Quitting Journal Day 3

[mholz02]

Day 3 is going to be one of the hardest days... I used to play Overwatch, a Blizzard game like WoW, religiously... and a new character was just announced. I unsubscribed to all of the gaming YT channels I was subbed to, but somehow this announcement slipped through into my recommended feed. I've resisted learning anything about this new character, but I am so very much tempted to watch the videos and learn what kind of character it is just so I know. Still, I know how cause and effect works: first I'll watch one video and I'll be tempted to watch another. Then, after a short series of events, I'll be back to playing Overwatch ten hours a day all summer. I'm staying strong and avoiding YouTube altogether for now, but I know that I'll somehow be informed when the character becomes playable on Xbox and then... relapse.

I followed Respawn and made lists of things I could do other than game but, right now, I don't want to do anything else. Every other activity seems dull and tiring just as they did when I played video games, of course it's only been a few days so I didn't expect to be instantly cured of it. I'm just gonna throw myself into writing my novel and hope things go okay today.

AAAAND I just started playing a browser game without realizing it... HOW?!?! Should I count that as a relapse or an accident, or both??

Edited July 22, 2019 by mholz02

[TTT]

You have a list of what you'd like to do instead of games, right? Pick the one that looks the least dull and the most accessible/easy and do that right away. To quote a bit from The Art of Not Giving a Fu**: "Action isn't just the effect of motivation, it's also the cause of it." If you do something, you'll automatically get into it a tiny bit and as you progress you'll like progressing, so it will start feeling better. Just do something from your list, anything.

It's like with push-ups. Any time you think about them it's just an annoying thought, but if you midlessly (out of necessity, to ignore any mental compalints) go on the ground regardless and start doing the first one, you'll feel very motivated to keep going till you drop and you'll feel great for having done it after.

As for writing, you can try finding a writing community and post little snippets of something, even if it's not the novel. I have a friend who is writing a book and his motivation goes up a lot when he posts small side stuff on reddit and the like.