Going to bed by 10pm and stop playing World of Warcraft - Day 7

Good day boys and girls!

Welcome to another entry on this journey:

1. Go to bed by 10pm
2. Stop playing World of Warcraft (again).

Today is the final entry on our 7-day journey. You can check out the intro to the series for more details.

Let's finish the last entry on our journey.

Day 7 (Weekend)

1. Waking up 🌅
   I woke up at a decent time (8:30am) and looked at my phone. I got a message from a friend asking me to meet him at the tennis court.

   I happily accepted his invitation. We don't just play tennis but exchange perspectives to help each other out. I guess you can say we mentor each other.

   The whole meeting took 3 hours. Yes, 3 hours. We were having fun playing tennis and giving each other some life advice.

   It was a great time.

   The meeting re-energized my social batteries. I felt good coming home.

2. Relaxing (again) 😌
   It was lunch time already.

   I finished the breakfast left over and decided to crash on the couch while eating. Everyone was busy doing their own thing. But what else can you do in another rainy, relaxing day?

3. Setback, or is it?
   As I got control back of my TV, I decided to watch some YouTube videos. No, not the cat videos. Sometimes I enjoy watching videos on Game Of Thrones or something related to mythology.

   And I probably should've done that. Instead, I ended up clicking a World of Warcraft YouTube video related to the new expansion.

   I'm was into Warcraft lore since late 90s. It's the main (and probably only real) reason why I played these games.

   More details in Observations section

4. Anxious afternoon 😰
   After eating and watching some more videos, it was time to visit finances and other things that weren't handle during the weekend.

   To my pleasant surprise, not much needed to be handled. The missus had done an excellent job on updating YNAB.

   This is where my anxiety kicked in. What am I going to do now? It's early in a Sunday afternoon. It's hot and muggy outside.

   Then I remembered the WoW videos and remembered I never reached my personal goal: get a character level capped (lv. 110). That's all I wanted ever since I start playing again back in January.

   More details in Observations section

5. Fun again 😊
   After the game finished installing and ate dinner, it was 7pm already.

   I knew what I wanted to play. My childhood favorite race and class - Orc Warrior. 😈

   

   Orc grunts always drew me in. Maybe it was the way it was drawn. Maybe because they were the "bad" guys and I was tired of the knight in shinning armor. Whatever the case is, I made one and it was fun again!

   I felt like a bad ass, smashing skulls with my battle ax. Screw leveling, this is where the game was at.

   I had fun. Fun I haven't had in very long time.

How did we do? 🤔

1. Get to bed by 10pm? ❌
   I was in bed by 10:05pm. But couldn't catch my zzzz until past midnight. My judge screwed with me after a few hours.

   It felt like one of my parents scolding me. You know that feeling when you did something they told you not to do? Yeah, that one.

   More details in Observations section

2. Stop playing World of Warcraft ❌
   OK. Failed but not failed?

   Failed because I loaded the game again.

   Not failed because I stopped playing for 7 days straight! The last time I played WoW was early last Sunday afternoon.

   I think that also pissed off my judge: I reached a goal. A goal, it thought I couldn't reach.

Observations 👀

I was hooked when I was watching the videos at lunch time.

I was hooked again because of all the areas I didn't get to experience yet. You see, the real reason why I wanted to play WoW this time around was to experience the new (to me) expansion content I didn't get to experience over the years. I'm talking about Mist Of Pandaria onwards (yes, it has been a while).

I don't care for gear or raiding content. I'm more interested in following story lines and finding out what happens to whom. Explore new areas, kill things I never killed before or die horribly due to a noob mistake.

When I went to bed I let my judge talk and talk. I figured it'd get tired after a while.

But I gave it too much ammunition: I played WoW and under its eyes: I was a failure, a loser, a good-for-nothing, selfish bastard who had not met its ideal standards.

Between you and I, I believe it was pissed for another reason: I had fun.

Your judge doesn't like it when you have fun.

I don't know about yours but mine doesn't let me or wants to have fun because there's still so much to do. Also, having fun it's not part of being a responsible adult.

It sounds like my mother. Ha! It is my mother's voice I hear every time I hear it scolding me.

It works so well that it tries to make you feel guilty for having fun in life.

Have you ever feel that way: you are having fun and then feel guilty for it?

Conclusion

I'm going to move my schedule and be in bed by 10:30pm. As I talked previously, I got to bed by 10:30pm multiple times. Eventually, I will push to get in by 10pm.

Thanks to this experiment I gained insight and clarity on what I want to do without letting the judge guilt-trip me.

So what does Jose want? Simple:

Level up my orc warrior to level cap and enjoy some of the content I haven't experienced yet. Go thru the story line, you know, smashing some skulls whether they be demons or Alliance 😘 (Calm down, I also have Alliance characters!)

Up next, a wrap up blog post with more thoughts about my judge and what's next on the journey!

What would your journey say?

As always, thanks for reading.

Till soon!

Comments

[Offirmo]

A bit sad you didn't make it.

[Jose Gonzalez]

Hey Offirmo,

Thanks for reading.

Technically speaking, I stopped playing early Sunday afternoon. And I re-started playing at 7pm the following afternoon. So, I "made" it.

If looking at end-to-end, you are right, I didn't make it. However, I discovered deeper self-insight ( or my inner judge) thanks to this 7-day challenge.

I'm working on a follow-up post to this adventure where I go into more details on my observations. Keep an eye for it :)