How to Be a Healthy Gamer

In this episode, I dive into my personal relationship with video games and explore what it means to be a healthy gamer. I share how gaming went from a source of comfort and escape in my teenage years to something that sometimes held me back socially, physically, and emotionally.

We talk honestly about the negative side effects of over-gaming—including isolation, lack of exercise, dating struggles, and a false sense of accomplishment—and how video games can quietly replace real-world growth. I also break down practical ways to build structure and boundaries around gaming, so it can stay a fun part of life without taking over.

This episode is especially for anyone who feels gaming may be impacting their motivation, relationships, career, or overall fulfillment—and wants a healthier balance.

Gaming Addicts Anonymous (GAA) – A 12-step support group for people struggling with compulsive gaming
👉 https://www.gamingaddictsanonymous.org

 (Online meetings available)

Thanks for taking the time to listen. Feel free to reach out with any feedback, or if you'd like to collaborate in any way. Peace!

@daltonrdan on Instagram

Chapters

• 0:46 Disclaimer: Who This Episode is For
• 3:18 What This Episode is About
• 4:14 How Gaming Became My Safe Haven
• 6:25 MMORPGs, Isolation, and Escaping Real Life
• 10:00 College Years and Realizing Gaming Was a Problem
• 14:39 What Happens When Gaming Has No Structure
• 18:29 The False Sense of Accomplishment
• 22:15 How to Be a Healthy Gamer
• 35:11 Replacing Gaming With a Full, Meaningful Life

Transcript

What's up you guys? We're back with another episode of the podcast. It's been a little while, but I'm happy to be back and I'm happy to be talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart and that is gaming, video games. In this episode, we're going to be talking about how to be a healthy gamer. A quick disclaimer before I break into all of this stuff, if you're a healthy gamer already, meaning that you live a life with video games and you have found a way to helpily implement them into your life, meaning you come to them here and then, you play them and you have a healthy and balanced life outside of them and you don't find it difficult to manage this activity in your life, then this episode may not really benefit you. I may talk about a lot of things that you already really have a firm understanding about. I just know that a lot of this stuff is stuff that I've been applying over the past few years and that if I look back to when I was a teenager or when I in my early 20s or when I was going to school, I had a very, very poor relationship with games and I still struggle with them a little bit to this day and I probably always will as long as I have them in my life, just because they're enjoyable and sometimes it's difficult to have good boundaries and maintain structure around things that I enjoy, period, and gaming is a huge thing that I enjoy, so. But if you feel like you already have a handle of that in your life, a handle on that in life, then you may not need this information but still stick around maybe you'll learn something. Yeah, but this is mainly for people who feel like gaming is oftentimes a negative influence on them or at least in some ways is a negative influence on them and this could look like playing it so much that you don't get enough physical activity and exercise, playing it so much that you're not engaging with friends or family or playing it so much that it's impacting your job and your performance at work and in life or it's distracting you and you're not dating and you're not trying to get out and make friends do things, you know pursue interests hobbies. I mean gaming is an interest in hobby but there's so much more to life than just playing games. That could be an opinion but I hold a firm strong stance on that, I think that there's so much more to life than anything you could do on a computer so or whatever a gaming console, so if you feel like you struggle then this is going to be for you and hopefully someone can benefit from this. Yeah, before we talk about that because what I want to be talking about is how to form better structure and create better boundaries around gaming and also some of the really negative side effects of playing too much video games. So I want to talk about that and lay it out very plainly, hey this is what happens when you use them too much and I want to talk about the dirty, dirty side effects and how this can negatively impact your life. And then I want to talk about what good structure looks like, how do we implement it in a way that is healthy, that we can enjoy and it doesn't take away from other aspects of our life? So yeah, but before we break into that I actually just want to talk about me, little old me and my history with video games and my love for gaming and how that all started and what it looked like and my relationship with video games throughout my younger years. So yeah, where did that start for me? It was, I actually, I think my first, the first game I ever played was on an Nintendo DS and it was my grandma and she had Harry Potter on Nintendo DS. And I remember being at her house when I was younger playing that game and it was fun. It was never an issue, I think at that age it wasn't an issue I do remember as I got a little bit older, I think I had maybe it wasn't in Nintendo DS. I'm thinking the Game Boy, that's what I played Harry Potter on. I'm 26 years old so I don't know how, I guess I probably eight or nine when that was the big thing. By the age of, I think probably when I was 10 or 11, I was playing on my Nintendo DS and that's when I started playing Pokemon and stuff like that. And those are my first years of me really sitting in the house and people like, oh come outside, let's play and I'm like, no, I don't want to do that. I'd rather sit and, you know, play this game. Um. 
