Thursday, February 1, 2024, 2:56:21AM EST
No. I’ve changed my mind (again).
Not worth the time. These days my time is much more precious to me. I’m there for my wife when she comes home and we talk or hang out for hours at a time. I train 90-180 minutes per day on average on the bike. I work a solid 6-9 hours a day. I read stuff I’ve been meaning to. I play guitar. I clean and organize my life more. In fact, most of my life is better now that I don’t stream at all. I certainly don’t regret it. But as much as I do enjoy the friends I’ve made through live streaming—not to mention the current job I have because of people I met live streaming—seven hours a week IRL streaming is just not worth it. That’s almost an entire day of daylight. In fact, it takes away from time I could be streaming educational content and coding stuff that has proven to be the most beneficial and lucrative. If I had no other reason at all that would be enough to never live stream IRL again. Perhaps if I were a full-time culture journalist I would do it. I’m not.
Not worth the money. I was checking finances mostly to stop the bleeding on all the small stuff that adds up so we can get another good down payment ready and realized I spend over 3000 dollars per year on streaming costs whether I do it or not. That’s more than 200 dollars per month. I mean, save that up two years in a row and I could get a very expensive bike instead. Most rational people would agree that is unreasonably high amount of money to pay just to be able to give up seven hours of me life every week to live streaming. Even super popular IRL streamers have a hard time making that money back through the regular Twitch stuff. For me it was never about the money, but it does cost a lot. I make a ton but I’m not independently wealthy like so many other IRL streamers who are just bored.
Just not safe. After watching a ton of IRL cycling streams from great people I realized it just isn’t safe to live stream while cycling other than the most casual of rides on sidewalks as if I were just walking around town. Now that I have a carbon road bike that weighs 7.6 kilos (compared to my Marrakesh that weighs about 14 kilos without the rack) I plan on biking fast, real fast, as in, averaging 20 kph on my rides or more. At those speeds even on the safest lonely roads I have to pay strict attention to the road, my perceived exertion, fueling, and nature all around. If I don’t I’ll end up dead. I’ll also be biking with others a lot more and I have to watch the wheel in front of me, not the chat.
Slower and irritating. It is ridiculously irritating to have to think about the cam rig while out for a ride. Something always goes wrong. The weight already slows me down, but reading chat and responding, or even spending the oxygen on talking makes for a horrible ride. Sometimes I do enjoy the company, but most of the time I would prefer that company be other cyclists instead.
I want to be serious cyclist again. Since I was 15 I have been a very serious cyclist. I’ve tried to convince myself that I’m just casual and like to ride my bike. I do. But when I’m completely honest with myself I always want to do it faster than 80% of the rest of the people my age. I’m competitive and always have been even though I hate that about myself sometimes. My first bike was the first thing I ever put on layaway and worked as hard as I could to purchase. I immediately started racing crits. When I was a kid I shoveled entire mounds of top soil to earn off a new bike. I love cycling. Simply put, I cannot be a serious cyclist and a regular IRL live streamer at the same time. It’s a question of priorities. At best, I might start streaming my Zwift sessions again, perhaps the least popular “game” on all of Twitch even though it is perhaps one of the most significant. In fact, my returned to high-performance cycling has really put a bad taste in my mouth when I watch fat, lazy game streamers randomly on Twitch. I find myself judging them and thinking bad things that I would just rather not. They are perfectly good human beings wasting their lives in ways that are fine for them but that I never want to ever do again. I don’t even find Overwatch and Dota 2 and Witcher 3 entertaining any more. I used to wander around the pretend countryside in Witcher when I could be exploring real countrysides. There’s nothing wrong with them or the people who play them. I’m just disgusted by lazy gamer culture at the moment and for letting myself get so sucked into it. I mean, people have fucking divots in their skulls from wearing their headphones so much. My body has been damaged in ways that will take surgery to repair because of how badly I let myself get out of shape. At least I’m not dead. I’d rather get hit by a motorist then keel over from a heart-attack or suffocation from sleep apnea because I let myself completely go.