Things to do when you are not playing dota

Dota, a dangerous game

Well because this is a community purely about dota I would like to talk about things that you can do that aren't dota related. I do this because there is way more in live than just dota and there are alot of people addicted to this game.

My addiction

a dieing family member

So I start with a little story from me. Previous year my granny was in hospital due to cancer. She is a really important person for me and I am for here the person where she has the strongest connection with. Of course I didn't want her to die, just like the rest of my family didn't want that. I was really sad, almost depressive during that period. But instead of helping my grandmother by visiting her and motivating her and stuff, I just played dota. I visited her sometimes but not as much as I should do and I also did less for school just to play dota. Dota was the best way for me to get away from all the trouble. However at a certain point she was moved to "intensive care" because the chemo had destroyed all her white bloodcells and she had became sick. Some sort sickness at the lungs where I don't know the English term for. For normal people that desease wouldn't be to big of a problem but because she had no white blood cells she had to be put in a synthesised coma. At that moment I realised that she may actually die so I started visiting her almost every 3 days, that was due to the fact that there were limited time periods where you could visit someone in the intensive care.

The leading doctor told us the bad news that she is probably going to die because that the illness is blocking here breath. But luckily some sort of miracle occurd and she actually survived and was put out of the coma. A few weeks later she was fired from the hospital and of course we were all really happy. However I was ashamed from how many times I played dota over visiting my grandmother in the hospital.

Bad schoolwork

But now she was free from hospital so I could actually play dota without problems. I still lowered my school work and I had poor results but enough to get to the next class.

I played more dota and more dota and during december we have examinations. Because I didn't do that much for school and because I actually did one of the most difficult classes you can follow at highschool in Belgium I didn't pass my exams. There were 2 options or working so hard( almost impossible hard) in the same class for the rest of this year to have good points so that after a calibration I would have enough points to get to the next class. Or I had to change class. I choosed for the second option but not in a way that it would become more easy for me to follow the lessons. Instead of going to an easier class I was offered by my teacher Latin to go to Latin- Greek. Before I did Latin- Science so that actually meaned I had to catch up 3 years of Greek. Normally this is impossible to do but because the teacher knew I'm actually able to do Greek I changed class and started doing this new class.

solution

I had to do a lot of schoolwork during the christmass holidays. I also started realising that my dota addiction was actually the reason that I had to change from class.

I lowered the amount of dota I play and now I only play when I think it is appropriate. Now I play average 8 games in one week, probably even less while therefore I played like 25 games each week. And during holidays I properly played like 40 games maybe even more.

Now after I told my story I want to make sure that everyone knows there is more in the world than just dota. Playing a game is fine but don't overextend it. Playing a lot of dota is probably fine if you or make it your job or if you really enjoy it that hard. Sadly I think most people who are or were addicted to dota don't realise that dota actually doesn't make them happy. I played because I thought I had to play but I actually didn't enjoy the game. There were some funny moments but they were pretty rare and I was just tryharding in ranked. If I wasn't playing dota I was watching video's from Purge, Dotacinema, Merline, etc. So you could say my live was dominated by dota.

However there is more in the world than dota and it is really important to know that. Otherwise you will later maybe regret that you have spend all of your time in a silly game.
Playing dota is nice but playing dota the whole time is actually not that enjoyable anymore, it is more an obligation than.

So what can you do?

Read books

Many people find books boring but there are a lot of good books outside that are really worth to read. There are so many books that you should never be able to say "books are boring". If you don't like reading there are always books with little text. You can read fictive as non-fictive. There are plenty of possibilities and
"reading a book is not a waste of time"

Hang out with friends or family

Like in my story I ignored my family, which was really stupid. But also friends shouldn't be forgotten. I used to play dota with school friends but instead of only playing dota together we also started doing other things beside dota. I have to admit going out is way more fun than playing dota.

work for or in your relationship

People with a dota addiction mostly have no time for a relationship. A relationship is not obligated but it is often something nice to have. I never cared about relationships but now I stopped playing dota like a freak I start realising what I actually miss. But just like the previous point
don't let dota become more important than real people.

Work more for school or for your job

In my case I had to do more for school anyway but now I work way more for school than ever before. And I don't work with disgust anymore which is really important too. You can almost always do something usefull for school, work or just some chores.

visit places

There are alot of places in the world waiting to get visited by you. Most people enjoy traveling and so do I. However because of dota I didn't enjoy my travels anymore and I remember my holiday in Germany, which I normally should like a lot, was super boring for me. Just because I wasn't able to play dota for 2 weeks. I was almost dieing. I think that most people can find that pathetic and it was.
Just enjoy everything that is not dota!

Also traveling doesn't need to be somewhere far away, really expensive. There is almost always something interesting way closer than you think.

find another hobby

Hobbies that aren't dota are a lot of fun to. I already had some non dota hobbies but I started stopping with them. Now I'm back practicing my hobbies and that is in my eyes also really important. A hobby of mine is sailing and I was slowly quiting with it because the time I was sailing I wasn't playing dota. That's a shame and now I sail often. I'm even starting to study the cursus to become a real sailor, so I can sail a boat on my own. Of course sailing with other people is more fun but this way I can be the shipper and not someone unknown. If I have my license I'm planning to go out sailing with some friends for a week.

start sporting

Well this is a bit the same as the previous chapter but practicing a sport can be really nice. And it allows you to work on your condition. I do a martial art myself and previous year I stopped training since november. However I started training back at september and I do like it again as when I started doing this sport. But because going to the training was time I couldn't play dota and due to the fact that I was addicted, I played dota over something else.

Just have a walk or a ride

If you don't want to find a sport you can always make a little walk outside. There is nothing wrong with it. A lot of people associate it with oldies but that isn't true at all. A lot of young people aren't able to walk 10 proper kilometers without nagging that their feet hurt which is in my eyes really embarrising. I mean a few days ago I walked with someone in a field because we had missed the bus and the next one was over 1 hour. I decided to go on foot and the other person resisted a bit but eventually he insisted. We only had to walk 7 kilometers and after 1 kilometer he started nagging that his feet hurt. I was like "you are 17 years old and you can't ****ing walk 7 stupid kilometers".

So please make sure you can walk atleast a small amount, being able to walk 10 kilometers should be dueable for almost every healthy person sub 65 year old.

A little recap:

Don't play to much dota.

If you play a lot of dota see if it actually make you happy or that you just play dota because you need it.

Don't forget: friends, family or partner.

Get another pastime activity.


You possible think now, well why do you spend so many time writing stuff on dotafire. Well I have 2 reasons for that. One I really enjoy writing stuff and also the fact that it helps other people makes me really excited.

At last I use this to improve at writing in general and especially to write in English. I realise that my English improved a lot lately. I think that that is actually the best thing Dota has done to me. Improving my English, written as spoken (Because I used to speak English with a horrible accent) and I now know some Russian words and understand the Russian alphabet :-)

So even while i'm limiting the amount of dota I play I still write about it just because it is a great excercise to improve at English.

I hope that if you are addicted to dota that you will realise and go do something else. Unless you enjoy dota way more than anything else, which is often not the case.

Quitting with an addiction is hard but it is almost always worth it.

Greetings

The Frosto