Down the Home Stretch I Go

This time of the year delivers two things to me:

1. Dread that I haven’t figured a damn thing out when it comes to content creation
2. Pure exhaustion that even the Panera death juice can’t fix.

I can confidently report 2023’s delivery of both arrived on schedule.

Granted, I refuse to call any year a “failure” because, quite frankly raising a single dollar through Extra Life qualifies as a successful campaign—much less over $15,000. However, my competitive nature partially blocks this celebration. I always examine what I’ve done, try to figure out what I can do better, and if I can ever have a year end in which I don’t feel like I could pass out for hours on end.

This newsletter itself is so far “off schedule” that I honestly can’t even remember when I sent the last one off the top of my head. I paused VoD production as well in hopes to find some extra energy reserves.

In fact, the only thing that’s remained constant are my Tuesday and Thursday streams. Twitch tells me that I might have something figured out on that end:

Final Fantasy V marks the moment where I started streaming consistently twice a week. Tears of the Kingdom followed thereafter. Full disclosure: I have no idea how I ranked in the top 10% of streamers considering my typical audience size, but I’ll happily take home the honor.

I absolutely know how I got to that subscription number though: shout-out ugl33 (Josh) for the gift sub bombs! Every penny of that goes to Extra Life.

I could argue that the new schedule works, but my body and my mind would heavily disagree. Not only that, I can’t remember the last time I played a game that didn’t have an Extra Life tie-in of some kind. I love streaming for Extra Life, but I also enjoy the comfort of turning a game on, and my brain off, without worrying about providing entertaining reactions or commentary.

This is all a long way of saying I’ll likely tinker with the schedule again at some point in 2024. Before all that, I will finish Tears of the Kingdom. My remaining streams this year will focus on that.

When the credits roll, I will take a step back from streaming and catch up on VoDs, including making highlights from 2023’s Game Day marathon. During this time I’ll also focus on various streaming to-dos that I’ve put on the back burner, including figuring out 2024’s schedule.

I will also release another episode of the Extra Voices podcast (after missing a month) next week. I also noticed, during my marathon, that some of the episodes had the intro audio go far too long (oops), so I’ll fix that too. I’m also going to make sure episodes go up on YouTube to provide as many outlets for listening as possible.

Then, I hope I can actually stick to a monthly podcast release schedule in 2024.

So until the year closes, I hope you join me Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 PM CST on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter for streams and toss in a few end of year bucks towards helping me fight pediatric cancer with your Extra Life donations.

I can’t thank y’all enough for all the support this year. I’m already looking forward to another awesome 2024 campaign.

Even if I have no clue what I’m doing. Still.