About me: (or: all the many things I got not and got going for me):
Studying
Since ages I study computer science (CS). I began in 2010 and got the bachelor degree in CS in 2016
(yes, it took me 11 semesters to finish. But at least i did finish).
In my garduate studies (master) I did it again (taking a long time with it).
So far I got all credits from the exams but I still have to write my master thesis.
I have time left until the end of september 2020 and will begin in a couple of days.
In 2017 I chose to pick up another topic preparing for my master thesis after I already got the necessary creadits
from other exams. So I had to wait 2 semester to finish this new topic (called neurocognition). That was
in august 2018. Then I helped a foreign student friend to write his master thesis.
After that I still needed one year of really understanding a paper I had to do an presentation
on and write an essay about. It took me until 2019 to start with making the presentation.
So far I finished the first version of the presentation (I'll talk with my mentor today (mar 3rd 2020) about that)
and almost finished the essay (which is basically just the long version of my presentation about this scientific paper).
So I'm not only fucked up in the PMO area of my life but have also a behavioral addiction to my lifestyle
(internet entertainment, hobbies, and sleeping). But that is more or less the problem of everyone that
has a similar age as us and you guys battle it too.
It basically goes back to how internet research, youtube and 9gag (those 3 in my case) have erroded the willpower to
have sustained focus to being able to study in the first place.
When I started my master I felt like constantly battling to stay awake in university, despite having
slept a lot.
I had really hard time getting into gears with my bachelor thesis. I would go to university but would
get stuck all day just researching random things on the internet. Boy, it was interessting and not bad from
the knowlegde I got and how much I enjoyed it, but it also, very similar to the porn, made working require so
much willpower that spend maybe 3 months mainly just researching stuff all day.
I still managed to perform pretty well in the end and also managed to work a lot. I'm still kind of proud of
the last three weeks (where the submission date was already shifted for exactly those three weeks) where
pretty much worked 16 hours each day from monday to saturday (on sunday you couldn't work there, university is closed).
I have read a lot about internet and entertainment addiction. I needed to cut back on internet
use for entertainment.
After all the exams in my master, that where necessary for credits. I basically had just one lecture over 2 semesters.
Since I needed the lecture to understand the scientific article I needed to do the presentation and essay about,
I pretty much got way to deep into slacking off in that year. That was really bad.
When I tried to study I felt really bad:
I fully felt my backpain, I got instantly tired and overall had to burn immense willpower to get myself to study
just shortly. One time it got so insanly absurd that I could almost not make myself look at the scienctific article.
I had developed such an aversion to working on it that I could not look at it! WTF!!
I baby-stepped it and eventually could start reading slowly.
The next thing was also just thinking about it.
Took immense willpower. The best way to put it how it felt is like that first moment in the coldest possible
shower that taxes all the willpower to make yourself stay in.
(I did cold showers for about 2 years exclusivly and it was almost every time easier than studying.)
That whole thing, not being able to work and not having any desire for real girls got me into a harsh negative
spiral. I was fairly severly depressed, because of all the things I needed to do where just hurting me,
but the is the only way to ever get better, while simultaniously feeling that it will never get easier. That was a
very tough time.
Middle of 2019:
To not slip back into internet entertainment escape and don't follow my hobbies (which would be escape too)
a resorted to the radical method to basically cut out everything besides work and sleep.
I got maybe 1 to 2 hours of work done in total each day, the rest of the day I tried to rest and sleep
or force myself to think about it. Yes, just recalling the words from that scientific article required
heaps of willpower.
Things slowly got better and could handle and get away from my addictive negative depressive thoughts.
All the way through this I allways knew that only working can make things better for me and that I had
to go through the mental and emotional pain each day again and again.
As of now (march 3rd 2020) I'm pretty much got my thoughts handled that I don't really slip into depression,
if so only rarely and shortly, but that is normal, I guess.
The nofap streak is going good so far and I'm having a MUCH more easier time working on getting my damn degree finished.
So things are not to bad. There is still much work to be done in getting rid of bad habits and sticking to good habits.
What really got me into the whole idea of cutting out everything was the idea of the dopamine fast.
I can only recommend you this youtube video on this topic (also from a guy who battled porn addiction and has coached guys on it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icu8hwo4mZY (channel "Universal Man", title "Becoming a Man of Action via the Dopamine Detox (MoA #01)").
