Month: June 2021

The last few trials have all been focused on trying to add things to my life. Unfortunately, they’ve had the side effect of throwing the habits I had in turmoil. I’ve been sleeping, eating, and managing my days poorly. Over the next few weeks, I hope to address those problems.

Fixing My Diet

Starting with the place I’ve made the most progress, my diet has already gotten better. Since most of my diet consists of what I bring in the house, it relies on what I buy at the grocery store. After a few weeks of delay, I’ve shifted back to what normal meals looked like prior to moving.

For breakfast, I have a small bowl of mixed nuts and a piece of dark chocolate. Still practicing intermittent fasting, I don’t eat breakfast until sometime between eleven and noon. With a lunch break to follow, I’ve switched back to a clean lunch of a few handfuls of mixed greens and tomatoes for a salad.

Getting these two meals under control helps me reign in on dinner, because why throw out what I just sacrificed for a bunk of junk food.

Lastly, when it comes to eating out, I tend to give myself more leeway with what I order. The goal in these cases is to limit how often I order from restaurants. Once or twice a week is more than enough.

The Core Five Habits

For a few years (past year maybe) now, I’ve held myself to five daily habits: reading a page from The Daily Stoic, a morning stretch routine, reading, creating, and meditating. Unfortunately, over the last few weeks, I’ve had a hard time keeping up with even one of these.

I’ve found this set of habits covers the majority of what I want to accomplish in a given day. Not all of them represent a perfect day, but doing at least a little bit in each helps to keep the wheels spinning. 

This week, a major focus of mine has been to hit the minimum of these habits. If that means reading only a single page or writing a line, that’s progress.

Building these habits to compound on one another helped me a lot in the past, and so I’ve been focused on getting those routines back. Reading my Daily Stoic page right after waking up, and stretching while my coffee brews are just two easy habits I can tie to activities I do every day already.

The other three have more often than not become things to do right before bed, which has begun a problematic cycle.

A Root Problem – Sleep

One of the cruxes of my issues has been poor sleep. Time gets away from me, and I find myself staying up far too late, getting poor sleep, and struggling the next day. I then find myself too tired to make progress on various goals or habits after work, and thus put things off until late in the night. This leads to late nights catching up to where I want to be and continuing the cycle.

To remedy my issue, I plan to get myself into bed earlier. Easier said than done, but it’s an objective marker that I can keep track of.

Lately, my sleep schedule has been to go to bed between midnight and one. Ultimately, I’d like to find myself back to an 11 PM bedtime, but trying to dial things back too quickly isn’t likely to see success. For the next week, I want to shoot for being in bed before midnight. While it’s not a monumental change, it’s a start.

While my week has been focused on getting the above in order, there are still pieces I need to improve on. Getting my sleep schedule to a manageable level, something like eleven to seven will definitely help across the board. My workout schedule has been hit or miss the past few weeks and I’d like to get that in order.

The last few weeks have shown me another fun hobby isn’t really for me to take seriously. Streaming, while it has its moments, never really got the momentum that I was hoping for. The Game Jam over the weekend was the culmination of the issues I’ve been having lately, spreading myself too thin.

Thoughts On Stream

The experience of going live and playing a game for an audience can be a great time but can be difficult when the need to perform is draining. There were a lot of days that the upcoming stream was a highlight but on others it felt like an oncoming burden. The latter days certainly outweighed the former.

This week, I decided I was going to put a pause on streams. I’ve been feeling pretty wiped out and have come to the conclusions of the trial already. Rather than continuing to commit to a schedule I knew I didn’t enjoy, I figured I would allow myself to recover.

For a long time, I was under the impression that I would have no interest in streaming regularly. The whole idea of consistently being online seemed far more demanding than I would ever like. After watching a few streamers recently, I thought it would be worth some honest effort.

There were certainly days that I had a lot of fun. Chatting with friends, family, and even strangers while playing interesting games had its moments. Then, there were the times that I would be less focused on the game and more concerned with if the stream was running right, my sound was fine, and other insignificant issues that took my attention.

