Streaming as a productivity tool
TL;DR - Streaming hard with current lifestyle, accommodations being made.
To be perfectly honest, after streaming for about a year (give or take my many breaks), I see that I'm really just not built to handle it with my lifestyle. Not traditionally, anyways. The idea of going live, interacting with a bunch of people, all hanging out and enjoying each other's company, I get it, but it never really felt right to me.
If I wanted the company of these people, why not just be in their company personally? Do I really need a constant influx of new people entering my zone, hardly able to really connect? Maybe I just dislike the transactional nature of streaming; I can't become personal friends with each and every person that stops in, even though I'd like to do just that. They watch me, I provide entertainment, we go our separate ways and do our separate things after.
I don't get it.
Especially when my time is extremely limited, as it tends to be.
That's why I stream for myself, and really, my friends. I've seen people criticize that mindset as lacking drive, among other things, but the way I see it, the highest quality content you'll ever put out live is when you're really, really doing what you want, for who you want.
Think about it: you hit go live, you're committing hours, 3-6 hours on average PER STREAM, channeling your energy, doing your best to put forth the best version of yourself, even sometimes at the expense of your own energy. There's nothing wrong with this, but why bother? Why grind so hard?
Why does streaming have to be a hustle?
I take it as seriously as my energy allows me to, which, generally speaking, is about a 3 or a 4 out of 10. I do my best in the moment to be entertaining and have fun, but if I'm not in the middle of streaming, I won't lie and say that I'm grinding backstage stuff to grow faster, incline harder, ACCELERATE INFINITELY!!! I say this as someone who genuinely enjoys video editing, too. But before I get too unfocused, productivity; sure, streaming is a giant commitment in one's day, and that time can virtually always be spent better doing anything else, ESPECIALLY in terms of content creation (in strict terms of efficiency). So why bother?
The win condition is to not play the game.
So why dedicate that time? What can I do to make my streams more meaningful in my own life? If streaming detracts from time I can spend producing higher quality content for YouTube, or spending time in the company people whom I've genuinely connected with through this hobby, why even bother? Why dump time into something that's genuinely all the worst bits of things that make it fun?
Because we can add value. Streaming, in my opinion, is the limp-dick middle ground between spending time with people you care about and actually creating something with intent (given the typical stream) at least as the average-10-viewers-or-less streamer. It's a totally different world for people with big, active chats. Entirely so.
But streaming can also be a very, very powerful tool for those little guys. If I can't convince myself to do something, I can sure as hell convince myself to stream it. It's productivity fodder, a secret sauce to trick the brain into considering what might normally consititute "work" as "play", thereby adding a personal value to the stream itself. You're committing time, you're putting your best self forward, you're doing all you can to make the stream good. If it just so happens that the stream topic is being productive, you'll naturally want to do it, and to do it well. So yeah, I'm going to stream. I'm going to go live, I'm going to chat, I'm going to have fun doing it. I'm going to win the game by not playing; I'm going to use streams as just another mundane tool in the everyday life. Sure, I can't use that time to spend with people I've connected to, nor can I use it to do something that requires getting away from the computer, but that doesn't mean it has to be a net loss.
I'm also noticing that this was one really elaborately constructed strawman, I partly doubt that anyone except me thinks this way. But, that said, if I can conceive the thought, so can anyone else.
Hopefully this meant something, but maybe it didn't. Only way to find out is to throw it out there and hope my silly little message in a bottle reaches someone that connects with some part of this.
Anyways, those are today's ramblings. See you soon, netizen. == Fuza
P.S. - The tea I made last time was strawberry lemonade. Pretty good! Gonna try it again, a stronger brew this time though.