#5: Still Figuring Out
I’m not burning out
Won’t fade away
Time to shine brighter
I’ve always been a fighter…
Wow, it’s been a long time, huh? So much has happened to me that I barely know where to begin.
The biggest thing is that, after a record-breaking nine-year run, The Beast has been laid to rest and a new PC, Project Stormbreaker (yep, I’m still a kid at heart), is up and running. It’s been a bit nerve wracking but also very exciting. My mod Craig traveled down to assemble it from scratch, and even before that, the process of all the parts arriving was a nervous process in its own way. I could probably write half a book on the various ways Amazon in particular screwed me over on various deliveries, in fact I’m still waiting on one refund, but all’s well that ends well.
Even with new gear, I’ve been struggling to stream. My gym odyssey continues apace, albeit with some setbacks the last few weeks. I battled a fever for a few days last week, and this week has been about adjusting to new meds and some supplements being added into my diet. The supps are a doctor’s advice, not just something I’m doing off my own back. It means changing up how and what I eat a bit as well. I’m terrible at sticking to meal times. Since living independently I’m very much an “eat when you’re hungry and drink when you’re dry” kinda guy. I’m having to change to eating four-to-five small-ish meals a day and right now, a few days in, I feel like I’m constantly teetering on the balance of being full and being super hungry. It’ll take time, I guess.
All this has meant missing the gym and, to my surprise, I miss it something fierce. Getting back on the horse is one of two priorities this week, along with getting back into streaming. It’s all had an impact on my mental health as well. This year, while mostly stalled from a streaming numberz point of view, has seen a lot of sowing seeds of personal growth that I hope will bear fruit in 2025 and beyond. Even with all the...unpleasantness ahead, I do have a certain amount of confidence in my own future. It’s uncomfortable to talk about but I have felt moments of an anger I thought was gone. For some people that’s a feeling of darkness, for me it’s the opposite. It’s a white hot beam like a laser blade that cuts through everything. It’s swift and violent and afterward it leaves me very shaken. I thought it had gone but events and circumstances the last while have had it rearing its head again. As I’ve been told however, now that we know it’s there, we can deal with it.
As far as actual streaming…god it hurts to type this but I often can’t escape the feeling of “what’s the point?” And I don’t mean that in a “Why am I not a millionaire?” kind of way. As someone who’s friends with streamers who’ve been to the tippity top, I’ve been lucky to see life online from the other side of the coin in a way that wide-eyed newer streamers don’t see when they’re watching a Shroud or an Ironmouse and think “I wanna do that”. Everything in this world comes with strings attached. Sometimes, we can’t see them unless we look up close.
No, it’s just been hard to look at a strange world getting stranger, Twitch as a platform gliding into the abyss while the CEO does his best “I’m a regular guy like you and not three raccoons in a skinsuit” impression and the online space (which, unfortunately, is as real these days as the nose on our faces) as a whole getting more hostile and hateful every day and think “Why bother?” I guess for me, I enjoyed streaming the most during the early lockdowns, when I felt like I was providing a service in terms of hangouts during the day and games and community during the night. The past is a foreign country and Twitch can never go back to that time, or indeed the mythical pre-pandemic Twitch which might as well have had Fred Flintstone as the CEO. It feels that long ago!
Each of these alone is no bad thing, but all at once and it quickly gets to be a lot. I’m dealing with other issues around my home and some are still ongoing but I’m learning to be at peace more often. Long-time viewers of the stream will be amazed to know that the tap that has leaked since I moved in here finally got fixed!
So, what do we do? What should I do? I guess we look at what Mr. Rogers said about looking to the helpers. I’m not a doctor or a scientist. I try to help people by making them laugh or making them feel better about themselves, plus using some empathy where possible. I’m still working on that last one. And we try to foster a sense of community, which has become a meaningless word in content creation, but for me it’s a sense of “hey, someone cares. I care”. Even if that person has to be yourself to start, ‘cause if you don’t show up for yourself, then who will?
I’ve been streaming a long time. Hitting the go button is hard every time. It never gets easier, especially if I’m awake for any length of time before it’s go time. It’s probably never been harder for me the last few weeks even with a spangly new set up. I think for the next while, it’s about showing up for myself, and with time, the rest will hopefully fall into place. I’ll never have a purple check or a silver plaque, but if I could get to the end of the year thinking “I did my best. I gave it my all.”, even if that only applied to the last few weeks of 2024, that would be enough.
I’d usually add Short Trips here but, leveling with ya, all my tripping has been traveling up and down between home and back so I’ll get to watching and reading some stuff in a future installment! I barely allow myself time even for AEW Dynamite lately. Something I need to work on for sure. I never got around to seeing Transformers One in the cinema and I’m slightly crushed about that.
I’ll be back streaming on Monday, all things permitting. I really struggle with scheduling and what the right amount of scheduling is. I tried to have an open docket this week and it just…didn’t work for me. I’d wake up thinking “oh what am I gonna stream today?” which, while certainly a change from “oh I don’t wanna play that today”, is still not the vibe you want to go in with when you want to entertain a dozen people or so for an afternoon. It’s been the hardest nut for me to crack but I do believe having some sort of scheduling is better for me overall, both for the channel and for my wellbeing. Eventually I’ll…figure it out! (waheyyyy)
See you next week?
I’ve been SeanShards, and I can do this all day.