[30/03/2024] - march update!

hello again. this was supposed to come out last month but whatever

at the start of the year i switched kinda to linux. i think it was a good call. i now have a dual-boot setup with windows 10 and arch linux. this came at a cost tho. since i was partitioning an already used hd i had to clean up some things to have more space for linux.
i thought for a bit on what i could delete from my pc and i found something that was taking the most of me. and i repeat: not only the most of the pc, but this was consuming most of who i am.

about gaming

i kinda wanted this to have more suspense but it is just a computer hobby like there is not too much out there for you to be "consumed" in your pc

i stopped to think about it. deleting my games was a decision i was already considering a while ago. so i started to pull out some numbers to check if it was a good decision.

• i have about 1500 hours in games on steam
• this is about 62 days of playing non-stop
• since i had about 6h/day of free time i had 250 days where i did nothing but to play these games
• this is almost an entire year
• most of these games i started playing around in 2019
• (at the time) its 2023, so about 4 years playing these games
• thats about 25% of the last 4 years.
• remembers that this isn't even close to what i actually spent playing. most of my games isn't on steam
• i have no idea how much of my life was put on these games. i just know it has been more than a year.

this would be frightening, if i didn't had the mentality of "oooh but these games are doing something great!!! im learning so much and having so many experiences!!!!!!!".
i noticed that mentality. and i started to put it in check.

are these games really, really doing something great for me? lets find out all of it's benefits.

• games can aliviate your boredom - so does many of my other hobbies. not only that, but these other hobbies could be self-sustaining. playing games is always draining from me and my resources.
• games bring you new experiences/learn new things - i just played the same games over and over. also my computer isn't the best, so most of what people call good games i cannot play
• games can bring you friends - i had none.
• games can make you rethink about your life - i didn't although im rethinking about it rn so maybe you have a point, dear strawman
• games can bring you joy - i was in an all-time-low 2 years ago. no game made me happy at that time. and today i don't think they bring as much joy as they did when i was little
• games can make you forget about the miserable life you have. while playing you will not realize that you are worthless or, even worse, a hindrance for other people. you will not remember that it would be better if you didn't exist - ah, this was tempting. but now i don't think im useless anymore so i think i'm ok without games

all of that time i could be spending at making things that would make me happier and more fulfilled in the long run.

after considering all of this, i was ready to delete all of my games. i was feeling sooo good about myself. "oh, im finally getting my life back!!!!!! i can finally be free from gaming!!! i can abandon God-knows how much years of my life!!... i can delete what i was before this moment..."

yeah... i have not thought about that.
after you invest so much of your life in something, it is really hard to throw it away like it is nothing. because it isn't nothing. it once was part of you.

deleting these games means to delete myself.
deleting my minecraft worlds means to delete 8+ years of effort, creativity, personality and much more young me had put into these worlds.
abandoning my binding of isaac saves means to delete all of my days of effort into knowing the ins and outs of the game just to have a higher chance of a successful run.

i could go on but i think you get the point.

ok so i was reading through this to check any mistakes and like wait isn't this the plot of toy story??? idk it has been so long since i last watched it i don't remember what the movie is about

differently from what i think most of people would do, i again noticed this thought and panicked. i just started deleting everything as fast as i could before i lose the courage to do so. i really didn't want to go back to what i was.

really good way of solving a dilemma, isn't it? just do not confront it lol.

well, thankfully, no regret ever came to me to this day. i feel really okay with this change. which is really weird, considering i used to believe memories and records are a part of you. quoting myself from 3 months ago:

"not only that, but there are things i've realized before, then forgot about it, and when i've read through my "diary" i've remembered it again and had a new impact on my life. it is almost as if a part of myself died and got reborn inside of me in the future. i've persisted through the passage of time and right now i'm more myself than i could have ever been."

but today i'm thinking about it differently. i think you can know things about yourself without the need of writing.

this reminds something a calculus book taught me recently:


you can find v if you know f.



im not going to explain exactly what that means but basically, if you know the output of something, you know it's input.

i may not remember all of the things i did in the last decade, but i know myself in this moment, which was affected by what i made, what i learned, what i've experienced over my life. and i could use that to assume things about myself.

not letting records control everything i know about myself gives an incredible amount of freedom. specially today with almost inescapable surveillance systems all around the world.

all of this may sound contradictory with my last post post? writing? idk how to call these texts but here is the thing: this is about knowing yourself. not remembering who you are.
it is about rediscovery, not permanence.

let's say i've lost all of my memories about myself. i could assume i was interested in music, as i have a guitar. i could also assume i was interested in digital art, as i have a drawing tablet. and last i could assume i was into game development because of godot installed.
in a first moment, i could not assume i was into videogames as i do not have any installed on my computer. but, if i piece together that i had an interest in music, interest in digital art and an interest in game development, i could assume that something inspired me to have all of these hobbies, and since all of the interests are related to videogames, i could assume i used to play videogames, but now the games are missing from my computer.

the reason of why are they missing would still be a mystery to me, so probably i would just go back and start playing games all over again and go back to the position i was on the start of this post, until i understood why did i quit them.

if anything, having physical records are just a way of facilitating this proccess.

i wonder how much old records have information about the human species and how much we could discover about ourselves.

aftermath

after i deleted everything i got about 250gb of disk space free! yay! but the amount of disk space i could partition for linux was really small when compared to the full disk space i actually have (~500gb total, about 70gb for linux and 400gb for windows). deleting everything gave me 20gb for the linux partition.

idk why i couldn't partition it further. from what i researched it seems that i have a block camping the end of my c: drive which doesn't allow me to give more disk space to my linux setup :(

anyways, this setup is provisory. i'm gonna try to get a new pc asap. idk what to do with this computer after i buy a new one. maybe it will be adapted just for music production.

also coming up with the topic i want to say thanks to everyone who is checking my songs! i'm glad that people are getting interested in them.

thank you for reading this!