I have picked out most of my games for my solo archipelago endeavors starting on Friday. I'm going to be playing 4 or 5, haven't decided yet. Don't worry too much about the quantity of games, though, as 3 of them are in theory fairly short and don't have a lot of checks to them.

I'll get my schedule figured out tomorrow.
I don't know who felt like reading through all this, but if you did, thanks for doing so.

Thanks to people I have been watching lately, I've been getting an urge to play a randomizer or an archipelago multiworld of something, so I'll probably add that to the list. I also think I want to redo my stream of Star Wars Battlefront 2 (classic) because the audio-balance made it unwatchable.

As far as what to stream, I'm going to end up dropping the super robot wars gaiden series. It's been too long and I've definitely ran out of steam on that. I'll continue Abiotic Factor, though I may try to slow down on that because I don't want to get ahead of my co-op with friends progress.

I know I still want to stream, so I'm going to keep streaming. The hope is that streaming will help me get better at talking, not worse like it feels like has been happening.

So where do I go from here? Call it experiment over and cut out now before it gets worse? Surrender to that "I'll be happier if I give up" kneejerk? Stick to my guns and deny myself a connection I value higher than most things?

I used to get by with just not caring.

It's becoming harder to do that.

I don't have interesting stories or experiences to share. Largely my commentary is narrating what I'm doing, else explaining things about the game I'm playing. After a point I feel like I'm just filling space for the sake of filling space.

More self-observations: I suffer greatly from social anxiety and I occupy a spot on the spectrum. Talking is hard. I can respond to queries, I can input question output answer really well, I listen good. I'm really patient. I am not good at talking. I can pretend to be good at that sometimes though.

effort put into it before I could start expecting potential viewers to actually stick around.
I know I'll be happier if I played Endfield with them instead of streaming, but that feels like giving up.
My life has been full of "I'll be happier if I give up." I can't call that habit a good thing.

but the cost of that is doing so bereft of the connection with all of these people I care deeply about. They're not going to watch my stream, they're going to be busy playing the game themselves, probably all talking about it together while I'm limiting myself to a platform that needs far more

It's not being able to directly enjoy it with the friends I've had and cared deeply about for over 10 years now that are also excited for the game to release in 3-4 days. By streaming, I get to create a record of my love for this IP that's been with me for 6 years,

The reason I started streaming in the first place was I wanted to stream Arknights: Endfield. And I did that with Beta Test II! And now I'm not so sure I want to any more.
If you want, you can usually boil down choices to matters of opportunity cost, and the cost of streaming Endfield?

All of these things, plus my watching and chatting habits put together have me realizing that I am a person that is somehow the antithesis of Twitch Culture as a whole.
I'm not out here to pander to viewers and my tastes are unpopular and mainly narrative-focused when it comes to games as well.

(to explain that last bit, if there is water in front of me, I'm just going to end up chugging it without any prompting. I'm a chugger. 2 cups of water out of the bottle and down my metaphysical gullet in seconds. There would be no water left for the redeem.)

I feel like the answer, ultimately, is no. I don't care whatsoever about the prospect of getting paid to stream, I don't have any budget whatsoever so I can't pay to have anything commissioned, and even little things like a hydrate redeem are kinda pointless on me due to lifestyle stuff.

For some reason, I'm already being given an offer to be a twitch affiliate. Happened in the middle of my Endfield Marathon and I just haven't really touched or acknowledged it because there's a lot I've needed to think about before I try and submit for it.
Starting with "Do I even want this?"