Now that it’s been a bit more than a month since I tamed my streaming hours, returned my day off and introduced some “speshul” days in my schedule, it’s time to review some first results. Just sorta little IRL update.
First of all of course it’s more free time and less stress because of that, that’s the main reason I switched and it sure worked, not a big surprise there. Obviously having a day off is also nice to deal with things and relax a bit.
Now what exactly that “allowed”? First of all I’m seeing my friends way more lately and not only on my day off, my friend moved in his new apartment and we already were hanging out there 3 times over past 4-5 weeks + at my place before that too, now that I can actually just easily go and join them without changing my schedule for that it feels a lot better. I got my “normie” evenings available now when I can just go do something after work with my friends, even though when winter time will arrive in EU I might need to adjust things a bit and maybe call it 1 hour earlier or something just so I’m not too late, but hopefully switching time might stop in EU next year and we will stay at 1 hour difference and it will be perfect soon. Really solid work hours allowing me to catch things before and after stream when needed.
Day off on Thursday still feels a bit “alien”, because I got used to Monday off, so we’ll see how it will go, but tbh it makes no difference from any perspective except my habit. Saturdays becoming a bit shorter compared to my old insane Saturdays also make me feel better, because I don’t need to interrupt my sleep habits and other things over it.
So overall “quality of life” for sure increased and it feels good, totally helps me to see the value of proper rest, vacations and other “luxuries” that streamers usually are hesitant to afford, this year with all the lockdown and lack of RL human interactions opened my eyes a little on proper off-stream time and value of friendship.
Having specific plans for some particular games also feels really good to me, because it’s easier to plan things that way, a lot more games are “open” so I’m always excited to play stuff, like currently I’m resisting the urge to play CK and Civ for a second day that started yesterday after 5Head stream. It kinda makes me feel bad because there is a lot of planned stuff and not that much space left to just play something randomly and maybe some people just want to see me go ham with some game instead of kinda jumping them, but in the same time I think it has its appeal when you can open a TV programme that is my schedule and see what to expect full week ahead. This experiment will continue, but right now I’m happy with how it feels to me and I’m always happy to hear some feedback from you, guys.
Main issue currently and honestly for a while is that I just feel that I’m not productive in my free time, I dunno how to call it, but I just want to do more things, work related things mostly of course during all the time I got now free. Logical mind would say “chill dude, you are done with your stream – relax and rest”, but my Pepega mind wants to do more and when I’m not doing anything it feels bad and stresses over procrastinating, so in the end it’s lose/lose situation when I can’t really relax and turn my brain off, being half in working mindset and in the same time not really using that brain and mindset fully. So when people stream full time with 1 day off, then do YT vids on their free time, update their social medias zealously, active on Discord, wander around Twitch chats of other streamers and then also binge some show/play off-stream or do something else IRL – respect them and know that shit is actually pretty damn hard and I wish I can do it one day, even minus like half of it. I’m a bit better with that though and slowly trying to do some more like with blog and social stuff, I just literally need to find the amount that will make my brain feel satisfied without me spending too much time and burning out, also probably just to try YT first without too much tryharding, but my perfectionist having issues with that approach.