Entry 20.6 ( Written on 21.6) Day 629: No Useless Videos Day 628: Sticking to Food schedule Day 230: Eating Only between 06:30 and 19:00 (Last bite before 19:00) Day 221: Being in bed before 23:15 3 Things I did well no matter how small -Writing email to embassy specifying my situation -3 calls regarding police permit -1 hour workout in the morning  1 thing I could do better -Forget these " in the middle of the night wakeups" and starting to look forthings on the internet. Een though I already had worse case scenarios and it was only one hour today still it's too much.

June 21 - Day #0 It's Friday, and what I want to be able to do the most is patch things up (mostly in my mind) with my social event group (after missing last weekend's event). This hopefully means being able to greet everybody at this weekend's event quickly by name, and remember about half of the conversations I had 2 weeks ago. There is also a (hard?)-core of people who stay on Discord for some voice chat gaming on Monday and Friday now. I want to be able to hang out there socially, even if it means I don't play at all. ^ Speaking of games, I decided to use the 'reward' of 1 hour online in the evening, after I'd done almost everything I thought I was obliged to do. What that did was get me singing to myself as I went throughout the 2nd half of the day, and through a second bout of exercise, plus chores.  Here are some of the outcomes: ~ Since last week felt very long, signing in for that 1 hour felt definitely other-worldly, and yet I remembered the 5 needs and kept in mind how I was going to fulfil them regardless of that hour.  ~ I did think about the 'future' of my profile more than I did normally during the sum total of 2 months without gaming this year so far, so I tried to focus back on the importance of achieving 'offline' during the day ~ Somehow, making sure I was without further desire by 7pm made its way into the mix, so yesterday was kind of a motivated 'failure' by last week's standards reported here ~ I did not sleep restlessly last night, as I did the 3 nights prior, from going to bed too early. There was some remaining drowsiness for the first hour, but at least I wasn't unhappy this morning. ______________ Having read Vee's and Wildermyth's journal entries, I think I am now number 3 in 24 hours to admit to 'needing' a session. I want to know what (if not the feeling which led to it) made us come back/give in all at once!  I will monitor my thoughts and feelings closely again, and try to be as  productive as reasonably possible before dark, before and if I sign in. It may seem pointless to call it as such, but if I should keep a temporary streak of days when I do this, I think I'll still feel decent. Good luck all. Matt    

After a 73-day streak, I played games. The first day I played for less than an hour. Then on the second day, I did nothing but play games for 18 hours straight...Yesterday was the third day, and I played for over 12 hours. I didn't want to reinstall Steam so it wasn't even good games, just mindless browser games. I've been awake for just over an hour today and already it feels like such a struggle to not play. I've felt so restless the last fortnight or so, and all of my good habits (journalling, leaving the house, waking up earlier, eating meals) have mostly fallen by the wayside. I haven't really been using TickTick (my to-do list and habit tracker app) so I can't even be sure what I've done or not done.  It's really difficult to balance pushing myself vs not feeling ashamed when I don't meet my expectations. Some people talk about just setting low, achievable goals, but even then I feel like I can rebel against basic things. Sometimes I'm in the bathroom at night and I know I could brush my teeth, but I choose not to. Sometimes I get into a bit of a helpless mentality, and when my mood or energy levels seem to shift I think of it as being more like the inevitable change of the seasons, rather than something I can control, to some extent. And so despite recognising that I was deteriorating over the last two(+) weeks and taking some action, I acted like a bystander in my own life. Part of the problem is, I don't know what action I should take. Other people talk about exercise, but that is still something I mostly have to push myself to do. Over the last few months, journalling has broadly felt easy and almost natural, but for the last couple of weeks, I've struggled. Some of my entries are just dreams, others are just single lines like "Watched The Brothers Sun and napped." because I have felt too apathetic to say anything else. Perhaps the answer is to reach out to someone, my housemate maybe, and have them help me form some plan of action (go for a walk/jog with them? "Body doubling" with her tidying her room and me journalling?). I guess it just feels...silly. Historically I haven't been good at reaching out to people even when I've been suicidal. While I hope nowadays I'm capable of reaching out when I'm actively miserable, it feels hard when I'm just...bored or apathetic. It's easy to get bogged down by all my perceived failings, and while I don't have anything positive to say about the last couple of weeks, if I think more broadly about the last three months or so, I can easily see that I've been doing better than last year. My sleeping schedule is mostly better, my eating is mostly better, leaving the house feels a lot less difficult, I'm journalling most days, my jogging is still erratic but my speed and distance have improved, I have some income (although not enough to cover my outgoings at the moment), I'm reading more, and I didn't game for a whole 73 days. I think I've socialised about the same amount this quarter (I love reflecting on quarters rather than months), but I've been initiating things more this year. I'll end it there. I will try to write up a plan in my private journal for how to get back on track. Sometimes I wonder if creating some sort of emotions flow chart would help ("feel X? Consider these options") - at least it would minimise choice paralysis.