In essence the main idea is that guys who are in prison or are studying aboard with not much interet access
get so bored that it just becomes natural to do the things that benefit you.
He talks about little by little replacing your bad habits with good ones or at least not so bad ones. For instance when someone battles porn addiction he is better of distracting himself with videogames or entertainment to not give
in to PMOing. On another level cut out things like excessive entertainment for escaping and replace them with
spending time working on your goals in life.
After whining about how bad my life is ^^ here are the things I got going for me:
goals in my passion:
My hobby is playing music and getting really good in playing it.
I strive to be pretty good at drums, guitar and singing as well as screaming.
I also want to get a good baselevel of skill in playing the piano.
Further I want to be good at reading music, as well as recognicing intervalls and chords as internalising
a reference note to really know how to play a melody (not just the samy intervalls but higher or lower but exactly that melody). Or simpler, you here a tone and can identify it.
All this is to someday be able to know how to play the stuff you hear in your head.
I want to be able to play on the level of tech death metal bands as Nile (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44jRUTKDLYI 'NILE - "Execration Text" (Official Music Video)') both in skills of drums and guitar. But drums are the priority.
Later I want to form a slipknot tribute band and sing and scream in it.
Maybe also someday a music school for metal.
Probably going to start a youtube channel in the next years and cover some songs.
What i did so far in aquiring musical skills:
I started playing the guitar in 2005 and started drums and vocals in 2006.
I've been practicing mostly guitar with maybe about 3 to 5 hours of practice every week.
Vocal training was probably 1 hour per week and drums maybe 2 hours per week, because I couldn't practice
drums and vocals at home.
Maybe somewhat around 2010 I got some practice pads for drumming at home. Started practicing little bit more.
Maybe about 3-4 hours per week.
In the big house of my grandmother I had (and have) a rehearsal room since 2006 and had also an
acoustic drumkit there. In 2008 I got also amplifierers for guitar and vocals and met with
3 other guys and jamed pretty much once in most weekends of the year from 2008 to 2010.
I continued to jam with my drummer basically until today but effectively the last time we met was in 2018 for
jaming or working on song ideas. Since then it's on hiatus.
The big changing thing came when my family and I moved to the big house of my grandmother in august 2016. So I
lived next door to my rehearsal room where I could practice drums and vocals every day if I wanted.
I buckled into putting more hours into drum practice and would do around 10 hours per week. Not too bad, but
the excellent pro drummers spend a couple of years doing many hours of practice each day 2 to 4 to 6 to 8 to 10 hours every day. The periodes I practiced drums the most I got about 15 to 20 hours per week.
Guitar and vocals got about 5-9 hours per week from 2016 on.
In summer 2017 I fullfilled one of my smaller dreams of buying an old but functional upright paino.
It turned out to be not quiet working as it should but I got it fixed and now it plays well.
I added also the piano practice of about 10 to 15 hours each week.
So in 2017 to 2018 my day often was structured like this:
morning drumming for about 2 hours,
than vocal practice for 45 minutes and screaming practice for about 30 minutes, then showering.
Next piano practice for 2 to 3 hours and then often but not always about 1 hour of guitar practice.
I also did about 1 to 2 hours of practicing racing in a simulation called iracing which is one of the most accurate modeled
race simulations out there (for normal gamers). I would mostly practice improving my laptimes on the Nurburgring Nordschleife
with a GT3 racecar (McLaren 12C gt3, later Ferrari 488 gt3).
Usually, instead of trying to get myself to study I ended up watching youtube (mostly self development / dating advice / pick up content (from RSD : real social dynamics, Owen cook)).
I got quite good at guitar, drums and vocals but the way I practiced had an fundamental flaw that I could only identify in 2018. In all my instruments I wanted get fast and for the vocal I wanted to be able to sing heigher.
The flaw in practice was that I tried to play fast with just using a lot of power. Through 2018 I realized that you can only
get really fast and good if you try to get your technique as relaxed as possible (so the opposite of how I
used to practice).
From 2019 on I pretty much practice mostly only drums for about 7-10 hours per week and often guitar with maybe again
about 5 hours per week.
I stopped practicing vocals because I had constant slight throat pain and had to cough.