A Long-Awaited Update for Nobody in Particular

The year is 2021, quite late into it in fact, and I’ve let this piece of digital real-estate go abandoned for far too long. This post is no guarantee there will be vast amounts of activity beyond this but can’t hurt to try. Got to start somewhere!

In February of this year, my time suddenly became a premium with regards to work that I had on for myself, coupled with a small bout of ill-health (mercifully not of the Covid-19 variety) – I simply couldn’t find the time to sit and prepare livestreams on Twitch and then sit there for several hours a day while keeping an eye on the bank balance in the hope of being able to turn a profit while spending the majority of my time playing video games.

I realise in this day and age the rebellious thing to do is no longer to drop out of school with a guitar and tell your parents you’re going to make a living with your music (though I’m sure this still exists), but rather to strike out on your own with a Logitech C920, a Blue Yeti and a moderately-powerful computer or laptop and tell people you’re now a ‘streamer’.

I won’t lie, I’ve had reasonable success with the latter – turning enough income to make sure I can pay my rent and bills, build an enviable computer, rig up an incredibly attractive sound system, and build a library of games on Steam that numbers close to ten thousand (admittedly most of it tat). But man cannot live on streaming alone – just read any Twitter account of anyone reasonably prolific who earns a living on Twitch. So, I took it upon myself to do the ‘adult’ thing and make sure to secure my income.

Long story short this has been easier said than done, as I have been self-employed my entire life and have plenty of interesting anecdotes and stories I may go into later here if I run out of banter. But as of late I have found myself to be better-off and positioned well to consider streaming again.

Good news! Right?

This is the part where I find myself struggling. I cannot pinpoint the exact thing that is blocking me mentally from just cracking open OBS, setting myself up and pressing ‘Start Streaming’. It does stem from my having a visual style I put together – hastily – in 2017. Turned out the design was bold, striking, and the colour scheme seemed to ‘fit’ with my character and personality. So – with all the intent in the world to update it when I got time – I went ahead and used it… right up until this year.

It is said (by whom? citation needed, I guess) that it’s tough cultivating one’s own garden – and that would appear to apply here. I can happily give advice for days when it comes to other streamers, their hardware and software setups, their designs, branding. You name it. But when it comes to my own design it feels like nothing is correct, and the desire to update anything is next to nil. Case in point, look how long it took to write a post here!

Then – in a surprising twist – I found myself with a more productive weekend than I’d had in a long time. I threw together a temporary setup courtesy of a good friend who bought me a streaming template package (to avoid the nonsense of worrying about what stuff I had was broken or not or needed updating). It’s not on-brand, but it’s slick-looking and will get me going. Now I just need to avoid the pitfall of sitting there and just using that for the next four years without working on my branding at all. You know, the thing I’ve been doing for the last four years.

That’s the situation now. I’m inches away from hammering that button and streaming again, but I simply lack the confidence in my own branding to make anything meaningful out of being a semi-fulltime streamer once again. But I am close.

Some of you may be asking yourself (besides “what am I doing here reading this?” and “Who’s this FM guy anyway?”) whether this is in fact a huge way of procrastinating and avoiding the task of polishing everything up and hitting the button again.

…and you’d be right.

ಠ_ರೃ