Quitting Addictions

People that get to know me learn pretty quickly that I have a very black and white personality. I'm either 100% or 0%. And trust me, I never give 110%. This manifests itself in lots of different ways in my day to day life, some positive and some negative. This year I've given up two of my biggest addictions. They might not be addictions in the true definition of the word, but I call them that simply because of my all or nothing attitude.

First, I gave up drinking at the beginning of this year. (go go New Years Resolution) For me, it was just a personal thing I felt I should do. I can honestly say that its not permanent, but I needed to do it for a year. I tell most people that I don't drink "because my wife can't drink right now, since she is pregnant." and they will nod in understanding. Really I say that because its a lot easier then trying to explain that I decided drinking half a bottle of vodka every weekend was not that healthy for me, or that my family has a history i'd prefer not to repeat, etc. There is only one thing that really pisses me off. I had hoped that after not drinking for awhile, maybe I'd feel a little better physically. Or perhaps I wouldn't be so tired on Mondays, or maybe I'd sleep better in general, etc. No such luck, I feel virtually the same as before. Damnit.

Second, I gave up the video game Everquest. Now, I know that sounds retarded. How can someone be addicted to a video game? Well let me lay some numbers out, and then do some math! In the 5 years that I played Everquest, my "character" had well over 365 days of play time. (the game was nice enough to track your playtime for you) That doesn't mean, over 5 years I sat down and played Everquest 365 times. It means, over a 5 year period, AN ENTIRE YEAR was spent playing Everquest.

Now, lets do some math. 365 days x 24 hours = 8760 hours roughly that I played Everquest over a 5 year period. How many hours of work did I do in that same 5 year period? Well, lets see. 52 weeks a year. I got about 4 weeks vacation a year. Subtract another week due to holidays, and you get:

(52 - 4 - 1) * 40 hour work week = 1880 hours a year, or 9400 hours in 5 years.

So for 5 years, I basically played a video game as long as someone would work a 40 hour work week. Another way to look at it is this: In an average 168 hour week, subtract work time, subtract Everquest time, subtract sleeping time = about 30 hours left. In other words, on any given week, I had about 4 hours per day to do ANYTHING else besides Work, Sleep & Everquest.

Wow. That begs the questions, what the hell am I going to do with all that extra free time? Setup a Blog I guess.

If there is anything that giving up addictions this year has taught me, it is this:

Quitting is easy.

Willing yourself into inaction is not that challenging. It's trying to will yourself into action that's hard.