Hello! So uh... a bit of an update for you all.
To start with, as I mention every now and then, my content creation is my side gig. My main job, which is in a retail environment, is my main source of income and, y'know, the only thing keeping me fed and housed. As any American working retail can tell you, the holiday season is the most mentally and physically draining time of the year. Currently, there is also a labor shortage in American, meaning nearly every business, mine included, are critically short staffed.
This has resulted in me working overtime pretty much every week, averaging about 95 hours per two weeks paid period. About 48 hours per week. Coupled with the fact I drive about an hour to/from work, I'm left with little free time. While I would love to be a workaholic and constantly be recording, editing, and writing - no one is able to keep up that kind of work load and maintain a level of quality.
That being said, I would like to talk over my plans for the content I want to produce. Let me address my Twitch.tv streams first.
For a while, I had stuck to a stream schedule of 3-4 streams a week. Every other day was a new "theme" day. RPG Sundays, Retro Tuesdays, Thought Thursdays, and Social Saturdays. About half way through 2021, I dropped this streaming schedule to try a new one. Since work had been ramping up and taking more and more of my sanity, I decided to try and stream only on days I do not work my day job. This resulted in a much more random stream schedule, where I attempted to stream for 8 hours on certain days.
The 8 hour streams were a hopeful attempt to gain more viewership. During the sparce experiment, I failed to gain any new viewers. Please do not take this as a -woe is me- statement. I understand that I am a small fry in a huge ocean of... fries. Just changing when and how I long I streamed for would not be enough to suddenly gain a new batch of followers. I ended up only streaming about a day or maybe two a week, which also did not help my standing with algorithm. I also found myself missing the original stream schedule, and I want to go back to it.
As of right now, the streams will return to their themed days and will start at approximately 8PM EST. Streams will typically last from an 1:30 to 2 hours. On days where I happen to have more flexibility, streams may last longer and start earlier. To keep myself sane and away from burnout, I will attempt to take one day off per week from any kind of creation. If this day happens to fall on a stream day, stream will be cancelled for that day. The best way to keep track of the stream schedule is to follow my social channels. I'll try to be consistent in posting a schedule for the week. No promises!
During the hiatus that I am going to be taking, streams should not be affected too much. Since streams are mostly low effort and pretty chill, they tend not to take up all my time and eat away at my sanity.
The blog and my Youtube uploads are the ones that are going to take the biggest hit. After speaking with my lady love, I feel more compelled to enact my decision. Those of you who happen to follow this blog are probably aware that the last post, the horror story "The Games They Play" was posted late. While this isn't a huge problem, missing a deadline did hurt my psyche slightly. To keep things consistent I have decided to try a different method of producing content.
The thought came to me when I realized what TV and movies do. A show or a movie are filmed, edited and produced months if not years before they are released to the general public. Now granted, I am small time and it takes considerably less effort to do what I do, but I can't help but wonder if this is the correct approach, I should be taking so that things remain consistent. Missing blog posts or video uploads sucks from my perspective. I hate getting pushed back and I hate trying to play catch up. The only solution I can think of is to take the spontaneity out of it. Here's the plan:
The best way to ensure I meet my deadlines is to make sure the entire production is completed before releasing it. Meaning, I would film an entire Let's Play, edit it, and perform post production work all before a single video is released. Previously, I have been trying to prepare content a month in advance, which eventually fell to a week in advance, which eventually fell into the day before. I then started to get behind, especially with my Spoopy Month event. I love doing themed months / holiday celebration things. It all became too much between work, writing, streaming and uploads. I'm hoping, by recording the entirety of a Let's Play before releasing a single video, I will take a lot of the stress out of my creative life.
What does that mean for the YouTube channel for the rest of year? Videos will be a bit sparse. I plan on finishing Pokemon: Pinball, since I only plan on having one more episode dedicated to it before I feel I got everything I wanted / needed out of it. Outside of that, Earthbound is now on hiatus until I film, edit and post produce the rest of it. I will still be uploading stream VODs when I can, since those are easy to edit and produce and tend not to require much work.
My goal is that I will have enough of a backlog of content that I will always be ahead of my deadlines or be able to mostly stay on top of things.
In terms of the blog, the hiatus may or may not affect it. At worst, instead of doing a new post every week on Sunday, it may be a touch farther in between. I would love to build a backlog similar to the Youtube channel, but the only way I imagine that working is if I review an entire season of a given show before releasing the posts. I would keep the same pattern of show review, creative writing, show review, game review and repeat. The blog would be a lot easier to build a backlog for since I would only need 52 posts a year and a season of Ed, Edd N Eddy would account for about half of that.
Creating this backlog would free me from a lot of deadline stress and could perhaps improve the quality of what I am making, since I don't have to worry about churning out content as much.
Too Long, Didn't Read version: I am going to take somewhat of a break for November and December, possibly longer. Hopefully this will allow for an improvement of quality and a decrease of stress. Guess we'll have to just wait and see.
In the meantime, allow me to thank you for reading the blog and watching my content. I truly appreciate every single view that something I produce receives. And as always, Good Night and Joy be with you all.
