Day 6

Man day 6 was a really fun day. I spent time with the wife and kids, visited with a friend, and watch the end of Bio-dome with my wife later in the evening. I forgot how goofy that movie was. Yeah I know, Pauly Shore and a Baldwin brother… lol… what did I expect. I can’t really say I would have been playing WOW at all so I can’t see myself using any of this time in the pay back countdown. Was just a great day. No WOW cravings at all.

Xlcior busting my chops

HA! My good friend Xlcior and I were bantering back and forth the other day in emails and he said something I had to post because I thought it was extremely funny. He was giving me a hard time about playing Warcraft 3 and saying stuff like I gave up cocaine for alcohol, as you can read in some of his comments.

I emailed him the following a day or so later as we were discussing this blog, and gave him a little grief for giving me a hard time. Here is what I said:

“Yeah I will post about it and get ready for your verbal assault. lol. Hey I got a few comments! Heheh.. “

Then he replied with the following:

“now, now, Dude, i am not verbal assaulting you. i am just giving my comment, and it in no way reflects a personal attack upon your character, race, or creed. those are the terms & conditions as reflected in my privacy statement. all comments are not necessarily the opinions of badboyenterprises, Ltd. and its affiliates.”

Needless to say I thought this was just hysterical. Well done my friend, well done!

Days 3, 4 and 5 of no WOW

On day 3 I worked on my den again. Well, I was wrong about only needing one more hour of work on my den. I spent four more hours on it.. But it is done now, so that was a major accomplishment. And yes, those 4 count as “productive” so they are going to the payback countdown. lol. I did play about 45 mins of Warcraft 3 too, but man, that is starting to get old already. HA!

Day 4 I worked on things around the house. Lots of little side projects and cleaning. Did that for about 6 hours and that was extremely productive. Feels great to have all these little things I had been putting off finally taken care of. I also broke out the lap steel guitar for the first time in over a year. My sons and I had fun for about an hour throwing different effects on it, and we also broke out a mic and had a bunch of fun talking into the effects. Found a pretty good seting that made our voices sound like that transformer decepticon soundwave from the original cartoon. Was a blast. ALL HAIL MEGATRON! That comes of the countdown too. What a fun time.

Day 5 I spent about 45 mins playing warcraft 3 after everyone was down for the night. During the day I watched movies with the kids while letting my wife catch up on some sleep. Had a great time with the kids. And then I took my wife out on a date. Was the first Saturday in a long time that I didn’t sneak on to WOW for some daytime pvp. lol. Seemed really strange too. Feels kind of like I have a lot more time to do things. Feels good, much less stress. I can take away another 6 hours from the countdown for today.

Second Day….

So last night I did pretty good. I mean I had NO WOW cravings at all. Didn’t miss it at all. But I gave into Warcraft 3 again and played like 1.5 hours or so. lol. There was a really good map i had never played before (might have been Zelda Tower D), and the game went on for a long time. We went on for a long time, and I played like 2 of those in a row. There were a couple 10 minute games, but like the total time spent was about 1.5 hrs. I don’t think it was “productive” though, so I am not counting that in the pay back.

On the positive side, I did spend about 2 more hours working on my den. Man, I had to put stuff in files and sort out crap, and clean off shelves, and dust… kinda sucked but hey, it needed to be done. I think I am within an hour of finishing it now! lol. I do think that was productive so two hours are officially paid back!

Make sure to check out the Pay Back Countdown page for the running total.

First Night WOWless…

Well, the first night of no WOW went fine. Since I am keeping track of paying my time back I can put in 30 mins of cleaning my den. That is at least productive. lol. So I cleaned my den and watched Seinfeld while I installed Warcraft III (which I haven’t played for years). That is a pretty fun game, and very easy to walk away from. I play only the custom levels on battlenet. Not into the single player campaigns. Well, needless to say, it was fun… but it aint WOW.

 So it was easy to walk away from after about 50 mins or so. No great desire to keep playing Tower D maps and Stronghold maps. lol. But I am NOT counting that in the payback total. That was not “productive” in my book. Although it was fun for a few mins. lol. We will see how it goes.

3,133 hrs, 11 mins, 30 sec

Well last night I added all my toons that were above level 10, and the grand total was 130 Days, 13 hours, 11 minutes and 13 seconds. And of course this doesn’t count the level 35 and 24 alts I deleted. So just the numbers I added up equaled over 3,133 hours of playtime. That is a lot of time spend sitting on my butt.

 The scary thing to me is that I am not even close to the hardcore addicted people. I can’t even imagine how many hours they have spent. To me, my total is sad and tragic enough. So much wasted time.

You know at this point you have to ask your self why? Why would I spend so much time doing that? That will be a good convo for another day. I am collecting my thoughts on the matter and will pop them out soon.

The Awakening…

Well, been a long time coming but I finally decided to quit for the second time and cancelled my account. My Last day is today as my account goes off  Feb 19th, 2008 @ 4:20 AM PST.

 When I went in to cancel my account I checked through the history and my first day playing WOW was 11/23/2004… The first day it started. So except for a 4 month break in 2006 I have been playing almost three and a half years. That is crazy.

 I figure a good way to help break the addiction is to figure out how many total hours I spent on ALL of my toons, and then keep a running total of hours as I “pay back” those hours by doing something a little more productive.  So, I will be keeping track of things and posting them up here. Who knows, maybe this will help other WOW addicts trying to get out.