I wish to stop lying

[Misticblair]

... to myself.

I lost 4 years of my life. Now I want to break it down.
I'm addicted from games and it just took 4 years of my life in the blink of an eye.
I want to beat it to the ground! I want to point out some rules that I will follow daily as my schedule.
I need to aid myself after what I've done...

RULES!:

- Using facebook only 2 times per day for 15-20 minutes, NO LONGER!!
- Stop using internet as entertainment (watching youtube for a couple of hours and so on...) use it for learning/studying + some movies.
- Don't look at other artists work, just do your own studies and illustrations!
- Spend at least 6 hours for drawing daily (best score would be 10-12) ! Including 30 minutes for warm up with gesture drawing.
- Start using references as it can be my best friend!
- Playing games only 2-3 hours from Mon - Fri ; Weekend 4-5 (it's the most difficult thing I can imagine for me...)
- Doing some outdoor - live - sessions sketching motion, expression, gestures etc. at least few times in a month! (not easy for me)
- Stop being SUCH a perfectionist, it kills my fun drawing.
- Eat at normal day cycles, and eat more!


GOALS!:

- My first goal would be to complete at least 25-30% of all of these rules in time minimum 1 month
- Second goal will be to keep those 25-30 % and add another 25% to it and keep it for next 1 month.
- Last goal is to add rest of rules and deal with it for another 1 month in a row.



After those 3 main goals achieved I hope that something will finally change in my life.

All I want is to ask you dear CD community to help me achieve those goals ( by simply kind words, mental support and sharing your beginning stages how it was when you were at level 0 - to now when you can actually see some progression in your art :) )
Why ? Cause I've got really huge "liberary" of ideas to draw but if I won't make my goals, I'll never become a succesful artist that I SHOULD BE (I believe it's why I'm on this weird little-big planet...)

[Bookend]

I don't even have facebook, man, lol. 30- 40 minutes a day on facebook? Insane!

But, yeah, we all have struggles we need to surmount in our respective journeys. I'm basically starving myself lately, which just isn't good for mental POWER.

Honestly, I think you should just spend every moment you have drawing. I don't think there's anything wrong with gaming every now and then, but if you want to be awesome, you have to spend every moment you can drawing. Just do it, dude.

I mean.. Today I've spent 5 and a half hours drawing, and I'm not even done yet.

If making a schedule helps to stay motivated, do that, but basically you should just be drawing everyday.

That being said, people burn out. Do things to stay interested in your subject matter. Go to places you love to do your life drawing, so that you have excitement associated with it. If you find going to the park boring, then go to a skate park, lol. Just put something interesting into everything you do, and you'll get there.

Keep it up, though. You'll get there. Stay strong!

[Misticblair]

Thanks for reply mate ! I know it's crazy being on fb more than 20 minutes ( I can chat in there for 2 hours talking some s****t really, that's why I want to change it, that's why I need to break it!)
Playing is okey I know but I lost my last 4 years to games - I'm not looking for understanding when I say 'hey I'm addicted to games' someone can think that 'oh probably he plays 4-5 hours per day it's not addiction' well,no. I can play for 16 hours per day and eat only one meal daily - that is a HUGE problem, I say that 'I can' cause it's really rare and extreme situations!!
Anyhow... Thanks for your advices I'm gonna try to do some live sketching even tho I hate to go outside honestly, It's because I don't like to be surrounded by all this 'crowd' I feel very uncomfortable, but it's all about changing my life and improve it so yeah ! :D

If anyone wants to say something more, please do it, cause I guess that I need real 'spark' to my brain to finally start working on myself !

[Chris P]

Best of luck!

The following is going to sound harsh, but bear with me:

...
- Using facebook only 2 times per day for 15-20 minutes, NO LONGER!!
...
- Playing games only 2-3 hours from Mon - Fri ; Weekend 4-5 (it's the most difficult thing I can imagine for me...)
...

GOALS!:

- My first goal would be to complete at least 25-30% of all of these rules in time minimum 1 month
- Second goal will be to keep those 25-30 % and add another 25% to it and keep it for next 1 month.
- Last goal is to add rest of rules and deal with it for another 1 month in a row.

...

Sorry, but no: "Playing videogames only 2-3 hours a day, 25-30% of the time" isn't going to work as a goal.

First of all, prefer positively phrased goals (what you do want to do) to negatively phrased goals (what you don't want to do / what you want to limit / do less of). The reason is simple: you can sit around and procrastinate / waste time by some other means (anything but facebook and games), loose more time of your life, but still meet all your negatively phrased goals. (It is quite easy to accidentally replace one addiction with another in this way)

Secondly, you don't defeat an addiction by "doing less of it, most of the time". You either quit, or you don't. Nothing in between. "Quitting a little bit" doesn't work. If you want to defeat your game addiction, you will want to prevent yourself from starting to play games. Now this might not work 100% of the time. There might be setbacks. There might be times when you are weak. That's okay. If it happens, realize it and move on. But don't include excuses and exceptions into your plans and goals.

Lastly, what you have there aren't goals but timetables. You are very detailed in terms of how many hours you want to spend on what; but where do you actually want to go? What for do you want to do those 6 hours drawing a day? Where do you imagine yourself today if you hadn't lost those 4 years? That is your goal. If you can't answer that question, take a while to think about it (Take a look into goal setting, like SMART and the like. Maybe that helps). The reason I am emphasizing this is because 6 hours a day drawing are a long time if you don't know what you are doing it for.


Sorry again if all of this sounds harsh. The reason why I am writing all of this is that was in quite a similar situation not so long ago. I also was at a point where I realized that I had just lost several years of my life to the internet. So I made a timetable and a plan, surprisingly alike to the one you are presenting here ... and then I failed dramatically and lost another year or two because I couldn't make that plan to work and didn't quite know how to start to draw.

