The Current Situation: Stream Full Time?

At work, I was informed one of my co-workers is leaving at the end of the month.  They are starting to train me to, at least, back up her replacement, and at most, have me replace her entirely.  This is actually problematic for a couple reasons:

1) This company has had a history of making me learn all of these new things only to reject any pay raise negotiations
2) This company has had a history of making the incorrect personnel decisions in an effort to cut costs

These two reasons lead me to believe that I will be in charge of two jobs with little to no increase in compensation, but a huge increase in work stress and time spent there.  I am typically scheduled from 6 AM to 2:30 PM, with overtime happening basically out of nowhere a lot of times.  This lack of consistency in my schedule has always been a bit alarming, but with this new situation, it will only get worse.  With the holidays a few months away, it will become even worse than that.

This leads me to one of the toughest questions I've ever had to ask myself.

Is it time to gamble on myself, take the risk and try to stream full-time?

This is a really scary question to me.  As I said in my stream today (August 1st, 2016), there are a ton of hurdles and a ton of question marks.  The realities of streaming full-time are very intimidating.  Health insurance, no 401k, no guaranteed wage/salary... the list goes on.  It's a very scary and potentially dangerous road to take.  You're essentially a salesman; your product is your stream, and you are trying to sell it to the masses in a pleasing and enjoyable way, and in exchange you hope you get monetary support.  To some, it's being tipped, rewarded for providing entertainment.  To others, it's begging, asking for handouts.  Friendships and camaraderie are also very double-edged, as sad and disappointing as that sounds.  Your closest friend on Twitch is your direct competition.  We all want to succeed in one form or another, but we're all competing in some way.  It's a really tough thing to do.

With all that said, though... I want to do it.  I really do.  It actually stings my pride a little bit thinking about it; I don't want to look like I'm begging people to help fund my life.  Memes aside, sellout streams aside, this is a big and dangerous step to take, yet I'm drawn to it.  It's not the idea of playing games for a living, even though that *is* a pipe dream for a lot of avid video gamers.  It's the entertainment aspect.  I've always been outgoing, I've always been an extrovert, I've always loved making people laugh and smile.  Twitch has allowed me to do that while doing something I really enjoy.  I want to give you guys more than just a few hours a day, I want to give several.  I want to dedicate 6+ hours a day talking to you guys, playing games for you, entertaining you, being your friend.

But I need help.

I don't want to look like I'm begging.

I don't want to look like I'm trying to take advantage of you all.

I want to get everybody's thoughts on this.  I don't necessarily need the pros and cons listed, just a general idea of how feasible it is to support me as a viewer, how feasible it looks for this to happen, so on.

I want to do monthly sellout streams.  I've taken some of your feedback and plan to apply it to the next one, and I plan to continue taking feedback to continue improving them.

I want to start a GameWisp profile to gauge out how much support I can actually get.  If you don't know what GameWisp is, it's essentially Patreon for streamers.  There is a lot of Twitch integration involved, it offers really good protection for fund transfers, and it is actually a really helpful tool to gauge how many people could support this endeavour.  I don't know what "rewards" I can give, so any ideas thrown my way would be nice.  If that, alongside donations/tips/whatever-you-want-to-call-them can lead to a reasonable monthly income, then I think the path is clear.

Most of all, I want to entertain you all.