Days Free of Fic: 0
Longest Streak: 1
Todays Steps:
- Quitting Fic: Cleaning Up Subscriptions
- Moving Forward: Telling Someone
Well that 1 day streak was over rather fast. See, yesterday was a really good day. Like phenomenally good day for me. I have health issues and yesterday I just woke up in a good mood and with a higher energy level than normal. I get maybe 3-5 of these days a month it feels like. It made doing a day of no fanfiction easy because I had the energy to tackle other things.
This morning however was sliding back into an average day. Stress levels a bit higher and energy distinctly lower. The perfect mix to just want to fall back into the comfort and warm hug feeling I get from reading a fic.
In fact upon waking up on autopilot I reached for my phone and opened up AO3 and clicked one to start reading. A few paragraphs in my brain woke up the rest of the way and I decided since it was already open lets start with my first step of quitting fanfiction.
Step 1: Cleaning Up Subscriptions and Follows
First item on the list. I choose to start with this because for me this was a two birds with one stone proposition. I would prevent emails from entering my inbox that would prompt me to want to go read. (I had already shifted the emails into a junk inbox that did nothing but get fanfic and store advertisements in an attempt to slow down years ago. It didn’t work. I check it multiple times a day.)
That being said a long time ago I started regularly not subscribing to things unless I was in love. This list wasn’t terribly long but that did mean it was doubly hard.
Starting Total Subscriptions: 44
First thing I did was count how many active subs I had. I want to make as many points of feeling good as I can out of this and one thing that is always nice is being specific about progress and celebrating small wins.
I wish I could say I just swept through and cleared them all. NOPE. That is not what happened. I realized quickly this was going to be harder than anticipated, whether that’s because stress is higher today or just I’ve underestimated my emotional connection to these stories, I’m not sure.
Sweep A: Duplicates
I decided to decrease friction (to quote the productivity community). I would sweep through and find any duplicates. Often I would sub a fic and an author. First pass here I cleaned up anywhere I had both. I defaulted into keeping the fics not the author.
Total Subs Left: 40 🥳
Sweep B: Completes
I realized quickly as well that there were several stories that had finished that I had completed reading that I still had active subscriptions for. I unsubed those as well.
Total Subs Left: 36💃
Sweep C: Uh Whats This About
A helpful aspect of the subscription page is it doesn’t give you summaries. So next sweep was stories I didn’t recognize by title. If I don’t know why I’m subscribed to you then bye bye. I don’t to read the summary and become more connected (History is tomorrow it will likely happen then anyway)
Total Subs Left: 32
Sweep D: No Heartache Here
My final sweep of the day was for stories that didn’t pull my heart out at the thought of missing an update. These works are the ones that I will be sad to never complete but not heartbroken. Or ones that I know haven’t updated in years and are likely to never be updated so the heart was broken a while ago and has recovered some.
Final Sub Count: 25
25 isn’t 0. But its also not 44. I hope that after sweeping my history tomorrow and making some reductions there I can clean up this number further. I’ll add it to my stats tomorrow as well.
Step 1: Telling Someone
For every step of fanfiction clearing I’m also going to mention a step that more focused on setting up some behaviors for moving forward successfully. And for me this starts with telling someone and setting up some accountability. The blog is part of that but another part is telling my therapist.
I used fanfiction like many people use their addiction of choice, to numb pain, find pleasure, and ostrich head into the ground to avoid certain stressors in life. This means I need to address those stressors. And since I started reading fanfiction over 20 years ago, that means there are a lot.
I will admit to being nervous for some reason, which feels ridiculous but fanfiction for me is hard to explain. Some people think reading is just overall good, so how could this be bad. But again it’s how I was using it that makes it bad. How I’m not living the life I want and this is part of that. I’m not doing self care because this masks the pain, etc.
I had brought up fic tangentially at times, mostly citing it as a way of relaxing that sometimes I felt I over did, but I’d never really had the words to describe how it would turn into this monster until I listened to the podcast from HealthyGamer and it become clear.
If you are struggling with bringing up your tech addition (or other) of choice to someone I encourage you to listen to that episode linked here: https://www.quittingfanfic.com/2024/10/27/a-strange-addiction/ or google signs of addiction to get the language and words needed to describe its overall impact on your life.
I could see the realization on her face as I started to discuss it in those contexts and she immediately jumped in and started asking hard questions. We have a lot of work to do its clear but I know that I couldn’t do this without her expertiese helping me conquer the reasons why I was seeking refuge in these worlds.
So please if you are facing this issue ask someone for help. Prepare yourself with language, find a person you trust (professional therapists and psychologists are fantastic, but I know not everyone can afford them) and get some support or just someone you can talk to as things come up.
You will still have to do the work after all, but having a support system and cheer team will only help.
Best – Mels
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