#PastebinMonday 08/14/2023 What This Means for the Stream Edition

'Sup, doods!

For many reasons, I felt like the Pokémon Puzzle Week was something that I needed to do. I don't have a lot of traditions on the channel... or anything cohesive, for that matter. The channel has felt aimless for the longest time and I would like to build some consistent things that people can rely on tuning in to over a really long stretch. The weekly schedule I was doing recently was good for that, but I didn't have any good “special events” to offer. This is a special event that I can promise to give people every year. It's also a way to treat myself for my birthday that I have usually neglected.

To be real with you doods, I've treated this stream as a hobby for the past ten years and come to realize that I can't do things the way I'm currently doing in order to grow it into a thing that I can live off of. At the end of Saturday's show, I relayed that my understanding of a successful live stream runs off of four central activities: streaming, editing, promoting, and adequate sleeping. I've been doing a LOT better at taking care of myself physically as of late. The weight loss from my turkey and cheese sandwich diet has been slow, yet fairly steady when I commit to it. That said, I am only capable of focusing on two of the aforementioned central activities at a time. When I stream, for example, I find myself afterwards choosing between making clips of said stream or making clips of older recordings that are piling up on my hard drive. Good sleep often goes out the window.

I don't have the time or energy to do everything that I want to do for stream growth. I can't review my stream layout or the perks that I give on my stream. I can't make complicated time-consuming edits for my videos. I can't make creative posts on all of the social media accounts that I have. I can't do all of that and stream. I can't do all of that and make new content. At some point, I have to pick and choose what to work on in order to make progress.

If all of this sounds “woe is me,” that's because it is very much a first world problem. I have a steady job that keeps me from streaming more, but I can fall back into that if this streaming thing no longer works out. I would like to make a living out of this, though, because I want to enjoy living for the first time in my adult life. I am simply surviving right now. I would rather not go through my life just going through the motions to get by.

I would rather go into all in stream mode and get the attention of other potential doods, but the stream design is not optimal yet. I also want to make a specific set of videos to get doods' attention, but can't do that while I stream.

So what does all this mean for the stream? I needed to go off on all of these tangents to vent in lieu of therapy, but I had an overall message that I communicated on Saturday's broadcast and need to expand upon here. Since it is tournament time, it feels right to continue streaming races on Fridays to prepare.  I will still stream on Fridays during tournament time. I expect that to go on for a couple more months. After that, I'm afraid I cannot promise anything until my planned videos are done. It could very well roll over into Tetris Attack tournament time because it's tough for me to focus on any one thing. I know this at the moment because I am getting distracted while typing this update.

Above just about everything else, I love to watch people, especially when they talk to each other. I would rather watch people collaborate than collaborate with anyone myself. I am currently watching v-tubers play Terraria. I have started watching Hololive's FuwaMoco (Fuwawa & Mococo Abyssgard) for their constant collab energy. It's the same kind of energy that got me watching v-tubers in the first place. These distractions will make things even tougher. I don't know how anyone else balances casual gaming with “work” gaming. If I'm going to stream a lot in the future, doods, I'm gonna have to figure that out.

Today's (permanent) extra streaming goals:

Goal #2 (was 3): update the LPS Pokémon Puzzle League broadcast layout to be better automated like the Tetris Attack layout. Part of the reason for the step back is to give myself enough time to ready this for the tournament in three weeks.
Goal #3 (was 2): edit my personal best runs. Last week gave me more for the backlog. Now I have a lot more time to get through the videos.
Goal #5: script and record footage for my Puzzle League tutorial series. I have some scripts left to touch up before feeling comfortable with moving on to recording gameplay. Then I will need to record my talking points and edit it all together. This will probably need to be saved for after the tournament.
Goal #6: clean up my own stream layout. I am brainstorming how I want the final theming to be. I probably want to give people multiple options, maybe allow spending bits to change the look. I don't have anything written down yet. I don't expect to get to this anytime soon.
Goal #7: maybe make a universal LPS broadcast layout. I have a base, but perhaps I should stylize one for the LPS brand. Let's just say I have plans. Hopefully I wouldn't over-homogenize it like SpeedGaming did.
Goal #8: release the Puzzle League tutorial series YouTube shorts once a day until they're all done. I really do think I need to time the release of the series with a ramping up of my streaming schedule so that I can take advantage of whatever there is to gain from releasing the shorts.

This week's schedule:

(All broadcasts begin at 7pm CT unless otherwise stated)

Friday – Friday Night Salt Mines (community speedrun races) – Even More Tournament Prep, Doods!


That’s my life story for the week. Later, doods!

--Cards