I have quit ranked/competitive gaming and do only casual gaming whenever I get some interest. Honestly I was happy that I’ve quit gaming as a whole because it was a real addiction. Countless number of times I have uninstalled games only to get so tempted that I would download them again despite them taking 1hr to install.
From that kind of situation to come to this situation where I only play whenever I want to, is a great progress I felt I have made. I have got lots of time on me as expected, but I don’t spend it wisely and infact in more “brain-off” fashion eg scrolling, chatting on discord, youtube etc.
Now I feel whenever I come across anything that needs my brain to be spent upon, I feel so reluctant to do high brain activity. I feel there’s lot more difficulty concentrating and being patient with my task.
Is this because I have quit gaming? (sounds crazy I know) that my brain has become rather less active than usual?
I recently come across a random study on surgeons that game a bit during the week are doing better at their job than the ones who don’t game. Not sure how of it is true but I sure have come across concepts like gaming keeps your brain active and make you perform.
Take this entire assumption as a grain of salt because I haven’t done any huge experiments nor do I have any conclusive evidence but a small hunch that I just came across. I just wanted to know your experiences after you quit gaming.
I used to be big on gaming, mostly just playing Minecraft. I could play for hours every day and it sucked a lot of my free time up. I didn’t “quit” gaming as much as I just lost interest in it over time. I fell into other hobbies (writing music, studying botany, Linux (Arch, BTW), local events, I had a kid) and I found these activities to be much more rewarding.
Don’t get me wrong: it isn’t that I don’t think that games can be rewarding, or valuable, or create important memories. Certainly they have for me. But I just feel like as I’ve gotten older I’ve had a harder time devoting brainpower to it. It’s the same as with movies. It’s very hard for me to sit down and watch a movie anymore, not because I am Tiktok-brained and incapable of focusing on one task for longer than two minutes, but because the whole time I’m just antsy, *what am I doing here, what is the point of this? I would rather be writing, or researching the Amaranth family, or looking into how to drain the rear differential in my car, or going on a long walk…)
I think as you learn more about who ‘you’ are, OP, you will find it easier to put vidya down. It takes a lot to sit, to breathe, to just engage with something and not have it be screaming at you for your attention the entire time. People watch, or just sit still and look out your window for a little while. Little things to ground yourself and connect with the present.
Sometimes I feel like Arch users are the vegans of Linux. Can’t spoil an occasion to mention it ;-)