/EXISTENCE
I'm pretty hard on myself. And I don't mean physically. I'd probably feel a lot better if I was more physical. No, I mentally beat myself down. A lot. I can't tell you the number of times the phrases, "You're an idiot", "You're a fat, lazy ass", and various other permutations of self-deprecation goes through my head per day. My method of choice to drown out that voice is to play video games. But it seems that voice has just used that as additional fuel to mock me for playing too much. It's a horrible cycle. But for the past week or so, my two best friends left their computers behind as they went to visit family for Christmas and we were each left to our own devices for entertainment. Combine that with some pretty slow days at work, and we have a perfect recipe for "Peter gets lost in his thoughts" time. And boy did I get lost.
A nagging consideration for years has been to completely give up video games. Remove them from all mobile devices, sell all consoles, sell all discs, have someone change my Steam password (and not lose said password), and just cold-turkey walk away from video games as a whole. I did that with Facebook games, so I figured I could do that with video games as a whole. And then my rational and logical thoughts kicked in and warned me against such a drastic action. For me, it would be social suicide to do that. Video games aren't just an escape, they're my social circle. Abandoning that would leave me with nothing and new spiral would form and probably take me down other dark paths. So I kept playing games.
A lot. And it's become a bad habit. Which through a series of conversations with a friend led me to this book about habits. I hadn't even finished it and I made a decision to start changing... no, replacing habits with ones that I benefit from. And when I thought about it, video games are my core and driving habit. But like I said, a complete firesale and removal of video games from my life would be social suicide. So instead I made the decision to reduce how much I play video games and restrict what games I play. The plan is to cut out Minecraft entirely and mostly only play co-op games with my friends. Playtime will also be restricted to the weekends so that I actually get things done during the week. As the book illustrates, habits can't be dropped, they need to be replaced. So in the void, I will put reading, blogging, and walking. I may need to be more specific with my schedule, but that can be determined on the fly.
This plan starts with 2018. This plan starts now.
Until next time:
Work smart. Play hard. Sleep well.
I'm pretty hard on myself. And I don't mean physically. I'd probably feel a lot better if I was more physical. No, I mentally beat myself down. A lot. I can't tell you the number of times the phrases, "You're an idiot", "You're a fat, lazy ass", and various other permutations of self-deprecation goes through my head per day. My method of choice to drown out that voice is to play video games. But it seems that voice has just used that as additional fuel to mock me for playing too much. It's a horrible cycle. But for the past week or so, my two best friends left their computers behind as they went to visit family for Christmas and we were each left to our own devices for entertainment. Combine that with some pretty slow days at work, and we have a perfect recipe for "Peter gets lost in his thoughts" time. And boy did I get lost.
A nagging consideration for years has been to completely give up video games. Remove them from all mobile devices, sell all consoles, sell all discs, have someone change my Steam password (and not lose said password), and just cold-turkey walk away from video games as a whole. I did that with Facebook games, so I figured I could do that with video games as a whole. And then my rational and logical thoughts kicked in and warned me against such a drastic action. For me, it would be social suicide to do that. Video games aren't just an escape, they're my social circle. Abandoning that would leave me with nothing and new spiral would form and probably take me down other dark paths. So I kept playing games.
A lot. And it's become a bad habit. Which through a series of conversations with a friend led me to this book about habits. I hadn't even finished it and I made a decision to start changing... no, replacing habits with ones that I benefit from. And when I thought about it, video games are my core and driving habit. But like I said, a complete firesale and removal of video games from my life would be social suicide. So instead I made the decision to reduce how much I play video games and restrict what games I play. The plan is to cut out Minecraft entirely and mostly only play co-op games with my friends. Playtime will also be restricted to the weekends so that I actually get things done during the week. As the book illustrates, habits can't be dropped, they need to be replaced. So in the void, I will put reading, blogging, and walking. I may need to be more specific with my schedule, but that can be determined on the fly.
This plan starts with 2018. This plan starts now.
Until next time:
Work smart. Play hard. Sleep well.
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