Later, spending time playing games alone again was far more relaxing. I just allowed myself to enjoy the game and not worry about anything else. After that, it was hard to motivate myself to go through with streaming again.

Any scheduled stream night, I knew I wasn’t going to have a great time if by 7:30 I wasn’t looking forward to going online. This was most evident in the GMTK Game Jam.

Jammed Up

The GMTK Game Jam is an event I look forward to every year. With two prior submissions under my belt, I was looking forward to working with a bigger team this year. Little did I realize that what I was really excited for was time to spend with a few friends.

My brother had actually come over in person, and being able to spend time with him was great. With just moving, I got to show him around the house and the neighborhood. I feel like I spent more time sitting around talking than on any actual work for the game.

We ended up having other friends over, and my roommate and I even spent a couple hours at a bar nearby talking about all sorts of things. Sitting alone at my computer hacking away at technical problems was the last thing I wanted to do last weekend.

I did end up pushing myself to do a short stream Saturday night at which point I was already tired and struggling to move forward with the project. Having to entertain on top of that was even more exhausting. After a couple hours, I decided to end the stream to focus on getting the game finished. In the end, I was too tired to resolve the remaining issues and didn’t finish it.

I was a bit disappointed that the pretty simple hurdle of submitting something wasn’t met, but at the same time, I found it to be a great weekend.

Dealing with Failures

This being my first year participating in the jam without submitting a game was definitely disappointing. The feeling I have towards streaming also has the last few weeks feeling like a waste of time.

On the bright side, having gone through and tried to put even the minimal effort into streaming that I did, I can pretty confidently say it isn’t for me. Performance and play are something I need to be excited to enjoy at all. Forcing it just makes things worse.

Regarding the performance in the Game Jam, I don’t think it is all bad. Throughout the time I procrastinated, I imagined myself figuring it out and putting something together. It’s been somewhat of a trend of the past years. There were certainly bugs and issues, but the games were finished and submitted. I now need to accept that I need to manage my time and efforts better for any project that I’m committing myself to, especially those with a hard deadline. Something I should start applying to my growing backlog of pet projects.

Lately, I’ve been overwhelmed by taking on more and more seemingly pointless projects. Streaming, game development, and a number of writing projects all barely started. What I need to do is step back and prioritize. Setting deadlines and scrapping missed work might be the only way to move past these projects or else they will likely be seen in a growing stack of to-do lists for the rest of my life.

I don’t think I’m done with streaming for good, but for the time being, it’s going to be a rare instance when I’m feeling it. Something for fun rather than something for necessity. If that means I stream once a week, a month, or even every few months, so be it.

While anticlimactic, this trial has come to a close. The last month or so, I’ve felt that I’ve been slipping up the basics of my habits and routines. I kept blaming it on the move, which has now had a few weeks to settle. With little change, I think I need a nudge in the right direction. While not inherently a trial, over the next few weeks I’ll be discussing my attempts to get back on track.

After a lot of thoughtful insights last week, I hate to say that I don’t have much to say this week. While the past hasn’t been too exciting, I’m happy to announce an exciting project this upcoming weekend.

A Brief Update

As this trial has already proven, streaming has been a lot of fun, even with the various technical issues. With what I worked on this week, a checklist and prepared layouts before the stream, I have an easier time avoiding the issues.

An issue I find I still have is a few streams that hold a variety of unused space. While I prefer minimal noise beyond the game, it can be a bit bland while watching a stream. I did set up one layout with the chat feed while live. It did offer some character, but with the limited chatters I have, it was mostly an unused black void.

One of the biggest pieces I am missing compared to other streamers is a webcam. It’s long been something I’ve considered getting, but have decided against it, especially as they’ve become harder to find at a reasonable price this past year. I don’t believe a webcam is a requirement by any means, but can certainly help to not only fill that space, but create a more intimate space with viewers.

My goal this week will be to find something extra to add to fill the blank space.