To start with, as I mention every now and then, my content creation is my side gig. My main job, which is in a retail environment, is my main source of income and, y'know, the only thing keeping me fed and housed. As any American working retail can tell you, the holiday season is the most mentally and physically draining time of the year. Currently, there is also a labor shortage in American, meaning nearly every business, mine included, are critically short staffed.
This has resulted in me working overtime pretty much every week, averaging about 95 hours per two weeks paid period. About 48 hours per week. Coupled with the fact I drive about an hour to/from work, I'm left with little free time. While I would love to be a workaholic and constantly be recording, editing, and writing - no one is able to keep up that kind of work load and maintain a level of quality.
That being said, I would like to talk over my plans for the content I want to produce. Let me address my Twitch.tv streams first.
For a while, I had stuck to a stream schedule of 3-4 streams a week. Every other day was a new "theme" day. RPG Sundays, Retro Tuesdays, Thought Thursdays, and Social Saturdays. About half way through 2021, I dropped this streaming schedule to try a new one. Since work had been ramping up and taking more and more of my sanity, I decided to try and stream only on days I do not work my day job. This resulted in a much more random stream schedule, where I attempted to stream for 8 hours on certain days.
The 8 hour streams were a hopeful attempt to gain more viewership. During the sparce experiment, I failed to gain any new viewers. Please do not take this as a -woe is me- statement. I understand that I am a small fry in a huge ocean of... fries. Just changing when and how I long I streamed for would not be enough to suddenly gain a new batch of followers. I ended up only streaming about a day or maybe two a week, which also did not help my standing with algorithm. I also found myself missing the original stream schedule, and I want to go back to it.
As of right now, the streams will return to their themed days and will start at approximately 8PM EST. Streams will typically last from an 1:30 to 2 hours. On days where I happen to have more flexibility, streams may last longer and start earlier. To keep myself sane and away from burnout, I will attempt to take one day off per week from any kind of creation. If this day happens to fall on a stream day, stream will be cancelled for that day. The best way to keep track of the stream schedule is to follow my social channels. I'll try to be consistent in posting a schedule for the week. No promises!
During the hiatus that I am going to be taking, streams should not be affected too much. Since streams are mostly low effort and pretty chill, they tend not to take up all my time and eat away at my sanity.
The blog and my Youtube uploads are the ones that are going to take the biggest hit. After speaking with my lady love, I feel more compelled to enact my decision. Those of you who happen to follow this blog are probably aware that the last post, the horror story "The Games They Play" was posted late. While this isn't a huge problem, missing a deadline did hurt my psyche slightly. To keep things consistent I have decided to try a different method of producing content.
The thought came to me when I realized what TV and movies do. A show or a movie are filmed, edited and produced months if not years before they are released to the general public. Now granted, I am small time and it takes considerably less effort to do what I do, but I can't help but wonder if this is the correct approach, I should be taking so that things remain consistent. Missing blog posts or video uploads sucks from my perspective. I hate getting pushed back and I hate trying to play catch up. The only solution I can think of is to take the spontaneity out of it. Here's the plan:
The best way to ensure I meet my deadlines is to make sure the entire production is completed before releasing it. Meaning, I would film an entire Let's Play, edit it, and perform post production work all before a single video is released. Previously, I have been trying to prepare content a month in advance, which eventually fell to a week in advance, which eventually fell into the day before. I then started to get behind, especially with my Spoopy Month event. I love doing themed months / holiday celebration things. It all became too much between work, writing, streaming and uploads. I'm hoping, by recording the entirety of a Let's Play before releasing a single video, I will take a lot of the stress out of my creative life.
What does that mean for the YouTube channel for the rest of year? Videos will be a bit sparse. I plan on finishing Pokemon: Pinball, since I only plan on having one more episode dedicated to it before I feel I got everything I wanted / needed out of it. Outside of that, Earthbound is now on hiatus until I film, edit and post produce the rest of it. I will still be uploading stream VODs when I can, since those are easy to edit and produce and tend not to require much work.
My goal is that I will have enough of a backlog of content that I will always be ahead of my deadlines or be able to mostly stay on top of things.
In terms of the blog, the hiatus may or may not affect it. At worst, instead of doing a new post every week on Sunday, it may be a touch farther in between. I would love to build a backlog similar to the Youtube channel, but the only way I imagine that working is if I review an entire season of a given show before releasing the posts. I would keep the same pattern of show review, creative writing, show review, game review and repeat. The blog would be a lot easier to build a backlog for since I would only need 52 posts a year and a season of Ed, Edd N Eddy would account for about half of that.
Creating this backlog would free me from a lot of deadline stress and could perhaps improve the quality of what I am making, since I don't have to worry about churning out content as much.
Too Long, Didn't Read version: I am going to take somewhat of a break for November and December, possibly longer. Hopefully this will allow for an improvement of quality and a decrease of stress. Guess we'll have to just wait and see.
In the meantime, allow me to thank you for reading the blog and watching my content. I truly appreciate every single view that something I produce receives. And as always, Good Night and Joy be with you all.
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