I go through it every year, I put to much on the schedule and then I pull it all off again. This time I’ve made a few conclusions about why this happens and what I want to prioritize. I’ve already dropped 40 subs because of the changes to take back my life, but I really don’t give a fuck. I can make all the money from 40 subs in one month with one quality GitHub sponsor or a single IRL mentor gig (which I’m also considering adding back, with no streaming).
Zwift category is my new home. Zwift is something I want to make a part of my personal identity and Twitch persona for the rest of my life. This means daily Zwift streams and meeting all the amazing people in the super tiny Zwift Twitch category. These are humans that I really want to get to know and maintain friendships with for a very long time (even more than those I’ve met in the other categories, as amazing as the people are). Many of the Zwifters are also techies, many of whom didn’t even know about Twitch tech categories when they came to Zwift via Twitch.
Maintain Science & Technology career streams. The category that started it all for me is still the best career category. It covers everything from hacking, to robotics, to biochemistry, and infrastructure engineering. It’s a small, quaint community that I do so love. I’m going to commit to one 2-3 hour stream on the schedule in this category once a week. I want this community to get used to me always being available at that same time every week so those streams have the most participation possible, not just because of the revenue, but because of the input from everyone. Part of the year will be Linux Boost related, and another part will be Linux Homelab init related.
Regular, unscheduled co-working/music streams in Just Chatting. I do love the coworking streams, but they will not be at the same time every day. There is stuff I just don’t want to risk accidentally streaming, sometimes I’m in my underwear still, sometimes I’m tired and might nod off while on stream, sometimes I might mouth the words to something that would get me fired but, on the whole I do enjoy coworking when these risks are low, just not all the time. Co-working streams will therefore remain unscheduled and random. I’m basically only going to do them when I would like a little company myself, but a lot of times I just don’t. I want to be truly alone. (I know, weird, right?)
Occasional Coding streams. I refuse to write the stupid “Software and Game Development” category title. I’ve always hated the “what game are you working on?” title. In fact, I really have no love for the entire category itself. Very rarely is anyone doing anything in there that I’m actually interested in. They are smart good people doing stuff that is absolutely boring to me. I prefer to read FOSS projects on GitHub and elsewhere instead. I understand that people want to watch coders who are just learning, but for me, there has never been a single thing I’ve learned or wanted to watch having sampled hundreds of hours of Twitch coding (yes including lastmiles, whom I love, just don’t care about the coding he’s doing). The people in this category are great people, just not doing anything I care about, usually. But, when I do decide to write some code publicly, I’ll set this to the category and try to take regular breaks to explain what I’m coding (without breaking my train of thought). However, this is always secondary to the scheduled Science and Tech streams that are specifically designed to be of value to those who are watching. If and when I were to ever actually do a series learning to program, I might do it in this category.
10 hours IRL/week, when moment feels right. I’ve been IRL streaming everything, and after the $475 bill from ATT for “overages” (despite the lies from the sales guy that I would never be charged for overages, only throttled). I have to pull way back on IRL. In fact, I have about 8 hours a week total. This means that I’m going to be much more picky about my IRL content. Most of my IRL content will be me biking in different planned destinations all over the Lake Norman and Charlotte area. I’ll do some cooking and at-home stuff that doesn’t take away from my bandwidth, but I’ll never know when that will be in advance. Wearing my streaming rig slows me down during the day when doing chores and stuff and I’d just as well finish them quickly and focus on streaming other stuff, like the occasional, beautiful sunset (just not every night).
Guitar playing in Music category. Eventually, when health gets back and I settle down a bit after the move I do want to add a regular day for just playing guitar and working on people’s requests. I don’t think I will do the practice on stream as I have done in the past, which will mean playing my limited number of songs in my song list until I build it up again.
What about hacking? Fuck hacking. It provides no actual value to me at the moment. I can hack. I have hacked. I have caught (several) hackers. I could make hacking my career any time I wanted to. I just don’t give a shit about it. It’s fun sure, but there are so many other things that are way more fun and relaxing and relevant and profitable and good for me. Hacking is not relaxing and has never been. I remember when I dropped prepping for OSCP the first year I started streaming and went from 200 concurrent viewers to under 100. Some people got really pissed off at me for it. FUCK EM! Fucking leeches. Most would not even subscribe and still complain about ads as well. I’ve learned this about Twitch freeloaders. I’m done giving away shit to entitled assholes who have no desire whatsoever to either pay it forward or doing the minimal possible way to show their support for the hundreds of hours I put in. Unfortunately, it has been the people wanting me to teach them to hack that has been the most egregious in this area. There are amazing people and friends I have made on Twitch and they are the people I seek relationships with and to help. So many of them, but far too few. Thankfully my community is still full of these types of amazing people. Most of the freeloader hacker-wannabes got the message, and wrote me off long ago. They continue to call me “not a hacker” or “an asshole” and watch other streamers grind on completely irrelevant things or give their attention to “DUDE, I can’t even code but I made $2000 on one bug bounty” people who call themselves hackers. (Makes me laugh every time.) In fact, I’m a little bit sorry I ever appealed to the Twitch hacking community at all, it’s left a really bad taste in my mouth with regard to hacking in general. I could almost say it is because of Twitch that I have turned away from hacking entirely. Too many posers and idiots with cringy tats in that community in general.