My Addiction

[Unknown Brother]

This is something that I've been wrestling with the past few weeks and it's time I get back on track. When I came back to FL my life was falling apart. My girlfriend of seven years had moved out, I lost the best job I've ever had (which I was way overpaid for and one I moved to another city to obtain) I've been on EI since I was replaced. The kicker is I was so overpaid that when I do go back to work in my field, I'm going to be making about half what I was. While I'm on EI I'm making more, and I'm still behind in my bills and my credit is ruined. The stress of this time limit keeps me up at night and caused me to start smoking again and I've been drinking almost ever day since that time just to sleep through the night.

Needless to say I was in the darkest depression of my life and I used FL to escape my own reality, sometimes putting 10+ hours into it a day. Subconsciously I knew that I needed to quit, but I couldn't pull the trigger.

This morning I woke up, and I had thought a year has gone by, and I was in the same place I was now. Struggling with bills, being an alcoholic and thinking I wasted that whole year to figure my next plan out, playing FL. Only it hasn't been a year, it's been six months. It was a real eye opener for me, almost like I went back in time to recover my situation.   So I'm going to have to bow out.

I feel like I had the character I've always wanted to in Rheinian. I really enjoyed playing him and I thank everyone who interacted and helped progress his story. I unfortunately feel like my current character Agmeel Bramco is a bit holed in his own RP at my own fault. When I rolled him Tribunal were hurting and I thought a single minded law keeper would be fun to play, so I went the construct route. I found it was difficult to branch out of my own rp to have conversations and my own opinions on him. As @Rygothrancalled me, Robocop was fun, although not a good followup to Cyprian and Rheinian. So many times I wanted to try and talk to the knights in this war to try and find a middle ground, but I really couldn't, it would have gone against his own RP in my mind anyway.

 

So with that being said, thanks to everyone for this distraction in my life I honestly needed it at the time, but it's time to face the world and rebuild my life again. I'll probably be peeking at the forums from time to time, but I'm going to do everything I can not to roll another character. (Maybe an Ip ban? It would be appreciated.)

[Rygothran]

 

Good luck UB. You will be missed. 

The underwear at Goodwill is nice, ask me how I know.

[Tantangel]

You should start with your bills to see what you can cut out entirely or at least reduce while you're not working. If you have a lot of subscriptions to varying websites or TV apps, I'd say start with those. If your house payment/rent is too high, find a roommate to help with the bills. Ween off the alcohol. That will probably save you a lot of money once you can quit drinking without any negative affects. I'm not saying don't take a break, take it and make sure it lasts for a minimum of 6 months, but I'd highly recommend that you do so until you've gotten things back in order and you're able to play without issue. Also a minimum of a year would be better than 6 months. Start going to AA meetings if you're serious about ceasing to drink alcohol. Support groups are very beneficial. Ultimately though, do what needs to be done to get your life back on track. You don't want to try trading off one addiction for another so everything in moderation.

[Anume]

Take care of your real life first. If you come back, try to keep your hours at something sane, e.g. not more than 2 hours a day or less. You brought a lot of fun into fl and I hope we'll be seeing you again, eventually.

Good luck!

[Magick]

If you need to take a break, take a break.  It's not the first time, and it probably won't be the last.  You get you sorted first, that's the most important.  And if you want or need second or third opinions on how to do that, there's always the OOC forums or PMs.  Don't be shy in using them, even if it's just to vent.

 

 

2 hours ago, Unknown Brother said:

... sometimes putting 10+ hours into it a day. Subconsciously I knew that I needed to quit, but I couldn't pull the trigger.

10 minutes ago, Anume said:

... try to keep your hours at something sane, e.g. not more than 2 hours a day or less.

For those people that have difficulty, you should be able to set up at least a notification on most clients to tell you how long you've been playing.  I know that many show the time connected at somewhere on the client, but it's often overlooked, but you should easily be able to display it in your window.  This way you have an unbiased external notification of how long you've played that you can't justify "just five more minutes" to.

For Zmud, you can do something like:
#ALARM TimeLimit {-60:00} {#ECHO Time played: 1 hr}
#ALARM TimeLimit {-90:00} {#ECHO Time played: 1 hr 30 m}

And so on.  If you want to get dastardly, continue with:
#ALARM TimeLimit {-120:00} {#ECHO Time played: 2 hours.;#ECHO Your client will close in 5 minutes whether you're connected or not.}
#ALARM LimitReached {-125:00} {#ECHO Goodbye;#SEND quit;#ALARM Goodbye {+5} {#CMD File|Exit}}

Though I did throw in the "#send quit" to at least attempt logging off before closing the client.

[Mali]

Gotto kick that stuff, man... like Bob.