Partnership Anniversary Thoughts

Hey everyone,

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of the day I got accepted for Twitch partnership. It's also quickly drawing towards the end of 2017, so I figured now would be an amazing time to reflect on this past year. As a word of warning, this next paragraph is going to be incredibly serious in nature, so you can skip it if you don't want to risk feeling upset or perturbed. I need to put it down on the page though if I want to paint a picture of how this past year has gone for me.

It wasn't a year ago to the day, but I will never forget this evening in November 2016 as long as I live. I was emotionally and mentally on a precipice. I had seriously hurt some people very close to me, and that compounded with my grandma's imminent death, my inability to make anything of myself through streaming or singing, and my general feelings of isolation from people outside my immediate social circle. I was broken. Yearning for a moment to actually feel alive, I stepped outside in 40 degree weather (4 degrees Celcius) wearing nothing but flip flops and pajama bottoms and paced my way over to the park across the street from my house. I don't remember if it was storming or not. I think my brain would like to remember it as being outside in a storm, although I would put my money on it being a calm, cloudy night. I called my mom, since I knew I needed her at that moment. I spoke to her for probably about 20-25 minutes about how I was done. I couldn't handle it anymore. For those who know about "the promise", you already know where I was mentally at this stage in my life. To the rest of you, to put it simply, I was suicidal. I didn't know what else I could do to change things. My mom definitely knew where I was mentally, even if she didn't realize she knew. She talked to me carefully and delicately, as if every word were worth its weight in iron. Her words really spoke to me that day, and like so many other instances in my life, I credit being where I am now to her. I understood that being at rock bottom is as much a blessing as it is a curse. It feels impossible to understand that when you're at the bottom, but if you keep persisting, you can claw your way out if you know your life depends on it.

Almost immediately, things started to turn around. Inspired by my mother's words, I started doing what I do best: planning. I knew all I needed to see was a small positive change, and I could seize the momentum and run with it. Anyone who's watched my speedruns knows this. Once I lock into the zone, I'm riding that wave all the way to the shore. I didn't know it at the time, but a huge tidal wave was about to sweep me up all at once.

On November 7, 2016, exactly one year ago today, I received my twitch partner acceptance after 3 straight rejections. Finally, after two years of Twitch streaming and a GDQ appearance, I had achieved what I believed to be the ultimate goal of twitch streaming. Two days later, on November 9, my sub button went live, and I finally revealed the news to everyone.

You have to understand that being a part of the Playstation community creates certain expectations for you. We're the redheaded stepchildren of the speedrunning community. Nintendo and PC speedrunners get all the attention, while we sit in the back playing our sleeper OP speedgames in the dark. This in mind, I barely expected to break 50 subscribers, so that made it all the more insane when I broke 130 subscribers by day 2. I didn't even have any emotes yet, nor would I for another month and a half. It was just insane, seeing this many people believe in both me and Ratchet speedrunning. It was the first time in my adult life I had ever felt truly accepted by my peers for what I was aspiring to do. My channel continued to quickly shoot up to 200 subs, which I honestly never expected to reach. It marked a stepping stone for what I was preparing to achieve, and set the tone for what was going to be possible in the future.

At the same time, in late November/early December, I started talking to a particular girl with an affinity for Gengars 👀

Over the course of the beginning of 2017, I made a list of all the things I wanted to achieve over the course of the year. I've kept it private all this year, but I'm ready to divulge it to the public: https://pastebin.com/hBjTQKfN. Many of the regular ones are still ongoing, but I've made significant progress in all of them.

I started focusing on my financial security; something I've never had growing up. As weird as it is to talk about money, I'm so wildly proud of myself for going from absolutely no money put away in my savings account to nearly $10k in one year just from aggressively saving money. I'm so excited to finally pass the five figure mark so I can start using my knowledge of stocks to invest in mutual funds and continue earning on investments, but it took a lot of frugality over the whole year to get there. Lots of times I've said no to social obligations so I could put away a few more bucks, but at the same time I was feeling freer with the money I was actually earning and enjoying the experiences they allowed me. This was something I had never experienced before, since I always lived on the razor's edge of poverty until this year.

