldn't bring myself to stand up. Weather was amazing, it was sunny all day. I saw all of it. But it didn't make me feel good. I was just laying in my bed, looking at a still image behind my window. When the evening came, apathy turned into rage. I was punching the air. It probably looked hilarious. And I think I know what was wrong today. No meditation or exercise. Tomorrow I will start my day the way it should be. Hopefully it will put me back on track.

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Day 52

I started off the way I wanted, my mood was alright, did some work then visited my grandparents. After we came back... Man how do I start.

So a week ago when I was going to school, a dog ran up to me and tried to bite me. He did touch me with his teeth, because there was some saliva on my pants. I looked at my leg, no scratches or anything beyond that. I went to a school nurse, she told me the same: not even a scratch. Cool, thanks, let's forget about it. Until this day I was feeling irritated and agitated. And this thought struck me: aren't those symptoms of rabies? I started searching for them, I read that they are, and untreated rabies is fatal in most cases... Boy did I get scared. Then I started analysing the situation. It wasn't my first time feeling this way. It was in city centre, some lady was shouting at the dog- therefore it wasn't stray. I even saw it today when walking to school- a lady was holding it on a leash. The same dog, in the same place. So I can be almost certain that it was vaccinated. And there was no bite either, noone could see any marks of it. But before I concluded all of this I was legitimately thinking of death, which made me feel weak. And I spent an entire evening convincing myself that I cannot possibly be infected. I feel like I'm overreacting so much that it's not even funny. I was so exhausted at the end of the day by all this stress that I fell asleep no more than 2 minutes after laying down.

50 days of nofap though.

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