Hello

	Hey, so I've never been one for overly long update posts, so I'll try to keep this brief while still encapsulating everything that's on my mind and has been happening with me the past few months (and some of it much longer than that). Hopefully this post ends up doing a good job communicating exactly what I've been thinking, because a lot of it is difficult to put into words and some of it is even slightly personal.

	So just to touch on what I've been doing while I've been away from Twitch, I reenrolled in the Comp Sci program I was participating in earlier this year since I only stopped when it became overwhelming to balance with streaming and having any amount of free time. I played a few video games that were in my backlog for the longest time, including a couple of the PS1 Final Fantasies, and Super Mario 3D World. I've also really gotten into learning Japanese, and have made pretty solid progress with that in the past couple weeks. Finally, and this may come out of nowhere for a lot of people, but I'm actually the assistant coach for a development League of Legends team. As the team is still a development roster, you can't find our games anywhere just yet, but that could change as early as July/August since we've been performing exceedingly well. I might share a little bit of info about that if it happens.

	Now onto my thoughts about streaming...

	It would be a massive understatement to say I've struggled to be a consistent streamer the past few years. When I first started streaming, I easily maintained a consistent weekly schedule with hours that I would consider fairly obscene nowadays. This came at the cost of my health and my other responsibilities, such as schoolwork and personal relationships. This stands in pretty stark contrast to nowadays, where daily streams takes a lot out of me and it's extremely hard to find the motivation to prepare to stream. Usually once I've begun streaming I have a great time, but it's the motivation to start that was always the issue. I have friends who would often give me the push I needed to do this, but even on some days it really wasn't enough.

	This really confused me for the longest time, because I was unable to mentally reconcile the fact that I was lacking motivation for something that I enjoyed doing pretty much without fail in every case. That being said, the reason I bring all of this up is because this has actually been a fairly recurring pattern for me in many hobbies and passions of mine. I've always had a tendency to overly fixate on something I'm enjoying when I first discover it, often to the detriment of every other thing I could be doing. It's happened with certain video games, it's happened with various subjects I've taken throughout school, and it's happened with multiple hobbies of mine, including streaming. Most recently, I've been exhibiting this behavior with my Japanese learning, as I find it much easier to find motivation to open up Kanji practice than to do actual schoolwork for the classes I'm paying money for, in addition to many other things like sleep.

	All this being said, I may finally have more insight into these behaviors, as well as what I plan to do moving forward to try and become a more consistent streamer and really just regain my motivation for a lot of things I used to more actively do. I recently had a really good discussion with a friend who has their own psychiatric practice, and the discussion led to them heavily suggesting I might have ADHD. ADHD has pretty significant effects on motivation, and could be a large contributing factor to these feelings with regards to streaming I've been experiencing. As simple as this might be, it was actually eye opening for me because it was never something I had ever considered before, and a lot of its other symptoms and effects on behavior line up with many of the things I've been struggling with throughout a large portion of my life, including my difficulty maintaining a consistent sleep schedule.

	Going forward, I'd also really like to try being more open about the steps I'm taking to tackle these challenges so that hopefully I can be the more consistent, better streamer I want to be. Before writing this post, I've already made plans to see a psychiatrist in-state that would be able to give me an official diagnosis and who I could hopefully work with to treat the symptoms, either through behavioral adjustments or medication. As of right now I don't really know enough to say what the eventual treatment will be, as this is all very new to me, but I definitely want to do something if it can have a positive effect on my ability to work on things that I'm honestly really passionate about. I've heard it's possible that consistent exercise can have a really positive effect on certain people with ADHD, so I'm really going to try to force myself to be consistent with that again, motivation issues notwithstanding.

	I plan to return to streaming hopefully later this month, with 100% Glitchless runs on the Switch to start. If I can overcome these hurdles and really, *truly* return to streaming, then my goal is to get every 100% record by the end of this year, as these are the categories I care about the most in Majora's Mask. I may experiment with other games on the side since these are all very long runs, but MM will likely remain my primary focus. When I first return I likely will still be very early in my treatment, or not on it at all yet depending on how long it takes to begin. If I can make it through the early stages though, my hope is that I will only get better and streaming consistently could actually become easier over time.

	I think this is most of the things I wanted to hit with this post. I just want you guys to know that above all else, I'm very proud of the community we've built. I get told all the time about the positivity of my chat and discord, and honestly I couldn't be more appreciative of everyone reading this. Despite my personal struggles, the person I am on stream is actually representative of who I am, and how I feel when I'm streaming, as I do genuinely enjoy it. I don't plan for anything to change in that regard, so I hope to see everyone soon. Thank you again for everything, and I hope this signals a true positive change for the better throughout this year.