A Note on Recent Success, and Future

I thought it might be appropriate to start by writing some little about what I experience now, shot out of the barrel of the last life and looking down the barrel of the next. For context, it’s been 5 months or so since this started, about only 3 months since it’s been real: I am a semi-popular streamer on Twitch. Enough certainly to live on, maybe more—depending on how I choose to angle myself. For now, I keep sponsorships and business-mind away, right outside my vision, in case they’re needed(I find these things nicer as a comfort than an income).

What the thing I have even is, I’m not certain. One audience doesn’t equal another, so it’s hard to quantify. But mine is funny, and smart. They’re kind, in the ways that matter, and they’re straightforward. More than anything, they come to see the show for the same reason I do the show. That makes all the difference. We’re both there to see something special. How few on earth have that kind of gift to return to? It’s beyond my understanding. There is a balance to be struck in being overwhelmed here, which I fail at. Balancing the joy of achievement and community with the onus of standing up to it is difficult, and the onus most frequently weighs heavier.

It is deep autumn now, and I feel it every day. The corduroy pants I wear and the wood-grain of my desk. It is so much quieter now than the summer, and I feel loud when I speak.

I'm mainly writing this for my own benefit--I am isolated, in a very bizarre way, from everyone.  The people who are close don't understand what I do, and the people who understand what I do aren't close.  I feel emboldened and strong and confident and worthwhile like I never have, but who's around to see it?  Many people who want a piece of me only want that piece now that the cake has baked--who can blame them?  Still, that's not a connection.  I know because I've taken bits of other cakes myself--connection comes from understanding, not transaction.  I seek that understanding from others. 

I believe it may be because if someone else shared my understanding, it would soothe me.  If someone heard me, and knew who I was, so would I hear me; so would I know me.  I could spend time listening to music if only someone knew like I did how music electrifies me.
So if that someone, or someones, knew what I know about streaming, it'd make it true: I work hard.  I try hard to make something special.  I do make something special.  I care about quality.  I care about laughter.  I believe in this art form.  My ambition outgrows my reach.  I can struggle and overcome the form.  If I struggle and grow, I could push the whole medium forward.  I could raise the tide of the medium, which is still infant, and send boats down river-ways I dug.  At the core, I am built to do this and nothing else.  It's the hole shaped like me.

Without that person, those people around who share that understanding, there are different truths: I am fortunate beyond my talents.  The flash-smoke still hasn't faded, but it will soon, and leave me nowhere.  I am not different than the people I disrespect who walk my alleys, creating little and fueling nothing.  I am the thing I look down on, a featureless totem of misplaced affection.  Not enough focus to hone myself, not enough discipline to work my way up.  A sloth, experienced at receiving but with nothing to give.  Even if he wanted.  I am pulled and pushed by forces I don't have the will or intellect to control, and nothing about what I have is my doing.  This life of mine is a guide-track.  It is the hole shaped like me.

Set aside the poetry, get to the topic of how I feel.  I feel correct.  This work is where I belong.  But I find it works poorly with where I live.  Quiet and secluded, lonely and serene.  I need the opposite to keep me alive, now that my work is all inside of me.  When my labor was outside, my rest was within--I find no rest within now that I labor there.  I need, also, new people.  I am a new person--I need new people.  So where?  All the answers seem eternally far. To build a life out of success like this is no small thing. So easy to waste—and these struggles so rapid now.  The difficulty is rapid; the ease is glacial.  I'll find it somewhere.  It, or who, or her, or them.

Priorities, for the record.  First comes love, beyond in another atmosphere from all others, beyond measurement and beyond weight.  I have no love now, so second is first--second is the work.  The work needs me to be contented and powerful, so I must solve for contentedness and power.  Wherever I might find it is wherever I'll go. Third, maybe, peace within me. Fourth, prestige. Everything is at least one of those things.

I may just be the totem-stone, flat from the worry-thumb of the teenager carrying me--but if I am I will be deranged.  I will be the totem-stone who thinks himself conscious, and spins a wild dream of joy and creation.  The dream will be vast and fulminated, and pour from me wherever I can sink the tap.  And perhaps someone else will see it, hazy and distant through my eyes, and make it truth.