ZENITHON 2026

Zenithon 2026 is live!

Before I say anything else about this, for the sake of my own personal sanity and feeling like I'm not ripping people off, I am aware I have not yet delivered everything from Zenithon 2025. So here is an explanation of why Zenithon 2026 is happening and what my plans are to deliver existing incentives.

As you may or may not be aware, 2026 has been extremely unkind to me and my family. We are really going through it. Stuff with my job is not good, to say the least. As of the time of writing this, I'm off work, and it is probably unpaid time off. I have spent this entire year doing everything I can to get a grip on things in my life in general, and every single time I start to get traction with that, the rug is pulled out from underneath me and I have to start over. Of all of the things in my life this has been true of, it has been most true with my job.

Most recently, we have been having a family emergency that required much more emotional energy that what I had left in the tank, and it left me completely unable to function for a couple of days. I am now at least feeling a bit more functional, but extremely low energy and still somewhat on the verge of another breakdown. This is pretty embarrassing to admit, but it is the reality of my life as a person with AuDHD, a shit ton of trauma, and basically no safety net if I fail. I wish I could elaborate on the family emergency thing, but it's not my place to share those details at this time. All I really can say is that Sassy and I and all of my kids are healthy, but there are others who are not.

So, with the situation above I have been forced to tell my job I am unable to function enough to perform the responsibilities they have placed on me as an employee. I don't know yet when I will be returning to work. I am hoping to feel well enough in a week or so, but it could be longer than that. Right now, I'm taking things one hour at a time.

Through all of this turmoil in my life, there has been one consistent bright spot. You guys. Thank you for your love and support, and your contributions to trying to help me get myself and my family back to a better spot, whether those contributions have been monetary, networking for other opportunities, or just emotional support, I appreciate you.

Zenithon has been one of my favorite parts of stream the past couple of years. It's motivating in a way that "normal streams" are not, and it's fun to figure out new ways to keep people engaged and give something to be excited about. That being said, since the incentives involve real money, it's very important to me not to give the impression that I'm taking advantage of anyone in any way, especially because there are people out there who would love to paint me in a bad light and try to convince the rest of you that that's exactly what I'm doing (I promise you it's not, but I guess if you would believe that about me you probably haven't come to know me well enough as it is, and there's nothing I can realistically do about that.)

So as a way to ease my conscience for those incentives, here is what I want to try as far as a format for this next Zenithon goes:

Each day that I stream will very likely start with Super Metroid Any%, unless otherwise specified in my Discord and/or the stream title that day. My intention is to do 1 hour (ish) of practice, and then move on to runs, generally those will be WR Attempts, but I might approach runs with different mindsets depending on how I am doing that day or whatever other capacity I have. Again, this is a loose number, but I'm thinking 3 hours of runs per day.
After the 3 hours is up, I will move on to delivering on the remaining Zenithon 2025 incentives. As a note, some of these have been removed, and that is not because I don't plan on delivering them at some point, but rather because I have specific plans for that content that will turn out better if it's not done off the cuff during a "normal" Zenithon stream. Additionally, this portion of the stream, the Zenithon timer will be paused, but still accepting contributions to drive the timer up. -- This is subject to change, but I want to try it and see how it goes.

I think I will have an option for people to add 1-2 hours of Any% Runs each day as well, but I haven't fully figured out how that would work from a technical standpoint. I don't want to manage 2 separate subathon timers, so whatever it is will be a manual effort, and I can only promise to keep up with that as much as I have energy for, so that will have to be something I play by ear.

I will try to think of a list of fun incentives for Zenithon 2026, but they will have to be spread further out than previous years because I simply don't have the capacity to keep up with it as much as I did in 2025 or 2024.

Thank you all for believing in me. I appreciate you.

-Zeni