Why I started back up streaming, and why I'm quitting again

#pastebinmonday

Yeah yeah I know, I don't mean to be so dramatic about everything. Most people if they're going on a hiatus say something like "I'm going to take some time to focus on irl stuff" and keep their pastebin short, but this one is a bit different. I feel like I owe an explanation to the people who have waited years for a return just for me to leave again, so I'm sorry if you may not care about my backstory or life. You can skip to the very end of this pastebin for the real marathon announcement.

I've been talking about this for a while on stream but I do not really plan on stream almost at all for the next 2-3 years, likely for the rest of my life.

I still may very rarely do certain one-off streams, just to make sure I stay in touch with all you beautiful people on twitch (I feel like a "Let's translate" stream would be perfect for something like that). I also still want to help sonic 06 grow as a game, so I'll glitch hunt and make tutorials/mods/resources as necessary, but in general this is, most likely, the last ever period of consecutive streams from my channel.

This is going to be very personal but I want everyone to understand where I'm coming from and so I have to give a lot of background. I've also been wanting to say a few things I've learned through experience about twitch/gaming culture that I think may be helpful to people who may going through the same thing as I was.

(Also fair warning that I get somewhat preachy/rambly towards the end of this (I have a bad habit of doing that) so sorry in advance. I've marked the section with a (*soapbox*) warning so feel free to skip it if you want.)

=============================================

Back when I was a high schooler I had lots of time, not much to do, and I was somewhat distant from most of the friend groups around school. I wouldn't say I was a social outcast, but I definitely wasn't in a close knit group. So I naturally turned to the internet and speedrunning and streaming and osu. I felt that this was fine since I was just biding time before college and my parents felt like I deserved a break from constantly working so they didn't bother me. For the second half of my senior year of high school and the entire subsequent summer I played sonic 06 constantly and had a great time. That summer was my first GDQ.

Fast forward to my first year of college and I am once again on the fringes of the social sphere. This is due partially to me not having signed up for any pre-freshman activities and also being in a really shitty dorm community but mostly because I was involved so heavily in twitch I felt like I didn't need friends in my real life. I felt like nobody would understand me, I felt like the only people who I was compatible with were other speedrunners/osu players/twitch streamers and if I ever tried making friends with someone who wasn't into that stuff, they would think I was weird. This made me turn to gaming even more. I showed the real people in my life only the normal parts of me and I showed my nerd side only online. Since at the time I didn't have my 360 with me (my younger brother wouldn't let me take it to college) I got horribly addicted to osu. I would procrastinate all schoolwork until the last second just to play more osu, I would think about nothing but osu during classes, I easily topped 50 hours a week and I justified it in the guise of "I'm just following my passions" where in reality I was just running away from the fact that I didn't have any friends.

My parents recognized this long before I did. That April I was on the verge of failing out of school and my mom visited me and we talked and I vowed to stop playing osu and fix my grades. I studied like a mad man that next two weeks and actually managed to study multiple semesters worth of material and pass all my classes. I returned right back to streaming and gaming afterwards to prepare for GDQ but I promised my parents I'd stop after GDQ, and I had fully planned to stop, but I didn't stop, I wasn't able to stop. I finally had a taste of livestreaming fame and I didn't want to let it go. I wanted to prolong it as much as possible.

This all came to a head when, in August, my father did the only thing left he could do, in a last ditch effort to get me to wake up from the world I had hidden myself so deeply in, he broke all of my equipment (PC, mic, monitors, webcam, everything)...and it was the best thing that ever happened to me (although I didn't quite know it at the time)
Here's my account of it happening - https://pastebin.com/XcYRDL44

Now after reading that pastebin you should seriously be wondering why I ever viewed that as a good thing, and rightfully so, it was a really terrible/inconsiderate thing to do on my father's part. He let his emotions get the better of him. Many people on twitter told me to leave home and that my father was a terrible person, and I'd be lying if there wasn't a large part of me at the time that believed it. However, he did what he did out of a legitimate concern for my health. He knew what I didn't and had tried for years to get me to realize it too, I wasn't going to listen unless he did something rash. He freed me from my prison and if he hadn't done that I may have seriously dropped out of university and gone past the point of no return. He saved me from the cliff's edge while there was still time and my relationship with him has been the best it's ever been due to that. I believe this day to be the most important single moment in my life so far.