Yeah, and then, and then it, it moved into Xbox, Xbox 360 playing Halo and, uhm, Call of Duty, Man, Call of Duty. I remember the day that I discovered both Halo and Call of Duty, probably within the same year of my life, uhm, but I remember that. And the amount of time that me and my friends spent together playing Call of Duty and, you know, just grinding out hours of Call of Duty in those terrible lobbies with the trash talking and the racism and my gosh, the things people would say. I would love to just jump back in one of those lobbies and just listen to some of the crap that came out of heavils mouths. It was like a free-for-all of just, just really, really terrible things. 
Yeah, but played a lot of Xbox with my friends, uhm, and then I got my first computer when I was probably 14 or 15. I feel like that's more so when things kind of took off because that's when I discovered MMORPGs which are massively multiplayer online games. I played a lot of World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, and I mean, yeah, those games for people who don't know, they, it's pretty much life inside of a video game. You, you, they've, the developers of these games, they create an entire planet, an entire world and I'm getting kind of excited talking about it because it's really, they're really cool. They are so cool. The developers create this entire world for you to explore. They create different races so you can create your character in this world and you, you know, you decide what it looks like, what your character looks like, what their name is and then you go about choosing a class or a profession, you know, like, you know, how do you fight things? Are you a warrior? Are you a mage or, you know, and then as you play the game, you, you level up, you fight things, you kill things, you, you earn titles, you earn weapons, you earn armor, you earn mounts, which is like, oh, you, a dragon that you can ride that, that no one else has, you know, like, and it's like, you gain status in this game and you, you progress and you earn things and it's, it's really satisfying and it's very, it's very fun and, you know, low stakes obviously, right, it's a video game, not, nothing really much happens if you die. So it's, there's not much risk involved in like pursuing these things, which is, we'll talk about that later and why I think that's actually kind of negative. 
But that's when it really took off from me playing games like that. I mean, I just, I love them. I mean, there's so much fun. Yeah. And I think especially in this time of my life, I was around 14 or 15 years old. I was very isolated. You know, this is when I was moving into high school, going through puberty. I was very uncomfortable with my body very uncomfortable with myself, very intimidated by my peers, women my age were, you know, like, you know, growing and, you know, and very awesome ways, but that I didn't understand and that were intimidating to me and the guys my age to, I, I hit puberty pretty late and I did. And I remember when guys my age, when I was younger, like, they were, they were getting strong. They were, you know, gett muscles and, you know, like, built and like, and I just, I was not, I was, I was pretty, you know, I don't want to say weak, but I wasn't athletic. So this is a difficult time in my life and socializing in school was difficult for me. So I found, I found a lot of joy and freedom and, um, I don't know what else the other word to use. In video games and I just, and my friends that I would play it with, it was just such a safe haven for me, and it was a place where I could go and I could earn things, I could become something, I could become things and I could do things that felt meaningful and a space that was, was comfortable to me because life didn't feel comfortable, right. And yeah, so gaining was, was my place. I just, I loved to play games. And as I moved, I moved into college, you know, 18 years old, um, I went to college and that's a whole thing, man. I didn't need to go to college at 18. I really didn't at that point in my life. I didn't know about myself, what I wanted to do, who I was. I, I didn't have the, um, the discipline to succeed in school. It's, I'm, it's amazing that I actually got through school honestly, it really is because I didn't have the discipline to actually do that. But I did and I got through it, which is crazy. Um. yeah. And uhm, but while I was in school, it was a lot. I mean, I played so much video games. Another thing I wanna talk about in this podcast eventually is porn. And, because I also think that's, that can be a pretty negative thing, especially for young men. Yeah, so, I mean, I was consuming a lot of porn in school and college. And it was a lot of video game playing, a lot of smoking weed, a lot of drinking, you know. And that was, so, this, especially around this age, around the age of 18 to 21, it was a lot of, a mixing of substances. So, it wasn't just video games, but I definitely over-invested in video games a lot. And it was one of the things that I was doing way too much. And yeah, I mean, this was obviously a very difficult time. And this was, this was when I started to realize that my gaming habits were a problem. And I think that I did