I Owe You My Gratitude

Y'all. This year has been a wild adventure and I am so thankful to everyone who has given me the time of day at all. Seriously.

I have been on and off Twitch for about two and a half years, trying to find my niche and a time slot that worked for me and my schedule and what I was trying to create. I've chased after numbers, attention, and associations during that time, not really knowing what I was chasing after. It wasn't until mid-2020 that I realized what I wanted to do with my channel and even then I had no idea what it would turn into. I was that person looking at my peers, wondering why my channel was so slow to get to Affiliate status, or why I wasn't getting to 10 or 20 viewers, or why I only had two people subscribe to my channel, while my peers were blowing up left and right after only a month on the platform. I felt left behind, like a late bloomer.

There wasn't any major moment that you'll ever see in my VODs where I had a realization, but it happened. I looked at my schedule: school and day job. I still had to go to work during the pandemic. I still had classes. Truly, the things I'm involved with outside of Twitch are more-or-less pandemic-proof. I didn't have the mountains of free time that some of my peers in streaming suddenly had, nor do I have the personality for "exciting, fast-paced game-play." Y'all, I didn't even get my first moderator until last week (you'll meet her this weekend!!) And the schedule I gave myself wore me out.

But one day I said, "Well, I'm here and if I'm going to do this at all, it has to be with the energy I can give it." So I made my schedule. 3 pm Tuesdays, and every other Saturday and Sunday. That's when I'm off from work, so that's when I'll stream, after getting other stuff done. I went live, gave my few little comments and announcements on my projects, and went to work drawing. But at 3 pm, I'm flagging and ready to take a nap, not do work. So I changed it to 9a on the same days and I promise you, I feel so much better. But I did all that without consulting the people who still come to my channel, and I feel like I left some folks behind.

The truth is, I noticed more that when I just allowed myself to exist in an online space without the guise of a high-energy romp that I could never match, y'all saw and were captivated enough to hang out! I'm saying all of this to say thank you. While Twitch was never going to be for me what it is to so many, I'm glad to know that it can still be a great time for both of us.

Thank you.