- Don't look at other artists work, just do your own studies and illustrations!

I think I understand what you are trying to achieve here - but I recommend you to do look at other artists' work.
Making studies from other artists' work (in order to learn their secrets) is just as valuable as making studies of the real world. By extension, looking at others' work is as valuable as looking at reference.

One goal I had set for myself a while ago: "every time you look at pictures on the web, draw studies from it". I applied that to both photos and art - and it was quite successful for me (Not only because studies are good, but also because it turned "starting to surf the web aimlessly" into a cue to start drawing for me). Maybe something similar could be a good goal for you as well?

[Ryonok]

Thanks for reply mate ! I know it's crazy being on fb more than 20 minutes ( I can chat in there for 2 hours talking some s****t really, that's why I want to change it, that's why I need to break it!)
Playing is okey I know but I lost my last 4 years to games - I'm not looking for understanding when I say 'hey I'm addicted to games' someone can think that 'oh probably he plays 4-5 hours per day it's not addiction' well,no. I can play for 16 hours per day and eat only one meal daily - that is a HUGE problem, I say that 'I can' cause it's really rare and extreme situations!!
Anyhow... Thanks for your advices I'm gonna try to do some live sketching even tho I hate to go outside honestly, It's because I don't like to be surrounded by all this 'crowd' I feel very uncomfortable, but it's all about changing my life and improve it so yeah ! :D

If anyone wants to say something more, please do it, cause I guess that I need real 'spark' to my brain to finally start working on myself !

Hey man I used to play World of Warcraft none stop for my first year of college. Nearly ruined my life getting that dang PVP gear. Competition between the people with no life to get fake shit in a game...........anyway from my experience I would just quit games in general or find a video game that you can play for about 30 minutes a day and quit playing for most of the day. For me that video game was Warcraft 3 instead of World of Warcraft. Then It became starcraft 2, and now its been league of legends for the past 4 years. I only play about 1 match a day and I am done. But the most important decision is to live for your art, learn to invest all that brain power and thinking into what your doing in your artwork and not what your going to do next when you start playing games again. You gotta think about your art like it is your best video game you have ever played and can't wait to play it all day.

Personal experience of mine to you. If you want to know how much of a difference it made for me go to my website www.randytoroni.com. My progress in art only started really after I quit WOW and did nothing but artwork and was totally serious about it, all my thoughts were about progressing as an artist. I only wasted 1 year of my life playing games and I quit alltogether, I say personally you should exile yourself from games/facebook/any distractions for several years until your at a comfortable level. Although you can watch movies that inspire you as you work, I used to play princess mononoke over and over and over again for inspiration while I would draw, oh and lord of the rings and star wars too :P.

My progress in one picture http://www.randytoroni.com/uploads/1/7/3...07.jpg?954

[JyonnyNovice]

Hey man, I feel your pain, addiction is a hell of a thing, I was a heroin addict for a good ten years and transferred that to a gaming addiction when I was cleaning up - I can give you some personal experience if you're interested but right now I'll try and give you some wisdom.

There's two kind of 'models' or schools of thought when tackling addiction. Abstinence based (like AA) where the thing has to be cut completely and never touched again, and there's the Harm Reduction model - where it's accepted that the game/drug/etc will be used but it's about making your life as safe and productive as possible at the same time (often this is a good transition into a life of abstinence).

When it's something pretty heavy, like hours of gaming a day, it can be impractical to just try and stop (usually that's only possible when someone hits 'rock bottom' through some kind of crisis). Hitting that crisis point can have a positive outcome in the end but if you're not there yet, you don't want to just wait for it to come, it's pretty miserable after all and could take another 4 years to get there, you wanna do something to get out of it now. Trying to just cut yourself off can just cause more suffering when you fail to meet that goal, so I think you're being really sensible trying to limit and cut down instead of just stopping outright.

I think Chris P touched on this, but problems we have just love to be thought about, the more you think about them the more attention they get and they slowly move to the centre of your life and you spend so much time and energy on them that they gain more and more power. It's good to envisage your life without your problems, what would you be doing? how would you feel? What are your goals? Where do you want to be in a year, 5 years, 10 years? Spend time thinking about that stuff, fantasise, dream, give those positive thoughts power and they will move to the centre of your life.

On a purely practical side though, what can you do right now to help meeting your current goals of cutting down? I think setting a 'time of day' limit is useful - so you give yourself a rule that before (say 6pm) you aren't allowed to play any games or go on facebook. You can try that for a while and see how it goes, then maybe up the time to 7pm, 8pm etc (or lower it to 5pm, 4pm etc. if it's not working out). If you stick with that you may find that one evening you don't even want to play, but this way you can enjoy your playtime, it's 'allowed' and you've probably done something productive in the day that makes you feel justified in relaxing with a game. Instead of playing in the day, maybe going longer than your 4 hours and feeling guilty, stressed and essentially not really enjoying playing anyway.

I think Peter Hamilton, a sci fi author, uses a method where, between midday and 4pm for example he is ONLY allowed to write - he can sit there doing nothing, daydreaming, looking out the window but he CANNOT look on the internet, read something else, tidy up, play games etc. he can only write, or sit there doing nothing. He says that some days he writes just one page, others he writes 20+. It's another method to try anyway, it could work with art too.

About outdoor sketching - it's really hard the first time you do it, but it gets easier and easier almost right away. It's really great if you can find a friend to go with the first time, but if not just work up to it slowly, maybe go and sketch some trees in a park before you do people sketching or something, or go to a cafe where you can draw people from out the window. It's a really joyous thing to do and you will start to love it very quickly after you've had your first good session.

I wish you best of luck anyway! Lot of replies in this thread so a lot of people are cheering for you!