realize when I was in high school, I did. And I think there was actually one year, I think my junior year of high school, I put the games away because I wanted to socialize more. I wanted to date. I wanted to experience life more. And I realized that it was hindering my ability to do that. Just having these games that being such a huge part of my life. But it was in college when I really realized it was a problem because, you know, I'm getting older. I'm growing up and people around me are beginning to pursue careers. You know, and dating was becoming much more important to me. I mean, I really wanted to have a girlfriend. But I didn't know how. And honestly, I felt like I invested so much time in these other things that I probably wasn't very attractive to many girls, especially the girls I was really into. I feel like they were, they weren't into me. And I didn't know how to talk to them. I didn't even try. It was a very awkward time in my life because I spent such little time around my peers in socializing or trying to make friends or do anything. And I spent a lot of time playing games. And I realized that, oh, man, I really don't want to do that. And around my junior year or senior year of college, so the time I was 21, leaning on almost 22 years old, I did. I did put them away. And my life did change a little bit. And I made an effort to join groups and socialize and exercise a lot more. And all stuff that we're going to talk about in a little bit. And later in this episode. My life did start turning around a little bit. And over the course of the past few years, I've attempted that my best to really focus more on the people in my life and community and friendships, nurturing friendships around me, and dating and exercising and pursuing hobbies and interests outside of things like video games. Because I realize that there's just so much more value to investing in those things a lot of the time. Or 90% of the time there's a lot more value in investing in those things. Just because they pay you back, you know, whereas gaming just doesn't really do that a lot of the times. Yeah. And this is a work in progress for me and I'm still learning, but I have definitely learned. I've learned a lot and I want to communicate it. Yeah. So what I'm going to argue a lot for in this episode for anybody who feels like they're struggling with video games or video game addiction is to have structure and boundaries around the games. Boundaries, meaning you decide when you're going to play them. How long what games do you play? Who do you play them with? What are your boundaries? And that's pretty much the same thing as saying, what is the structure that you have around these games that you play again? How much are you playing them? We'll talk about that in a second. How to create that structure. But first, what I want to talk about is what happens when you don't have structure. And I kind of just touched on it in my story tidbits of what happens, right? But I have some bullet points here that I'm going to go through. What happens when you don't have structure with gaming? And you just kind of do it whenever you feel like it, and you overindulge. And there's no structure. You just do it all the time. What happens? Firstly, it leads to anti social behavior. And when I think about this, I think of you're not interacting with your family that much. If you have a partner, if you have children, it could take away from that. Also, community, like, are you building community around you and friendships, you know, friendships people that you can rely on, talk to, speak to, go grab a drink with, go outside with, go on a hike with, things like this. Do you, are you able to build community around you while, like, while playing games, which is a structure thing we're gonna talk about, but, um, often when you're playing too many video games, you don't take the time to invest in your community. So, that's, that's one big thing. Another thing is, um, dating, you know, it makes it difficult to invest in, in dating, which is important, which is valuable. And I'm speaking for myself, maybe people don't feel like they need to go out and build community, or maybe they have community and games. Me personally, I like having, like, groups of friends to hang out with out in the real world and go to do things with, and do, um, active things, and things like that, and, and also dating. I find it difficult when I'm playing lots of video games all the time to, to feel confident and to feel like I can, you know, go out and, and approach girls and, and go on dates. Or at least it takes away from, it takes away from my motivation to do that, and it takes away from time that I would usually dedicate to to try and to do that, or to go on dates. So yeah, it can lead to anti-social behavior. The second one is a lack of exercise, which this actually further enforces, you know, a lack of dating opportunities. If you're not exercising, if you're not moving your body, and if you're not, you know, just healthy and individual, that's, it doesn't, you're not very attractive, right? And it makes it difficult to go out there and attract a partner. So it leads to, at least to that. It also reduces your ability to move in the world