do you ever wish that you had a sponsor for everything...???

I think I've got much better at self-management in the last few years. Still below where I want to be but I'll give myself some credit. I get your point Scott but other people's input still triggers my inner cussedness tbh so maybe I just need to keep sponsoring myself

My impulse control is so bad right now I feel like I need to go to some kind of meeting.

My gambling went from manageable ($10 - $20) to dropping $600 last week (thankfully, I won, and miraculously won every stupid bet I've placed recently sans one). Part of it came from my brother being distressed that Mom was asking him for money the week before his wedding and me trying to win $200 for him at March Madness.

Not just that though. Drinking also started to creep back. But now that the wedding's over I'm feeling a bit more in control. I tend to act out more when I'm overwhelmed

i am not a halfway person. i am all in when i am in.

so sad but sometimes i miss being hungover! how sad is that? not REALLY hungover but my baseline hangover that made me not give a shit about stupid stuff and all day it was just me and my pals joe and smokey. mmm...cigs and coffee. definitely curbed my appetite. after they were gone is when i learned that i can eat 40 pounds of sugar a day. and 40 pounds of wheat and salt.

by the time i am 80 i will have this life thing down i swear.

I read something years ago which was probably faux anthropology about a tribe that favoured the hangover as a state of enlightenment, and as I say it was surely bullshit but I get the meaning behind that bullshit

yeah i can dig that. sadly. it makes you really vulnerable but also somehow impervious. which is hard combo to come by naturally.

My gambling went from manageable ($10 - $20) to dropping $600 last week (thankfully, I won, and miraculously won every stupid bet I've placed recently sans one).

This is why I just can't give myself access to things. Even an innocuous game, if I find myself spending too much time with it I've got to completely uninstall (and even uninstall Steam sometimes), just saying no to clicking the icon isn't happening. Having access to a gambling app would probably ruin my life.

Yup. And I've uninstalled the app about 70 times lol

Scott, which stupid video game do you play?

it's embarrassing to say here because people here probably play really complex games that take forever to get good at. i played it years ago and it got really bad. i got really bad tennis elbow from it! i went to a doctor! we got rid of our PS4 though and it was a relief. but during the pandemic cyrus bought a PS5 from a friend of his and he basically stopped using it after a minute and i just needed something mindless cuz i was kinda going out of my mind so i bought the game again. it's called Resogun. i play Resogun: Demolition a lot. if you want mindless it does the trick. even after all this time i'm still 11th in the world. i have a new user now though. i'm not as fast as i used to be. i'm 23rd in the world with my new user. i don't play it nearly as much as i once did. i think back then it was just an avoidance thing. i became obsessive with it. i probably played a total of months if you did the math.
i used to play the Survival mode a lot back then. its an arcade-style game with one life but if you get good at it one game can be an hour. i'm still in the top 100 there but people got really good at it. like, did-they-find-some-kind-of-hack good. it is not easy to get past a certain point.
anyway, long story short, i'm an idiot. and a side-scrolling idiot at that. Defender will always be my number one. since 1981.

but, hey, i didn't smoke one friggin' cigarette during a worldwide pandemic! i am still proud of myself for that.

https://blog.playstation.com/tachyon/2022/03/96710313f54ed93e9ff0c6704550e38b73bb832e.jpg

the thing is, its not even really relaxing. its just a release. it can even be stressful. its my meth i guess. but there are times when you get in that game flow, whatever gamers call it, where it can feel really peaceful. when i'm playing well. when i'm not its just aggravating. usually that's when i stop. which is good. that's progress.
its an old game but people all over the world still play it. so its not just me. i looked and on the weekly challenge 729 users have played that this week. you'd think it would be forgotten by now.

also, one more thing: if i were delusional i might think that when they were developing this game that there was a group of people in Finland saying "okay, now what sounds do you think would be ideal for scott seward in greenfield massachusetts in some primal asmr way?"

i mean the crunchy sounds and even just the feel of the game were made for me. people must have games like that. i will occasionally buy a game thinking i'll try something new and i last maybe 1 or 2 days and i never play them again.