I've been putting in a lot of time recently being more consistent with streaming. I've gone weeks where I averaged more than 12 hours a day streaming. I think I've only gone one 'day' without streaming at all in months, where I use 'day' loosely as a period of time where I'm awake. I've had multiple ask about donating to the stream, and plenty of people offer suggestions on how to make things higher quality.
And yet, I haven't even updated my profile on Twitch since last April. There are tons of little things I could be doing to make progress on being successful. But I haven't done them. I sometimes think about doing them, but then I just stream something instead, or play an idle clicker game.
I do actually think just streaming things has helped a lot. I used to break into a sweat just having a single viewer show up and chat, but now I can hold multiple broken conversations at once without freaking out. I've settled into a comfortable pattern, which is fine enough, but if progress is going to be made I need to actually make an effort to do so.
Even though I don't think I deserve it.
What I need to do is pretend I do deserve to be successful, and then take steps towards making it happen. So I'm going to make a list of things that I need to do. Small things, sure, but slowly chunking through a list of small things will eventually get to a good spot, without being too overwhelming at any given time. And hopefully without breaking the facade of pretending to deserve it.
{As an aside, Wil just made a 6 month progress report on the things he's working on. I created this post right after he initially made his post, which means I've wasted 6 months without putting in very much work. No surprise then that my stream really hasn't grown very much since then, huh?}
- Set up a green screen.
- Write a more detailed 'About Me' profile.
- Buy a scissors boom for my mic.
- Sell my old Magic cards.
- File taxes.
- Get a chat bot for my stream.
- Write a better chat bot, or modify one.
- Set up a stream schedule.
- Stick to said schedule.
- Set up a streaming related email address.
- Set up a Paypal account.
- Set up donations.
- Work on developing and implementing more board gaming streams.
- Buy a better video card.
- Buy a solid state drive.
- A better 'break' screen.
- Generic layout for 4x3 games.
- Generic layout for 16x9 games.
- An offline screen.
- A better stream profile header.
- Verify Youtube account.
- Set up a time each week to make highlights/export to Youtube.
- Join a streaming team?
- Restart SNES Saturday.
- Come up with a cute/cool/catchy name for viewers/supporters.
- Configure a Discord server.
- Investigate small business loans/subsidies.
- Define rules for chat.
- Figure out what to do about chat mods.
- Decide on a hair style.
- Get hair cut/shave.
- Exercise more than not at all.
- Investigate lighting/lenses to reduce glare on my glasses on camera.
- Figure out how to mix sounds so I'm not streaming everything I hear.
- Curate a playlist of 'go fast' songs.
- And one of 'not blocked' songs.
- And one of 'non-lyrical background' songs.
- And one of just plain awesome songs.
- Make a better 'games I play' profile section.
- Hook up my SNES to my capture card.
- Possibly get a powered splitter for the SNES.
- Figure out how to make my new headphones not cause pain when they press into my glasses.
- Find something I'm willing to drink while streaming that isn't pop.