and enjoy life, you know, I think of hiking and swimming and are playing with sports with friends. If you go on a ski trip with friends or family, you know, how, how much can you really enjoy your body in that way? And there's so many different things we do with our body, surfing or, yeah, swimming, like I said, or diving, and whatever you like to do, whatever you want to do in this life. If you're spending too much time on your butt doing anything like that, then it's going to take away from your, your physical ability. Playing with children, I mean, that's another big reason. I want to be healthy and fit. If I have children one day, I want to, I want to be able to lift them up, throw them around, run around with them and not get tired, you know. So, yeah, lack of structure around games can lead to you being out of shape, right? And then the last one that I wanted to talk about was it supplies you with a false sense of accomplishment. 
I like I was talking about these MMORPGs that I played, really any game does this, but that was a big one. It provides you with these rewards and these titles and these accomplishments and these feelings of like, like you're achieving things when the achievements that you make, although they are achievements in the game, you know, you're still you are making tangible achievements. Like they are, but they also, they don't translate into the real world. They don't feed into you. Right? Like if you go, if you go earn a job, that's going to feed into all aspects of your life. If you go, if you go date and you, you have a girlfriend, that's going to, that is going to translate into all areas of your life, you know. If you, if you make a new friend, that's going to, in life, like that's going to translate into all areas of your life, if you, if you exercise and you hit a new PR on squat, you know, like you squat 250 pounds, 300 pounds, like that's going to, that's going to translate into every aspect of your life. Like I'm imagining for me, it's like, you know, put in my girlfriend and my shoulders and running around, you know, like being strong, like that's important to me, you know. And it, and it, it lights me up and it really inspires me, you know, being strong. And, yeah. And so there's all these ways in the world that we can go about finding a sense of accomplishment. And it's important that we're not doing it too much in these games because it, it feeds us. And it makes us feel like we're really doing things and we're really accomplishing things with, they're not tangible. And we can't, we can't really, they're not tangible. I don't, I don't know if I'm using that word correctly. What I mean is, they don't translate into our lives, they don't feed into us. And we really, we don't have much to show for it when we spend so much time accomplishing things in these games. You know, so well it feels nice and it, and maybe something that seems cool, it's, We're not really doing a lot for ourselves. Yeah. Yeah, and this reduces, when you accomplish things in games, it reduces the pressure that you may feel to go do it in other areas of your life. You know, if you sit down to play a game and you accomplish something, it feels good. If you don't have that, you might have this other pressure. You might be suppressing this pressure to go, to go work on yourself, develop skills and better your physical health, pursue a career, or do things that are very meaningful, making friends, dating, like I said, building relationships, building bonds. These are things that have been satisfying for us people for so long. They're ingrained in us to accomplish things, to move the needle in our life. It's important that we're doing that. And gaming almost, it does. It has a way of hijacking those systems in our mind that make us feel like we're moving the needle when there's really no needle that we can show. That's moving. Where is the needle? It's not even real. Yeah. I mean, there's actually, there's a game in my that I'm thinking about, that I've been playing recently, that I played from time to time. It does. It feels so good. It feels so good to accomplish things in it and to accomplish little things here and there. Yeah. I mean, I have to be careful, I have to remember, you know, wow, you know, like, this is powerful. It's so much fun. It's so enjoyable, but I can't let it take me away because it will. So, how can we game healthily? How can we be a healthy gamer? This is the this is the juicy stuff. All right, because it's such a it's a it's a very, very fun thing. So, how can we implement it into our lives? So, the first thing I'm going to recommend is that you allow specific allotments of time for yourself to game. And this may sound really, really what's the word? I don't know. This may sound like too much structure, but it's important. An I think it's important that you ask yourself, if you could take a break. Or if you could maintain structure. And if you can't, if you genuinely are somebody who feels like they could not structure themselves or allow themselves to take a break from games, say for a week or a month or however long, I actually want to recommend a resource that I mean, I recommend, which is called GAA. It's gamers gaming addicts anonymous. 
