happiness is elusive ..

[Emu]

I gave up online gaming and have found my life to have improved substantially. I used to play Warcraft 3 and Neverwinter Nights obsessively for a few years, and those years even now seem like kind of a blur to me. Now I'm working, I've moved in with my girlfriend and things are good.

You can tell something is a bad influence in your life when it takes up the majority of your time, even if you're not around it, like constantly worrying about friends who are in trouble but have no desire to fix it. Of course, this could be said about a lot of positive things, like jobs or girl/boyfriends or whatever, but I think it can be said that the benefits outweigh the negatives in those aspects.
So yeah, I think you did the right thing. :o

[Miss Modular]

This is actually a pretty good idea for a thread.

I've been trying to cut down on my message board posts. Although it's not as bad as it used to be for me, it still can be distracting a lot of the time. Any major drama that goes on at message boards that can be carried over into your personal life, and that's not good at all.

One year ago this past Saturday, I hit a serious low and began counseling. I was overanalyzing everything, hated my existence, and felt like a failure for not having fulfilled what I believed was my true potential. Aside from internet stuff, I feel that I've had to let go of old emotions, old perceptions in order to move ahead. I began reading a lot of stuff on using your intuition and stuff like that. These past few months have been good for me. For the first time in my adult life, I feel genuinely happy, even if not I'm quite where I want to be, physically. I feel like things can only get better.

Now if I can just get my driver's license, everything will fall into place.

[george]

one day a few years ago (during my severance period when i go laid off from a pretty high paying job that i hated) i woke up in my bedroom and looked around and there was beer bottles, bags of dope, traces of other drugs, and just generally the sort of mess you'd find in a heavy drug users den. i was stunned by how far i had fallen out of the life i had lived before i just gave up.

i decided in that moment to get my shit together. i cut out drinking, all other drugs aside from pot (i just recently gave pot up too, sad to say but for awhile i really needed it to get by) and started taking on one problem at a time. i have been through a huge amount of shit since that morning, but every bit of trouble was directly related to fixing the problems in my life.

i have very few problems right now, there is a lot of change going on, and things are tough sometimes, but it is all the good kind of shit that hopefully will lead me to a peaceful, quiet existence.

but as for happiness, i really doubt i will ever be really happy again. most of the time i feel like a ghost in my own life.