Tooned Out

Suburban mommy talks about kicking her online gaming habit.

Name:
Location: Redmond, Washington, United States

Just another face in line at the grocery store...

Saturday, July 16, 2005

One Month + One Day

June 15th was my quit day. It's now been 31 days since I deleted my characters. It's been surprisingly hard, even with the help of my husband, my family, and the wonderful folks at OLGANON. I haven't yet used all the resources available at OLGANON and am toying with the idea of asking to become an actual member. I can't pin down what stops me from going whole hog into the 12 step thing except that I'm stubborn and like to try and do things my own way first. I'm probably just making things harder for myself.

I quit Toontown once before. I managed to go for 6 weeks that time. What's different about this time is that I'm not using other games as a substitute. Last time I played a couple of 'offline' games in place of my online game. That didn't work, obviously, because what happened was that when I finished those games and couldn't find any others to interest me I headed right back to TT. This time I'm not playing any games at all, although in a moment of weakness I did try the Sims Online - luckily not at all my cup of tea.

I worry a bit about my excessive use of the internet. A component of online gaming is time spent at game forums. For the first few days after I quit I went to my game forums but since I wasn't playing anymore I quickly lost interest. The time I used to spend on those forums (and more, unfortunately) I now spend on this blog and other forums. It adds up to more time than I ever spent online before I got hooked on Toontown but a great deal less than when I was playing. It's starting to taper off, thankfully, but it still feels like such a huge waste of time...