Yeah. And it's a 12-step program. It's it's related to alcoholics anonymous. And if anyone doesn't know much about these 12-step programs, or maybe if they have a bad taste in their mouth, let me just recommending it, or maybe they just don't know much about it, and they have a this negative view of what that is. I really recommend you look into it a little bit before you knock it. 12-step programs, the original 12-step program was called it's called Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's a it's a support group for people who struggle with drinking alcohol and I've realized that alcohol has a negative impact on their lives and they want to recover from that addiction. They want to put it away and they want to pour love into their life again and learn how to live without it or just learn how to live a healthy life. And many other 12-step programs have been created, almost branch programs from alcoholics anonymous that are very similar, but they treat different substances, I'm going to say that, or different negative behaviors or different ways of coping, meaning alcoholics treats people with that are abusing alcohol. Gaming addicts anonymous treats and supports people who struggle with video games. Narcotics anonymous treats people who are struggling with using narcotics. Then you have sex and love addicts anonymous which is people who compostably enter relationships and have sex and struggle with sex addiction or love addiction. 
Trying to think of other ones. 
There are many other ones. And I actually haven't tried gaming addicts anonymous, but I have enough experience with 12-step groups to know that this is a great resource. And that sounds almost silly to me because I haven't checked it out. I haven't even been to a meeting there so like that sounds ridiculous. But I just I know enough 12-step groups to know that if you if you look into this if you invest in it, I think if you if you give it a shot, you would find it. You would find it very helpful. The people in these communities are very self-aware and Then they, um, usually provide really, really great support around, uh, whatever behavior or substance it is that they're, um, supporting people and, um, recovering from. Yeah, and the point of these groups is to provide you support and awareness that your addiction is causing you harm, and then they help you and give you resources so that you can step away from it and create a better life for yourselves. And that'd be a whole other episode to talk about the 12 steps and all of that. But, um, I just, I recommend that you give it a shot, you look into it yourself and decide whether or not it's, uh, it's something for you. Um, right. And if you're, if you're not willing to do that, if you're not, if you're listening to me say that and you think, oh, whatever, I'm not going to try that. Um, I would at least recommend that you take a break from gaming or take a week break, take, you know, a month, six months, however long you can, um, if you, if you struggle with, um, the structure that I'm trying to, um, encourage. If you, you struggle with setting structure for yourself, I highly recommend you take a break, um, and find some support, whether that's a friend or family member or, um, some community around you that will support you in and creating more space from the video games. Um, because if you can't take a step back for a little bit, if you can't make, create some structure, I, you do have a problem. And, um, I recommend that you, you, you look at that a little bit deeper and you find some support, which is what GAA does. But, um, if you're not willing to go there, I think even just a friend can be very, very helpful, confiding in a friend about this, um, so that they can encourage you and, um, and support you. That's, that's, I had a few friends in, um, in college that we, we would talk about this back and forth about, wow, man, I'm really realizing that, you know, gaming is, is having a negative impact on my life. Yeah, man, I realized that too. And we did. We helped each other overcome that. And, um, so that's a very, very good resource just having friends you can talk about this with. Yeah, so I would recommend creating structure. And, um, that could look like, that could look as simple as, if you work a nine to five, um, saying, all right, I'm going to play for one hour, um, each night at, uh, I can play for one hour at the end of my day every, every weeknight. And then on weekends, oh, I can play for four hours on Saturday and Sunday evening, each, each evening. You know, if you're a, if you like to play games a lot, that could, that could probably sound pretty good, right? And I'm not going to play past nine p. m. You know, um, because I do know for gamers, oftentimes we have this problem of, uh, would not, not being able to turn it off. And all of a sudden, we're playing until 12 1 a. m. And we have to get up for work the next day. And it's terribly, terribly, um, as a terrible effect on our sleep. And that, that just has a terrible domino effect on every other aspect of our lives. So creating the structure and setting time allotments for yourself is really important. 
