Quitting gaming forever!

On 27 July 2017 my daughter Amara was born. This was also the day I made the commitment to stop gaming, become a better father, and through that process; become a better man. I guess you could call this my personal manifesto.

But before I continue, allow me to give this community a little background. I’m 27 years old and I’ve been playing video games since I was maybe 4. My foray into the hobby started when I was diagnosed with amblyopia. For those of you who aren’t optometrists amblyopia is a condition that causes your brain to favor one eye over the other, causing the lesser used eye to become underdeveloped, causing issues with depth perception and hand-eye coordination. Many people with this condition will also develop strabismus, or as most people know it: lazy eye. Lucky for me both eyes move together, so it’s less that I have a “lazy eye” and more so that I’d consider it “unmotivated”. With this diagnosis the optometrist suggested to my parents that I should start playing video games and to encourage this as a regular activity, the belief at the time was that this would improve my hand eye coordination and (by wearing a very unfashionable eye patch) encourage use and development of my weaker eye. My mother purchased a Super Nintendo console that month and so my life as a gamer began.

I’m 27 now and to say that I was a dedicated gamer would be an understatement. I played nearly every day for hours straight for 23 years. I would play just about any game and any genre from the platforming Super Mario games to World of Warcraft and even the Madden series. Although gaming didn’t stop me from getting a degree, a wife, or a good career; it did often get in the way of my success in pursuing these thing. I would skip class to play Mass Effect to see the story through. On numerous occasions, after a long day of work, I’d ignore my wife to play Civilization and stay up long after she’d go to bed. I’ve even put in a half assed effort at my job to get more time at home to play Fallout 4. I’ve simply procrastinated on a lot of my life to game, and it didn’t get me anywhere. I turned into the person who wanted to run a marathon but wouldn’t spend the time to run the miles. I became the kind of person who wanted to learn an instrument but wasn’t willing to sit down and learn to play it. It is this realization that’s been a driving force in my desire to put down the controller for good. I don’t want my daughter to grow up looking at the back of my head facing a dimly lit screen in a darkened room. I want her to grow up seeing a man realize his goals and treat his family as his first priority, not an afterthought. I’m not playing anymore; I know from my own life experience that I lack the ability to do this activity in moderation. So whatever it takes, I can’t go back. Not to the PC, the Xbox, or even my phone. I’m going cold turkey, that’s simply the only way I can succeed here.

So with all that said, I’m reaching out to this community to help me on my journey. Consider me a blank slate! What new things can I learn to do? What are your pastimes and how can I get into them? Naturally, raising a family is time consuming in and of itself but I have no interest in simply becoming a dull and boring man. With your help and suggestions I’d like to potentially try and get into a new hobby and occasionally share my progress with all of you.
Here are my only “rules” for suggestions:

1. It needs to have measurable progress.
   I’d like to show people where I’ve started and how far I’ve come. I want to the ability to show people that I’ve made the most of my spare time
2. Please don't ask me to do something illegal (should go without saying)

Thanks for reading! My hope is that this is the first post of many where I can come out and discuss my new life as a father and exgamer.