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.
‘yes’