Uh, um, the next thing I want to talk about is the people you play with, you know, make sure that the people that you're engaging in this with are a positive influence on you. If you express to people that you're playing with that, I, I, man, I really want to go out and socialize more, you know, I, you know, I want to date, man, like, I want to go out and meet girls or I want to go out and meet guys. And I want to get out, you know, um, I want to date more, you know, and, you know, if people trivialize that, if the people you're playing with are trivializing that or don't think that's important or aren't taking you seriously, they may not be worth investing a lot of time in, right? Or, um, you know, if you express to them, yeah, man, I, you know, I want to create a social group outside, you know, outside of, you know, games. I want to go meet people, you know, whether, I know for a lot of people, that's church, you know, for me, it's been a men's group, men's group here in Austin. And again, I want to say this, I say this every single time I bring up the men's group. If you ever, if you ever, ever want to build a community for yourself and you're a man here in Austin, you should definitely reach out to me and come and join the men's group. I don't care who you are, you're welcome. Um, and, uh, I mean that. And, um, if you're a woman, um, I know of women's groups around here too, they're really, really great. There's plenty here in Austin. Austin is a great community. I don't know where you live. Um, and I'm sure that you can find communities wherever you are. But, uh, if you do live here in Austin, there's a lot of great communities here. Um, so just go out and look them up and, uh, go find them, go meet the people and be very intimidating to do that. Um, but it's very worth it. And, um, yeah. But if you're expressing to people, man, I really want to get out. I want to meet new people. I want to, and, you know, the people you're playing with. Either they aren't reciprocating that, or, especially if they are trivializing it, or if they are mocking you for that, then they may not be good people to get to play with because that's gonna, that's really gonna hold you down. And that's gonna, it's gonna be a really negative impact. 
Yeah, and, uhm, yeah, and I would say, uh, surround yourself with friends that have other interests too. Um, these may be your gaming buddies, you know, I mean, I think that sounds like such an ideal situation if you play with friends and you say, "Hey man, I really wanna start doing jujitsu. You wanna go to jujitsu with me?" Like, "Yeah man, let's go to jujitsu outside of this, let's go meet and do that." Or, "Hey, you wanna go, there's this group I found, you wanna go to this group with me?" You know, yeah, dude. Or, "You wanna go hit the gym with me?" You know, uhm, if you have gaming buddies that you can go do that with, my god, I mean, that's, that's awesome. If you guys can tackle this mission together and, like, go, better yourselves together, go grow, go, go make friends, go build community, go, you know, get stronger, go whatever it is, like, if you can do that together, that's awesome. You know, that is so cool. Um, I think that's ideal. And if not, go meet people, go meet people outside of games. I really don't have many friends that I play games with lately. I just don't, um, yeah, it's just, I don't know many people that play video games. I rarely, the people I meet out in the world too, I just don't know many people that, that do. And that's fine. I'm just going to get to my next point, which is I play a lot of single player games. Um, sometimes I get online and I'll play multiplayer games, but a lot of the games I really enjoy are single player. And that's because I can take them at my own pace. You know, I love exploring. When I'm playing a game, I love just melting, melting. I don't know if I like that word, but just completely just being immersed into a universe. Where I can be this certain thing and do this, and like, I think Spider-Man was really, really cool to me for a while swinging from buildings and just like, oh, man, I don't even want to fight any body in the game. I just wanted to swing around New York, dude. Man, hadn't. Um, so cool. Um, and the most recent game I started playing was like the Zong B survival game I run around and get guns and stuff and stockpile stuff. And I'm building a base. And it's like, it's just so much fun. And then, and then I can set it aside and come back later. And it's like whenever I want to. And it's like I just pick up where I left off. There's no pressure. Um, so sometimes multiplayer games or games you play with people, they can apply that pressure. You know, um, I remember I played, um, a lot of, there's a game