#PastebinMonday 05/08/2023 Lack of Focus and Sleep Edition

'Sup, doods!

I am finding myself increasingly incapable of maintaining focus. If I close all of the browser tabs that would serve to distract me and put my editing software in front of me, I'm able to get to work for about 10 minutes before my mind wanders. This is not a good sign for the Peggle video I am continuing to work on, much less all of the editing I have set myself up for. Even writing this Pastebin has me wishing I could be doing something else at this moment. The urge to just play games and watch people play games is so real.

I want to get to that point eventually, but I have other things to do that I will be mad at myself for not doing. I need to make a schedule for my life. I need to put reminders on my phone. I need to just stick to it. In fact, I just took a break from writing this to set the reminders I wanted. My phone will now vibrate to let me know when I want to work out, when I want to start working on stuff, and when I want to sleep. I think a lack of sleep has contributed to my chronic lack of focus.

Last week, I had a hazy feeling go over my face the entire time. My head was too glazed over to commit myself to a stream on Friday. I would rather not stream if I cannot present myself at anything near my best self.

This week, I will do a mental reset to start thinking about taking care of myself again. I focus too much on my wants over my needs. I somehow get FOMO real bad when new YouTube videos come out that interest me. However, I don't have any friends that I share those interests with to allow the FOMO to become realized. I keep telling myself to realign my priorities and yet the carnal desires for dopamine continue to creep in. I will take steps to figure out how to realign my priorities in the coming weeks. Perhaps going back to tried and true speedruns where personal bests get really hard to obtain will free me from a desire to edit even more videos than I already have planned.

Today's (permanent) extra streaming goals:

Goal #1: edit my best Peggle Extreme Adventure Mode run for YouTube. This is almost done. The final video is already 17 minutes in length and destined for at least five more.
Goal #2: create a broadcast stream layout for the next LPS minor speedrun tournament game. An announcement for the game will be made soon.
Goal #3: update the LPS Pokémon Puzzle League broadcast layout to be better automated like the Tetris Attack layout.
Goal #5: script and record footage for my Puzzle League tutorial series. I have some scripts to touch up before feeling comfortable with moving on to recording gameplay. Then I will need to record my talking points and edit it all together. I will still want to take time during the week to do all of that instead of stream. Whether I will be able to remains to be seen.
Goal #6: clean up my own stream layout. I am brainstorming how I want the final theming to be. I probably want to give people multiple options, maybe allow spending bits to change the look. I don't have anything written down yet. I don't expect to get to this anytime soon.
Goal #7: maybe make a universal LPS broadcast layout that I don't have to agonize over recreating every year. Hopefully I wouldn't over-homogenize it like SpeedGaming did.
Goal #8: release the Puzzle League tutorial series YouTube shorts once a day until they're all done. I really do think I need to time the release of the series with a ramping up of my streaming schedule so that I can take advantage of whatever there is to gain from releasing the shorts.

If I can commit to proper sleep this week, I will actually do something with Pokémon Puzzle League on Friday. I've also had thoughts to go over the global vision for full time streaming I have in mind, from the games I would play every week to the special streams and perks I would plan every month. This would require eventually opening a Patreon to maximize the diversified portfolio. This would also possibly encourage splitting streaming time between Twitch and YouTube. I would also need a schedule for implementing these things once I take care of all of the passion projects I want to take care of. These details can be hashed out starting on Friday.

That’s my life story for the week. Later, doods!

--Cards