attempting to do something else with my life

[ace_dee]

Greetings everyone my alias is ace_dee and I'm on day 7 of my "almost" cold turkey attempt. 

When I was younger I retreated into games to avoid facing the normal difficulties that come with growing up.  That created the habit of going back to gaming rather than learning the skills to take risks, cope with loss and failure, and building the resilience to try again until I succeeded.  With everything except games I would stop trying or quit when things got difficult.  But fortunately I was blessed with a level of self-awareness that prevented me from becoming a truly lost individual.  But that was never enough to completely break my bad habits.

Now I'm over 40, married and have children, have a well paying, secure job and have a good life by almost any standards.  But I have also spent a large portion of that life playing games.  And the seduction of game playing meant I missed out of many opportunities that I was presented. It was easier to "settle" and be "content" because I could always get the vicarious satisfaction of accomplishment without risk in the safety of a game.  This is something which I now deeply regret.  I can't change the past but hopefully I can change the path that I was on to have a better future.

My goal is not necessarily to completely quit games entirely but to stop using games for procrastination or as a substitute for real life accomplishments.

[chiliflavor]

Welcome to the forums, @ace_dee! Hoping that this community would be of great help on your new journey. 😁