called Rust. If anyone knows what that is, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But the game, um, the servers that you play on, it's all multiplayer. So when you go to play the servers wipe, they refresh like every every week or so. Some are like two weeks, but the point is they refresh. So you have a time stamp on how long you can play. So that means you can only, you, you have so long to accomplish a certain amount of things in the game and progress. So if you don't play and play and play, you're not going to keep up with other people. And like your character is always in the game. So if you don't log back in, someone's going to come and kill you and like, you're going to lose all your progress like it's the point is it's it really makes it difficult for you to put the game down like games like that. You can't just, oh, I'll come back to this later. No, you can't, you need to get back on tomorrow or else you're going to lose everything you, you worked for. So I personally, I can't play games like that anymore because it it, they take up way too much time and it's wait there's way too much pressure on me to play it. And that that's that's very conflicting for me. That's very difficult for me to have a game like that in my life because I want to, I will, I want to I want to play it. A part of me really, really wants to sink a lot of time into it and it makes it difficult for me to maintain good boundaries and good structure. So I've found for myself, I just stay away from games like that because I don't have time, you know. I almost wish I did, but I just, I don't and I'm not, I'm not going to mess with it. Yeah, and this is a last and final tip that I have, or bullet point, which is just fill your schedule with things that interest you and that you love. 
Hobbies, interests, friends, dating, the last thing I put was fun exercise, jujitsu, dancing, swimming, hiking, surfing. I mean, and I'll just talk about like some things for me, which is like learning to play the guitar. 
And that's like, I have a vision with that, which is like learning to play this instrument, and it would translate into other areas of my life. I want to be able to play with people. I have a friend in my life actually right now who I've grown really close to, and we will play and we'll sing together. And like, that is, I mean, that's like really filled my heart being able to have experiences like that. And I want to step more into that in my life in certain ways, being able to bring this instrument around a friend, a close friend, or a group of close friends and enjoy it in that way. You know, so it's a hobby that I spend time doing and I'm alone when I'm practicing, just like I would be alone playing a video game. But the thing is, I see it paying out in other areas of my life. You know, other interests, jujitsu is something I haven't had the time for, but I really want to sink my teeth into that. It's just very physical, provides you with a sense of almost, you know, combat which I think for, especially for guys, and I think for a lot of women too. But I think for a lot of guys is really, really helpful to have that healthy competition, that physical competition. Yeah, and a lot of my, like, just role models in my life are big jujitsu people. And so it's something I really want to sink my teeth into. And I haven't really had the chance to recently, but yeah, that's dancing. Oh man, that's intimidating to me. But sometimes it has been enjoyable and enjoyable. And it's that thing where you can, you can do that with, you know, I'm a straight guy, you know, so for me, it's like being able to do that with another woman, I mean, do it. Like what, there's not many spaces in my life where I can just go out and meet women and, you know, be that close to them and be that like almost, almost intimate, not really intimate, but, you know, be very close and sensual with. And it's like, I mean, that's awesome. It's fun, you know. So that's another thing that I have invested some time in that, not nearly enough, but I mean, that's awesome. You know, that's fun. And it pays. You know, it pays very well. It feels very good. For me, it's like,oh , being around a girl in that way, and being around just people in that way, expressing myself in that way, it feels very rewarding. It feels very fulfilling. And it pays, right? Like this is, it's a way to meet people. It's a way to meet potential, you know, partners and, and obviously that pays in so many ways, right? Yeah. Swimming for me, super healthy, super good. I mean, going to Barton Springs and surrounded by people, you're out in the sunlight, feeling the breeze on your skin, swimming. Come on, man, hiking. Surfing. I don't live by the water, but man, I would surf if I did. 