After that event happened I started devoting all of the time I had spent playing video games into learning Japanese and by that next august I was conversationally fluent. I started dedicating my time to my studies and I went from a 2.9 GPA in freshman spring semester to a 4.0 GPA junior fall. But most of all I dedicated my time to other people, and really opening up to them and being myself despite the possibility of being thought of as weird.

(okay here it goes, *gets up on nice big soapbox*)

What I found is that the whole concept of being incompatible with non gamers is a MASSIVE fallacy. Everyone has weird things that they like, gamers and non-gamers alike. Just because someone doesn't obsessively play games doesn't mean they can't enjoy a good mario party session and likewise, just because someone is a gamer doesn't mean they can't enjoy a casual frisbee toss on the lawn. The key is an open-ness to new experiences. If your personality revolves so heavily around games that you're incompatible with people who can't understand games, maybe you should distance yourself from gaming. At the same time, most people are open enough to gaming to give it a try if you let them. They won't be as into it as you, but that's okay, they don't need to be for the two of you to have fun. Most people probably know this, but I really didn't and it was a hard but rewarding lesson to learn.

Not a lot of people really really don't like to talk about gaming addiction in the gaming community because it's hard. We game because we love the escape, we love getting taken into another world and whisked away on adventures and roleplaying the big hero who saves everyone. But in reality, the only reason why anyone would want an escape, is if they have something they want to escape from. Now that can take many forms (be it social anxiety, stress, isolation, you name it). I no longer have anything to escape from.

I now have a great group of friends in university who like me for me and not for some mask I put on to seem normal. I also have many other things I want to pursue, be it academic, language, career, or social and I feel like my time left on this earth is precious. I no longer prefer the world of gaming, it has lost its luster for me. Any time I do game I feel like I could be using that time for better and more fulfilling things, which is why I'm "quitting" streaming.

tl;dr - Gaming is inherently an escape, and I no longer have anything to escape from

(*returns from atop said soapbox*)

================================================

OKAY - sappy stuff over, so you might be wondering

"Trips if you don't enjoy gaming, why did you return to streaming this summer"

Very good question. Personally, I absolutely can't stand leaving things unfinished, and my PB in sonic no MSG was one of those things. I wanted to be remembered as one of the all time greats but after I quit I was almost immediately overshadowed by focus, dss and sharu as they beat my record so quickly and got the 58 that I had been talking up as free but had never gotten. I wanted to change that. I wanted to drum up hype for my return and then, with everyone watching, I wanted to get a time that was so good that I couldn't possibly be left out of the conversation for the best. I wanted to optimize sonic no msg so hard that the record would stand for years so that I could exit the scene satisfied that I had at least made a name for myself at the cost of those countless hours and years off my life. But I only had the summer. I had only about 8 weeks to stream attempts, and so far in these 8 weeks, I haven't quite achieved the time I had set out to get. A time that was thought to be not humanly possible.

The 56

I only have one week left of my internship before I will no longer have any time left to stream. I have put almost everything else in my life at a higher priority level and so this will be my last free weekend for probably the next year or two.

With that being said...

ALL THIS WEEK, I WILL BE STREAMING PRACTICE AND RUNS IN A LAST DITCH EFFORT TO GET 56

"FAREWELL WEEK" (subject to change):
Tuesday 7/24 - 7:00 to 9:00
Wednesday 7/25 - 5:00 to 9:00
Thursday 7/26 - 5:00 to 9:00
Friday 7/27 - 7:00 to 11:00
Saturday 7/28 - 10:00am to 10:00pm (12h)
Sunday 7/29 - 10:00am to 10:00pm (12h)

I will be very dissatisfied if I end this summer without getting a 56 so by devoting this next week to practice I hope I can get it before my time is up and I hope you all can join me for this last hurrah.