Vocally, I've made extreme growth. In 2017, I was finally able to afford voice lessons again after years of not being able to. Through aggressive pratice regiments and taking on many gigs, I've had the opportunity to refine my technique and my musicality/musical decision making to the best it's ever been. I know I have a long journey ahead of me to keep improving into the professional level, but I was finally validated for one of the first times in March when I was accepted to the New England Conservatory of Music for graduate level opera studies. Unfortunately, I was not able to afford the education, but I have newly inspired confidence to try again this year and get into a school that will hopefully offer me enough to move outside Pennsylvania for the first time in my life. Performing all throughout the summer and preparing for my September recital reinforced this confidence, as I spent months refining the music and growing as a performing artist. The musical I performed in Chicago gave me the opportunity to bond with a group of people I'll always consider great friends. The recital was easily the best I had ever performed, although I was rather upset that less than 10 people showed up to the actual venue itself. Fuck it, doesn't matter, gotta keep proving I can be the best, right?

Now for the big one: streaming.

Jeez, where do I even begin? I guess I already said that things shot up faster than I could have ever guessed. By late December, I was finally rolling out emotes. I was always looking forward: trying to stay on top of the bit meta, pushing myself to do 24 hour streams out the wazoo, setting up campaigns and community events.

OH GOD THE RATCHET RELAY. You guys don't know this story, but it's a fucking crazy one. December 3rd, 2016. We had the first ever Ratchet and Clank Community Relay race. So many games and categories, and two teams hungry for victory. It was easily the greatest event I've ever been a part of, and it was run entirely by myself and Cippy. It. Should. Have. Been. A. DISASTER. We  had no idea what we were doing, we troubleshooted everything less than 4 hours before the event started, I was triple booked and had to skip two rehearsals to be there, and Cippy got food poisoning for the first 5 hours of the event!!! Absolutely wild. I remember the scariest moment was when two people were scheduled to go, and I couldn't figure out how to get them on stream until literally 2 minutes before they went on. I was staving off a panic attack with that one. It was one of those magical days where everything went exactly as it was supposed to. It even ended with the hypest ending imaginable: Team Megacorp winning off the back of Cippy breaking rac1 All Gold Bolts record in the marathon. It was actually magical. There was this air of intangible, morbid beauty surrounding that day for me, as well: I woke up knewing it would be the day my grandma would die. As if she were looking out for me, making sure I had a wonderful day, she passed literally 5 minutes after the relay stream ended. I'll never forget that day.

Over time, I kept smashing records and gaining traction. I set new world records in 6 different Ratchet categories, including the 31:29 in UYA that I improved to a 31:16 literally yesterday. I got stuck at 200 subs for a while, and then somehow shot up to 300, and then somehow shot up to 400, and then somehow shot up to 500, which is where I'm hovering right now. I'm very content riding out the rest of 2017 with these numbers, but over the course of the next year, I want to push to 1000. I want to prove what I've known for so long: that I can hold my own among the pantheon of elite streamers.

I had two sick GDQ runs: the No IMG race with Skitz (that i won get fucked skitz haHAA) and my All Gold Bolts run that was honestly legendary. The route is horribly out of date now (sub 1 is very doable nowadays) but I hit every single incredibly difficult trick first try with the pressure of >100,000 people watching. I can honestly say it's one of my proudest runs ever.

All the while, the Gengar girl and I kept spending sleepless nights together and getting closer and closer. I visited her for the first time in February, where I finally convinced her to start dating me even though we both knew it was kind of a dumb idea to have a committed distance relationship. We're still together to this day, and I'm seeing her again in 3 days that can't go by quickly enough. Summer, I love you so much, and you've given me so many reasons to be happy even in my darkest, edgiest moods. I don't know where our paths are going to take us in the future, but I know we'll be able to figure it out together.

In conclusion, 2016 was fucking awful, but in the past year, I went from someone who was nearly suicidal to someone who has never believed more in myself and the things I'm capable of achieving. I have so many people to thank, but to keep it terse, I'll leave it at this. Thank you. Whoever you are. If you're reading this, that means you've made my life better in some capacity. I'll be setting my sights even higher in 2018, but for the remainder of 2017, I'm happy with what I've accomplished.

Here's to a brighter tomorrow.

Xem

P.S. I'm not kidding I REALLY want front page and, like, forreal, whose dick do I have to suck to get it?