Friday, November 5, 2021

Let Your Streaming Passions Guide You in Life



In several Twitch Playbook entries, I’ve spoken about following your passions. Entries have dealt with choosing less popular but more enjoyable activities, using Twitch to bolster a new skill, and even allowing Twitch to enhance a vacation. It’s my belief that following one’s dreams, rather than following the crowd, is the way to truly be successful. It doesn’t always garner fame or fortune immediately, but it plants unseen seeds for happiness far into your future. In this entry, I will describe how allowing one small passion to show itself on my streams has created ripples throughout my life, letting me explore new things off-stream, and eventually helping me to achieve a major life goal. 



➢ LIFELONG LISTENER


Souls games have amazing lore hidden
in the item descriptions.

For years now, I’ve had a great love for audiobooks. I’ve read hundreds of books in audiobook form, keep track of my preferred narrators’ works, and have listened and re-listened to my favorites time and again. In fact, I even based this podcast on the audiobook format! When thinking of what the show should feel like, I decided I would create each episode like a single chapter in one long audiobook, meticulously writing and copy-editing before recording, and making sure to polish the narration to as professional a quality as I could get it. And this love for the spoken word eventually found its way into my streams. 


I’ve mentioned in this podcast before how I love taking my time in video games, and exploring the things that aren’t necessarily front-and-center. While I’ve always loved doing this while playing privately, I didn’t originally play this way on stream. In a few different entries, I’ve talked about how I previously only played fast-paced games, while skipping any supplementary content I found in order to keep up a pace on the stream. It took a long time for me to slowly migrate my streams toward the gameplay style I actually use while off-stream. Now, I always read the books I pick up in games like The Witcher, and the item descriptions in Bloodborne. I do this out loud on my shows, getting completely into it, like I’m narrating an audiobook. I put on various voices, take on the tone of the writing, and give everything the proper cadence. This change allowed me to enjoy my streams more authentically, and I’m much happier making them. But little did I know that this small quality-of-life improvement would go on to affect so much more than my streams. 



➢ THE SPOKEN WORD


About a year and a half ago, I began doing another podcast. On this second show, I release episodes every single day, each one an audiobook-style reading of a different book which appears in a video game. This new podcast represents my love of audiobooks creeping even further into my content offering, letting me create these performances while separated from my livestreams entirely. All the practice I’d gained by doing this on my Twitch streams made me confident enough to branch out into this whole new field. 


But it didn’t stop there. After having produced this podcast every week for two years, the other podcast full of bite-sized narrations every day, and of course reading as many audiobooks as I could get my hands on, I began to wonder. What was stopping me from becoming an actual audiobook narrator? After all, I had plenty of experience narrating, I had a microphone, and I knew how to edit my own content. All I needed was to figure out how to get myself attached to a book. And after a good bit of research and preparation, I accomplished my goal! I now have two full audiobook narrations published on Audible and Apple Books, with a third coming out next month.


Metal Gear Solid 2 has a few excellent
in-game books.

Now, let’s take a moment and look back at all this. A years-long path led me toward accomplishing a major life goal, and it all stemmed from choosing to show my passion on my Twitch channel. If I hadn’t allowed myself to slow down in the games I played, reading all the books I came across, I never would have begun narrating in-game books on my podcast. And if I hadn’t started that podcast, I never would have become an audiobook narrator. Imagine if I had let my self-consciousness get the better of me, and simply chased what would get me the most views on Twitch. I would have missed out on a huge opportunity. 


How can we quantify the benefit of embracing our passions on stream? Sometimes, like narrating in-game books did with me, they can lead you in totally unexpected directions over the course of several years. There’s just no way to predict how it will help in the future, but at least we know we’ll be doing exactly what we love along the way. Like with my on-stream language learning leading me into having full-on conversations in Tokyo, my love for art finally finding a strong outlet, and so many other stories I’ve laid out in this resource, following my passions on Twitch instead of chasing views has continuously improved not only my streams, but my entire life. Whatever your streams look like, and whatever you personally get excited about, I hope you’ll find that same happiness when you let your streaming passions guide you in life. 


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