Since I'm off social media, I essentially need to train my brain to accept and want challenges / adversity / long term dopamine again. With video games, social media, or tv, after a while we crave that instant gratification and forget what it's like to have long term gratification. We think it's disgusting because it requires us to put in effort. Something I realized is I couldn't answer a question of why I'm not using social media anymore. I can list the downsides of it sure, but the downsides are just facts. What do I want to achieve in my life that social media would prohibit? Why do I want to sacrifice social media? These are the questions I feel I need to answer. To give me a solid ground to base my choices around. And to remind me why I quit in the first place.   Once I figure that out I can start crafting a schedule to make progress to my life goals one step at a time.

1 Day at a time. I've actually had over 800 days before that, just saying 🙂 Thanks for the pat on the back, appreciate it! I currently use DW learn German to learn German, but I finished 2 trees in Duolingo - German to Spanish and Spanish to German, also I've learned quite a bit in Memrise and listened to songs with subtitles, and well a lot of stuff. I've been learning for 7 years or so. Are you interested in learning German? 

Entry 23.5 Day 128: No Useless Videos Day 960: Sticking to Food schedule Day 563: Eating Only between 06:30 and 19:00 (Last bite before 19:00) Day 111: Being in bed before 23:15 3 Things I did well, no matter how small  -8 Concentrated work units -Afternoon workout [ legs, chest, stairs ] -Effectively washed clothes in the morning (Done everything fast and earned extra time to do it) 1 Thing I could do better -Write a planned time for each part of the food preparation process, so that I'd have a measuring stick to overcome and maybe so I'll be more effective. Gaming (Death, Slavery, Regret, Disease) - 5 Yan (Life, Individuality, Freedom, Purpose, Self-Fulfillment) - 129

Good job Allan. Good work at all you've done to build your life outside of games. The anxiety and stress and boredom you feel will pass as you have more time away from games. Your brain needs time to recover, especially its dopamine. It will get subtly easier every day. After two weeks it will be quite a bit deal easier; after a month, even easier, and after many months, this stress and anxiety is more of a rare but manageable occurrence. Your activities will become innately fulfilling and joyful. And good job noticing where you used games disguised as something else, or game-like technology. Just find your way back. Forgive yourself and move on, so that you can focus on the good life you are building, which is ultimately the whole point. 🙂

I hate how everything is digitized now. I don't use instagram but when I did even my irl friends their only form of communication with me when we didn't see each other was sending me Instagram memes.    this doesn't mean they're bad friends or I have to get rid of them, or they're not socially available that couldn't be farther from the truth. they're honestly some of my best friends. But it just goes to show how normalized spending hours on social media has become. Even for people who aren't addicted and spend 24/7 on it.   Like my parents and those real life friends I mentioned. They're not addicted to social media. They'd rather do anything else. They like not being on their phones all the time. But they still spend 1-2 hours a day scrolling and looking for memes to send people.      it's disgusting how much these fake platforms have grabbed us, even if we're not addicted or ignoring other parts of our life. I wish I could say this so loud everyone could hear it and change their ways. But I know that's not how it works.