The other night, I finally took a small step into the Streaming pool. I did a small, few-minute test stream to see how my laptop would handle running something alongside OBS, and so far, it passed with flying colors. Granted, I only ran DUSK for a few minutes, which isn’t too taxing on a computer, and also because I don’t want my brother asking 10,000 questions about why I was doing what I was doing. But, it ran at a steady 60 FPS on both the PC, and on the stream itself, as I was watching it from the app on my tablet. This may be something feasibly possible in once I get my nerves together.
Now that I know that I can run a decent-looking Stream, I can start setting up the bells, whistles, and otherwise that I’d need to actually look competent. I need to come up with like, “scene” cards and stuff to denote when I need to step away, other things that I can use as a “We’ll be right back”. Do I know how to do any of this? Absolutely not. Are we going to hit buttons and switches until we do? Maybe. If my family leaves me alone and doesn’t ask me a million questions that I don’t want to answer.
I’m serious about giving this thing a shot. It doesn’t have to be a “career change”, I don’t have to do it any more than I want to do, I just want to try this, and maybe make some friends doing it. I want to maybe build a community where people can feel safe, and secure, and be themselves in a relaxed environment that isn’t a minefield of awful crap. I want to build an environment where nobody has to feel as alone as I do sometimes, where people can just exist with others like us. Believe me, spending Friday and Saturday nights at home, cooped up in a small room by myself being sad and miserable isn’t any way to live. I’ve been there many a time, in fact, I’m doing that right now.
I want to build a “gentle city ringed in spears”, as that saying in Destiny goes, where everyone is safe, secure, free to be who they want to be, but, anyone that threatens that peace is swiftly dealt with. Yeah, it’s “peace and love”, but, it’s that way until someone threatens it, then it’s time to go deal with it. The older I get, the more that saying, that philosophy makes sense, that we can’t do this life thing alone, that we need some sort of lifeline to each other. My writing, and when I can, my Streaming, I kind of want to be that for myself, and for others. It sounds flowery, it sounds self-indulgent, but, that’s about where I’m at.
I want to build a place where people don’t have to hide who they are, who they love, how they identify from the world. Where being told “hey, I’m gay/lesbian/bi/trans/non-binary” is like, “okay, cool, whatcha want to play tonight?”, and if that sounds “cringe”, oh well, it’ll just have to be cringe. I’m a closeted bi man, my family doesn’t know this, my job doesn’t know this. I keep my sexuality very close to my chest in real-life, and I only say it here because I’m semi-anonymous. There’s some dudes (cis or trans) out there who I absolutely fall head-over-heels for, same with women. Like, trans, cis, non-binary, it doesn’t matter, if I’m attracted to that person, I’m just attracted to that person.
I know what it’s like for people to live behind a mask, because I have since long before I knew that I was bi. If I can make it a little easier for people to live true to themselves, hell, why not give it a shot? I can take the heat for people, this stuff usually slides off me anyhow. Being a fat white guy with a buzz-cut and a beard gives me a little bit of cover around where I live, since that’s every two of three men here. If I can take the heat for people to live openly, then I want to do so. And if anyone gives my people crap for it, I’ll sternly, but politely show them the door.
It’s taken me years to re-discover my backbone, rediscover my nerve, but, I feel like it’s something I have to do, in order to do what I truly want. And what I want is to build a space for people to be themselves, while they give me ten kinds of crap for being bad at video games. I can’t make a slightly-less-awful world by simply sitting on the sidelines in a bunker, I have to actually do something. And taking my popsicle stick, and using it to advocate for the stuff I believe in is how I can do so.
I can do those things, I know that I can. I know that once I get out of my head, reinstall my backbone, and get going, I can maybe get somewhere close to where I want to be. I want to create things, express myself, make friends, build a community of like-minded people, all those things, but, I can’t do so if I don’t get up and swing the bat. I can’t build a community if I don’t get up and try.
I know, or am acquainted with some Streamers, I could ask how they got started. Ask them how they build and protect their communities from those who’d be out to hurt them. So, we’ll wrangle OBS into a usable state, get all those things I want loaded in, and get going. Something something journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Words Under My Name 