No More Gaming

I will keep this short and sweet (actually it's pretty long). Gaming for me was an addiction. A full blown addiction. Every moment of my day was spent thinking about games. All of my activities were planned with gaming in mind.

When I would go out on the weekend with my wife, I would plan in my head "OK 2 hours at the beach/shopping with my wife and I can be home by noon and game for at least 10 hours". It was affecting my relationship with everyone, especially my wife. One day, I decided to make a change.

As a Christian, I have always gone to church and done the whole "good guy" thing by playing on the worship team and faithfully attending Wednesday evening and Sunday morning services but, it was all just an act. I thought by going through the motions, I was fulfilling my duties however, a relationship with God is not a duty; it's a privilege.

One day while driving to my crappy job (which I thought was a good job because it was 10 hours a week, thus allowing me maximum game time), I got fed up with myself. I began to pray "God, I am so ashamed of my life. I have been married 5 years and we are no better off than we were on day 1. In fact we are worse. I am willing to do whatever it takes to have a personal relationship with you and get my life straightened out".

Of course, God pointed me to the one obstacle remaining between us; my gaming. The change didn't happen immediately. You should know, I am a VERY stubborn person. My mother used to actually lecture me in properly arguing my point when I was a kid. While some kids practiced their ABCs on the way to school, we practiced words like "misinterpretation" or "unrelenting". My mother wanted me to be verbally and intellectually capable and perhaps one day become a lawyer or corporate big whig. This practice gave me a wonderfully diverse vocabulary but also served to give me a attitude of "I'm smarter than everyone else".

Back to my story. It was another month before I finally made any noticeable change. In fact it got worse before things got better. 2 weeks after I had made that life changing prayer, I got a job for a company called Citrix (an AWESOME place to work). It was a fulltime job making quite a bit more per hour than my previous job. I figured "well the money is good and I can buy more games with it!" I quickly discovered that a fulltime job greatly impedes your gaming life. Now with 40 hours of work, I was trying to juggle gaming, work, and a wife together (with gaming taking up the majority of my home time).

One night, as I was "raiding" in a game called DC Universe Online, we had guests over at our house. I was so into my gaming, I didn't even acknowledge them the entire time they were there and my wife was forced to do all the entertaining. As I sat there and noticed the visible disappointment on there faces, I thought to myself, "what am I doing?" It was right there that I finally made the ultimate decision. I would give up gaming...completely.

With me, there are NO levels. I either commit myself to something completely or I don't. There was no "weening" of of gaming. I had to either quit completely or not at all. I chose to quit. The next day, I sent out an email to my closer friends online informing them that I would never return. Of course, I heard the usual "just game less" lines from them but I knew that I had to stop because there is no gaming less for me. Within 24 hours, my website was given to someone else, my account were closed down, and I had placed all my games (all 500 or so) up on the internet for sale.

That was 2 months ago. I am happy to say, I have no relapsed, my relationship with my wife has improved more in 2 months than in our entire marriage, I am teaching a class at my church on discipleship, and I am a month away from completely paying off ALL our debt. This entire time, it was my gaming that was standing between myself and God. Gaming was my idol. It was more important to me than God. Therefore it WAS my god. It says in the 10 commandments that we can't have any other gods. Well I am happy to say, I don't anymore. Thank you God for being so patient with me.

GOODBYE GAMING! HELLO REAL LIFE!