The GMTK Game Jam Live

For the last couple of years, I participated in the Game Maker’s Toolkit Game Jam, a 48 hour game development marathon. In years past, I had help with design from my brother and music from a friend, but handled all of the coding myself.

I’m very excited to work with a wider group, including some friends who are experienced coders. We worked on a game a few months ago, and I’m looking forward to working with this much bigger group for the first time. I plan to stream at least a few hours of work this Saturday. Stop by at twitch.tv/qryguy.

I’m hoping with more hands helping on the coding side, we can not only make a more complex game, but I can have more time on the design side. This is the part of game creation I am most interested in, coming up with interesting, engaging, and fun mechanics to use in the game.

With the way that jams work, everyone will more or less do a little bit of everything, but people definitely have their expertise. At the end of the day, I just hope I don’t end up having to handle the art again.

Last week’s set of goals helped set me off this week on the right foot. Watching Devin’s video gave a few ideas of what to focus on for the next week. In particular, he discussed the importance of having a specific niche and how different platforms work for better or worse when it comes to discoverability. First, I have some thoughts on how streaming went this week.

Mistakes and Failure

For the next few weeks, my plan is to stream on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. So far, I’ve already had to compromise on one of those days with a long night spent setting up a new monitor and fixing some prior hardware issues with my computer, but that was just the beginning.

The new monitor is quite nice, but led to a variety of issues with my stream on Thursday. The different size caused the layout of the stream to completely change, making it a challenge to look nice, resulting in my giving up and settling for a wonky layout.

Another problem arose when I decided to snack on some fruit while streaming. In an attempt to not submit any viewer to my chewing, I muted my microphone, which I forgot to unmute the whole stream. Thus, nothing I said came through for the entire duration.

These aren’t the only mistakes I’ve made. In the past, I once streamed a black screen for multiple hours, only to discover the mistake near the end.

These problems seem absolutely stupid compared to what I regularly watch, but of course many of those people have far more experience. My mistakes are lessons I need to learn to improve myself and my content.

Platforms and Discoverability

Luckily, these mistakes are limited to Twitch itself. The one time stream that not many people will ever see. While a benefit in that case, reaching a wider audience is definitely a goal of mine.

Devin Nash is a long time Twitch partner and has advised a variety of people on growing online. Last week, I decided that I would watch a particular video of his about growing from zero to one hundred viewers on Twitch.

What was surprising is that a lot of his recommendations for growth come outside of streaming. The video was a conversation with another streamer and a lot revolved around using YouTube as the focus for growth. This is because YouTube has far better tools for reaching a wider audience that Twitch definitely lacks.

There are a variety of platforms that offer a wider net, whether they are social media like Twitter and Instagram or content platforms like YouTube or TikTok. These have easier ways to share and reach an audience with trending sections, built in sharing tools, and algorithms pushing content to new viewers.

Another big part of the video focused on something I’ve struggled with for a long time, choosing a niche.

My Possible Niche

In Devin’s video, he was talking with a streamer of Magic the Gathering Arena, the online version of the card game. While a lot of the specific advice was ways to improve using elements of Magic, the high level lesson was the importance of finding a niche.

I’ve long known that this is something that has driven so many creators I watch. Whether they are World of Warcraft streamers or self-help authors. Finding one for myself, however, has been a weird journey.

This blog has somewhat been in the self-improvement ballpark, but other interests of mine have been in areas of game development, personal finance, and fiction writing. With this disconnected set of interests, I haven’t been able to build a 

This scattered set of interests has also led to my picking up and dropping a variety of hobbies and projects. This basically leads to little of what I do ever getting to feel complete. Luckily, right around the corner is a fun project that always pushes me to publish something, the GMTK Game Jam.

With the success of my goals last week, I want to give myself goals. This week I’m more focused on avoiding the mistakes I’ve made in the past. I want to have layouts ready to stream for the games I plan to play for the next two weeks. I also want to have a checklist to cover before each stream to ensure I am ready and don’t make any mistakes off the bat.