7.20.18

Hi - wanted to talk about some online stuff quickly. As you might notice lately, trying to stream more often - mostly because P5 is an awesome game and has been a lot of fun so far. But I don't quite want it to end there, hoping to keep the activity up afterwards.

Over time I've done a lot of weird things to be barriers to me achieving either speedgaming goals, stream goals, or even just finishing casual games for my enjoyment. I tend to overthink how to efficiently spend my time that I pretty much end up not being as effective as I could have been. For example, leading up to SGDQ I just had the mindset for multiple months that I couldn't do anything speedgaming related besides Rockman 8, which in hindsight was pretty dumb. I have a few other smaller hobbies, and of course higher priorities of both exercise/health & my career. The main other hobby that I compete with is practicing and playing music, and I found that I waffle too much between speedgaming/streaming and music so much that I think I wind up ineffective at properly pushing both.

So a bit before going to Japan earlier this month, I made up my mind that I was going to push all the bullshit aside and stream more for awhile. Stop giving a shit who's watching, stop pretending like I "should" be doing other things, on and on. It's real easy for someone who's got a full time job (esp. in a major city where it's hardly 9-5 hours) to slip into the abyss of not fully pushing their speedgaming/stream limits. But at the end of the day, I still find that I really want to keep it up because I have a stupid amount of fun around this community.

I don't have a ton of subs and a ton of viewers, but I definitely really like my stream and the crowd. I don't watch a ton of Twitch myself but occasionally I watch other streamers, frankly who do some eye-rolling shit for either money or chat interaction sometimes, and I think often that I can do it better or smarter than some people (some game feed & layout setups I see on Twitch blow my mind). That being said I'm definitely aware of my smaller status, but I like it- hanging out in that 1-100 viewer range, depending on the game, is a real nice part of Twitch to chill in. I have a few mantras I keep in my head for streaming, which is a combination of 1) up-beat & good attitude, 2) clean layout and game feed, 3) minimal/mild interaction with monetary elements but not at all the focus and 4) a good combination of first playthroughs and speedgaming.

Also speedgaming's not dead, not even close. Just needed some time post SGDQ, and breaking free of that GDQ/marathon cycle is tough. DQIII race submission for AGDQ is on the radar but other than that, I really just want to push my own speedgoals. Also zootr understreams :]

So yeah, want to keep the stream activity up, knock out some of my speed goals, casual playthroughs and have a good time. Want to care a lot less about dumb peripheral elements and just do it. It'll likely always be a hobby but I prefer it that way. There may be times where I drop off to work on another hobby/project for a bit, but I want to be less indecisive about whatever projects I'm working on and more assertive. I think it'll help me with my musical pursuits too, to better siphon my time & focus into one area or another.

Having a crowd & community to hang out with, on Twitter, Discord or in my stream, is great and means a lot. Thanks for reading