Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

As I write this blog post I’m at the cusp of another livestream for Massively Overpowered. I promise that’s not a plug for the channel or for my stream (though perhaps it should be), but it’s basically a marker in the sand of where I’m at right now in my professional career as a writer for the site.

Let me provide a little context: MJ, the site’s primary livestreamer, suffered a pretty spectacular lightning strike at her house. Mercifully everyone is fine, but she’s been mostly knocked out of streaming, which she used to do every day. By comparison, I did streams for the site barely once a month, if that much, mostly because I wasn’t confident in a lot of things about my ability to be a streamer or a content creator. However, since the weather incident, I’ve done my part to keep the MOP Twitch channel alive by doing weekly streams every Sunday and Wednesday. And I’m having a lot of fun dong it.

All this despite the fact that I’m 40 years old. Which, at least in the grander scheme of Twitch things, is ancient.

I’ve said before on this blog (I think) that gaming should know no age, and that people should enjoy what they enjoy in terms of hobbies despite how many years they’ve been on this little hell ball of an Earth. Still, there’s some mental hang-ups that I’m not sure I’ll ever fully remove, but I still end up cheering a little inside every time I actively hit the button to start a broadcast.

Sometimes, just jumping in and doing the damn thing works.

I contend and wholly point out that I’m standing on the shoulders of giants here. MJ has established the channel completely on her own and it — and by extension my own streaming “career” — wouldn’t exist without all of her hard work. Further, she’s still the Queen of Stream for MOP in my eyes. She’s an irreplaceable asset to the channel and to the team, and I look forward to her being able to hop back on to her regular schedule or even being invited to play games alongside her.

With all of that said, I can kind of pat myself on the back here, too, because despite all of my anxieties about my skill as a streamer, or all of the little concerns I have about what being a streamer should be, I’m finding that I’m hitting a stride and having a lot more enjoyment out of this than I had convinced myself I would. We are our own worst critics, of course, but then I’ve always been told growing up in no uncertain terms, either directly or through circumstances of my life, that being a creative force is not something that should be pursued, either as a career path or even as a hobby. Literal decades of hardwiring is telling me that I’m wrong and stupid and bad for doing this. But I keep on keeping on, proving those daily doubts as the lies they are.

I don’t know what I was getting to with this post, if I’m honest. I’m not sure there was ultimately a point. I suppose I just wanted to share one of those “if I can do it, anybody can” kind of things. I also wanted to just share a little self-congratulations since I don’t allow myself moments to do that very often, and maybe just kind of remind myself of this moment in my life.

Maybe, even at 40, I can actually do this seriously and regularly.