First full year of me being away from home passed and boy was that an experience, from kinda slow beginning of the year into the tornado of things happening and taking sands of time flying with it.
Started 2024 in Gyumri, Armenia, me and two of my friends living together, celebrated New Years with our friends in their bar, with some other expats we know and then just opening the bar and hanging out with everyone (well mostly expats too). Really slow winter, just grinding streams, quite uneventful in terms of travels and in general, meeting with friends here and there, celebrating some birthdays, but nothing crazy.
Then in April I started doing some IRL streams in Gyumri, went to Yerevan for a few days streaming from there too, hanging out with my viewer who lives there and with my friend who went there from Russia for a week.
April was also moving to Georgia with 9 hours drive across the border reaching our home for next 6 months in Batumi, that already was more of an adventure.
It was only two of us, since third was staying in Armenia to arrange proper residence status and papers (and skipped Georgia completely while at it) and actually at least for me more people is less stressful in such environment, so having less people was a bit of an extra stress, but it was my best friend with me so still no problems.
Even though summer was pretty hot and some months were really bad, because as you can see on the photos above, my room didn’t even have a proper window and AC was far, it was still great, going for a swim in the sea almost every day (except for some rainy days, solid amount of those in Batumi), enjoying the sun.
Food in Georgia was amazing and I do miss some of the dishes, for my personal taste better than Armenian cuisine and I did try a lot of Armenian food, had a whole list to go through, think I will also write more detailed post about cuisines/countries etc where I focus more on those topics, here it’s more about me and my adventures.
Our friends from Armenia visited us, fellow expats came for a little vacation and stopped at our place for around 5 days. Was really nice getting some extra social activities after it was only two of us for months. Got a chance to chat with Georgians a bit while train from Armenia was delayed for a couple of hours, which also was an interesting experience.
Another “highlight” of Georgian Nomad Arc was my adventures with opening my company, so I could finally resume Twitch paychecks, get proper donos with Paypal set again and in general arrange some sort of legal entity not connected to my sanctioned home. Was super easy and smooth actually, but bank account adventures took probably around a month with a lot of stress, e-mails, calls and walking to bank. In the end I did get everything arranged and got my Twitch piggy bank broken for a whopping 6000$ that accumulated there over 2.5 years of no paychecks, which is a nice sum of money and helped me a lot with all the expenses, but considering it was building up over that amount of time you can calculate what it amounts to monthly and then it’s not much of sunshine and rainbows. I will go over financial part of travels, nomad life and my channel in a separate post in more detail too.
Dad visited Georgia in September while I was on my IRL stream trip to Tbilisi and then we both returned to Batumi so he managed to also enjoy some sea for a few days and I got to hang out with him after over a year of not seeing each other – was really nice.
My IRL streaming game in Georgia got on a new level, since I did stream more than in Armenia and had more long streaming sessions from different cities, going on a whole trip to two more cities to stream from there, even taking stream with me on a zipline ride.
In October it was time for another country move to Uzbekistan, which was a bit more stressful since first we needed to take a 6 hours train ride from Batumi to Tbilisi with all the luggage and then next day it was 4 hours flight to Uzbekistan, so just a lot of taxis, hotels and running around with massive suitcases. In the end all the muscles were hurting and we both got sick in a few days. Found decent apartment a bit cheaper than in Batumi (750$ vs 800$), but still thought it will be cheaper, at least in Batumi you pay tourist “tax” in summer, here it’s just regular apartment not even in the centre of Tashkent.
Uzbekistan so far is really nice, feels almost like we are back home, in terms of language, people and general vibe of Tashkent. Food is amazing and reasonably priced, supermarkets are really close, 24/7 and prices are also really good. There are issues with heating though, it’s not really a cold winter (yet at least), but central heating already barely helping, at least hopefully if it will be super cold pipes and stuff not gonna freeze over, but we sure might, since I’m already walking around and streaming wearing pretty much my outfit for the outside minus the vest and need to put the gloves on sometimes since hands are cold often.
Bank in Uzbekistan was actually super loyal and easy to open account and get local cards, probably so far the best experience dealing with it and also maybe the fastest too.
On a sad side of things my best friend couldn’t handle the cold and went back home, he was already planning to do it later in spring, but he’s in general not handling low temps well, so this heating here just made him advance the plan. His attempts to get some income remotely didn’t work, only having income from renting out his own apartment at home, his health wasn’t doing too well and freezing constantly wasn’t helping either, he also didn’t really have a proper motivation to stay, because he went on all this nomad adventure because of me and while I do have some actual reasons to be out of the country – he kinda doesn’t, so when enough negatives piled on one side of the scale, he didn’t have enough to put on the other. Still pretty sad about it, now also getting extra “damage” from him leaving, because due to lacking in moneys to add to our group bank he was handling small day to day groceries, cooking and I could focus on my streaming fully. Other friend arrived from Armenia now at least, so it’s a bit less sad, but he’s also pretty busy, so we both now need to find time to do groceries, cook food etc.
Worth mentioning some other sad and negative notes, so it’s more real and not just hype and pog as it seems from the most of the post:
- General uncertainty. Inevitable due to the situation I’m in.
- State of my streaming “career”. 2022 sent all the trends downhill and while I managed to get back up after a massive drop in 2023 (when you take 1 month “vacation” to prepare to move to another country and return to like >30% dip that takes months to recover), 2024 was still a bit worse than 2023 in terms of channel stats, just a bit, but considering overall uncertainty it doesn’t make you more confident in future not gonna lie.
- Financial instability. Companion of any self-employed person, but in current situation it only gets worse and also being a direct result of previous line in the list. Post cards and other things I try to sellout with are basically to keep my budget at least near zero and maybe save a bit for some upgrades/improvements (planning new IRL cam that will provide more stable picture and will allow me to direct what I film better).
- Health related questions. Wisdom tooth is dying for a while and moment of removal is nigh, dentist visit will bring up more things to deal with and that also overlaps with financial situation.
Despite some negative and side things it’s still going well, I have it better than many other people and I thank my community for that, because without your support none of that would be possible and I would basically follow my friend’s steps. Hope I still have more time to avoid that fate and hopefully while I have that time I’ll manage to turn the tides and set those trends upwards.
Visited (and streamed from) 3 countries, 6 cities, streamed whole train trip from Gyumri to Yerevan, loads of IRL streams visiting some landmarks and iconic places, dozens of hours walking with backpack full of gear, dozens of different national dishes (should probably write down the list of everything I tried, it really is a lot), many hours of swimming in the sea, thousands of kilometres travelled. Despite all the stress and negative things it’s still great that I’m able to live this kind of life thanks to your support and 2025 I will try to do even more IRL streams from more countries and cities. Second half of spring and summer will be loaded, but I will talk about plans in a separate post.
Writing this post just made me realize how much I can tell about different aspects of my life and travels, so there will be more posts coming, because this one is already too big and even from year review perspective it’s not covering gaming/streaming side of things, so that goes into separate post very soon. Posts about countries, cuisines and other details will follow too, descriptions I gave here are also kinda short, surface level and generally positive, while there are negative things worth mentioning too.
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