So I've been away for half a year almost and to make a long story short: I relapsed. It was an honest attempt to try to make it work, as I was still riding on that wave that caught speed during my first interaction with simulation games. I managed to set up some pretty solid boundries together with a close friend that monitored my progress. She checked in with me on a regular basis and asked if I was feeling ok, If I wanted to stop or maybe changed something. We sort of had an agreement where I could only play for a certain number of hours a day and then shift my focus on more productive tasks. This worked really well actually until I realized that I also wanted to play longer games, and suddenly a couple of hours a day didn't feel like it gave me any real sense of progression within the game at all. My lack of satisfaction led me to stretching the boundries and eventually I was caught up in the same behaviour as before where I did nothing else but play the game as soon as I had any free time. I could feel how every other goal I recently had, like starting to play the piano or getting started with my drivers license, was beginning to fade away slowly. I also could see no real end in sight as my mind was spinning around the frustration of trying to finish a set number of games within a certain timeframe. I bought a large number of games as before and all I could think about was trying to go through them as quickly as possible, and this of course meant that anything else was not prioritized. But yeah, when it finally dawned on me that I had to pull the handbrake once and for all was when I started to get agitated about my upcoming trip to Iceland. I was trying to figure out how to game as much as possible on my portable device during the trip. I felt so bad for thinking this way but I also remembered how I got over this the last time, by starting up a more fruitful hobby and shifting my focus towards that (which was skiing). So now I've booked a couple of piano classes with a really great teacher and I'm off to buy my very first piano which feels sooooooooooooo exciting! And as mentioned I'm going to Iceland very soon and I know that it's going to be completely lifechanging in the best possible way. Whenever I travel I get so much self-confidence and every cell of my body is so engaged with the experience. I also feel when I write this that I've made the right choice because with every word I type I get more reassured of my decision. I've read that most people here do a relapse at least once and maybe this was my big one. I really hope it will be the last because even though I was caught up in it once more I also felt more than ever that it didn't grant me anything truly meaningful. I still have cravings and think about it many times a day but I really want to stay on this track now and have a more balanced life. Already it feels like a win to not be stressed about getting back home to continue my games - I can just stroll around with my intuition and be fine with doing the smallest things.

Entry 19.6 ( Written on 20.6) Day 628: No Useless Videos Day 627: Sticking to Food schedule Day 229: Eating Only between 06:30 and 19:00 (Last bite before 19:00) Day 220: Being in bed before 23:15 3 Things I did well no matter how small -Despite sleeping under 4 hours because of signing apartment contract again overcoming sleeping urge, and going to embassy plus gathering all necessary documents -23.5 hour fast on water -1 hour workout in the morning  1 thing I could do better -Just noted I accidentally wrote this part in Spanish yesterday lol. Anyway 1 thing I could do better is bring the 9.84 Euros with me to pay for handling fees for the identity document only, that is the first step.and have at least those two pages printed beforehand instead of gathering all of them but not managing to print none I guess.  Food schedule update:  As i said I'll update two days ago, peanut butter for now left in the morning (didn't write yesterday since i fasted anyway.