But these are all just fun things. You can go out and fill your day with. Go do that, you know. And if you don't do it right now, or if it seems intimidating, it seems like a lot.It  seems like a difficult area for you to step into. I know that feeling. You got to try it. You got to do it. And it might be uncomfortable at first, but you will be able to move into it. And it'll get easier and easier and easier as you do it. Most certainly does. So you have to trust me on that if you're in that boat. So step into it and go for it. Yeah. But also just friendships. It can be very intimidating to go meet new people. But it's also very, very rewarding. If you can really form relationships and bonds with people, yeah. Yeah, we just live in such an interesting time that you can really go out and meet anybody doing anything that you'd ever want to try. I think there's like Acro yoga. I don't know. Something interesting. What was the other thing I was going to talk about? Oh, there was like handstand groups, like a free group I found on Meetup a while back. Where you can just go in Austin, you can just go, go learn how to do a handstand with a group of people. This guy hosts it every week. And I think it was like on Thursday nights. It's like so cool, you know? I mean, there's so much stuff you can go out and do in the world. And so if you're investing tons of time into something like gaming or even if it's anything else, 
yeah, go out and try some new things and expand, you know, expand because life has so much to offer. Yeah, and I wanted to tie this up with talking about like my vision, like what our lives can be, what life can be if you're not completely engaged in something like this all the time, or if it's not just sucking you in all the time. And I think I already just did really, just, you know, the community, relationships, hobbies, a feeling of feeling healthy and being able to do so many things with your body that are enjoyable. I mean, yeah, I mean life is like the bad most badass game there's ever been. It's just, it's scary. A lot of the time and it's very challenging and it's very real but it's, it's very, very rewarding and it's very, very fulfilling and it's worth investing in. I'm going to drop the gaming addicts anonymous. I'm going to, I'm going to drop a link to that here in the show notes. And if you have any interest in that or if it, even if it, it just rubs you a little bit and you're curious about it. I recommend you click the link and maybe check out a meeting. They're all online. So the commitment's kind of low. It would just be, you know, showing up one morning at your computer at a certain time or one evening or whatever there are, wherever they are and just sitting in a chat with some people and just listening to them. Yeah, but it could be worth checking out. I think 12-step groups are really, really powerful and very, very useful. It's a great way to find support over overcoming, overcoming whatever issue you may be working through. Yeah, guys. I think, I think gaming gets a bad rap. I think things like, you know, lots of people watch football and sports like crazy, you know, like they just love it. There's certain days of the week where they get on, you know, they watch sports. And I mean, granted that is often something people do with community, with people, they get together with people, they watch sports. There's also a lot of people that just sit around all day and watch sports, you know what I mean? But that's very simpler, similar, drinking, smoking weed, you know, having sex. I mean, like there's so things in life that are very similar to this playing games that are like, if you do it too much, it's bad. If you can find a way to use it in a, in a, in a moderate way and you're not relying on it or leaning on it, you can have a healthy relationship with it. But it's difficult to balance that. And if you need support, go and find it. Yeah, that's that's that's, uh, that's pretty much all that I got. Yeah, if this is something you ever want to talk about, please reach out and I'd love to discuss it. Yeah, check out the resource that I recommended if it calls to you, GAA, if not, that's okay. But if you do feel like you need support, find it, friend, family member, community, um, whatever. But don't give up on yourself and work on this if you feel like you should. And, um, with that guys, I'm going to go and wrap up this episode. I hope that you found it useful. Reach out if you have any questions, leave a comment on the podcast if you feel inclined. But without further to do, happy gaming guys and go enjoy your life. Peace