Limbo

I’m currently in a state of limbo.

My depression has taken a step back, so I no longer spend 20 hours of day in bed. My motivation is above zero now, but still not much. After about 12-14 hours of sleep my body tells me to get up, and so I do. But then when I’m up, I don’t really want to do anything. My eyes become heavy, my mind somewhat foggy, and my natural inclination is to go to bed again, close my eyes, cover my head with a pillow.

Even right now as I write this, I have things on my to-do list.

1) I need to stream four interviews on Twitch and upload them to YouTube: interviews I recorded over the past 10 days or so, but wasn’t able to upload yet.

2) I need to stream a multi-hour narrative on Twitch about my first month of streaming (a recap), about my history of depression, about what I’ve learned from interviewing streamers so far.

3) I need to start sending out invitations again – invitations to streamers to come do an interview with me. Last time I sent invitations was two weeks ago. And this is something I need to do daily.

4) I need to respond to some people in my DMs. Mostly about interviews.

I could be doing any of those things right now. But like I said, my eyes feel heavy and I just want to close them. All I want it to fall asleep.

Strong black coffee, black tea with sugar, some gummy bears and some Imagine Dragons in my ears – all those things combined may give me somewhat of a boost. Keep me up and running for a few hours. But, man, it’s so much easier to just to go crash on my bed…

Depression

Man, I don’t want to be writing this... Depression has taken hold of me once again... I thought that my streaming hobby was keeping it in check, but no, not really.

So for three days now, instead of streaming, I’ve spent most of the time in bed, sleeping or trying to fall asleep. Nothing else seems to be working. I don’t want to play a game. I don’t want to go on Reddit looking for friends. I don’t want to message streamers inviting them to come to the interview. I don’t want to watch YouTube. I don’t want to listen to music. I don’t want to be awake even. And I definitely don’t want to be writing an article. But here we are.

A bit of history is in order. I’ve had depression in one form or another for over 10 years now. But it is only for the past 5 years that is has been a real problem, making normal life impossible at times. Five years ago I had to quit my job (and my life) in Norway, come back home to Latvia, live with my parents, have them take care of me, and seek treatment from doctors. Chronic physical stress at work was what led me to ultimately burn out and it was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. It just broke me.

I remember when returned to Latvia and talked to my first psychiatrist, describing my situation to her in great detail, she said three things to me: 1) that I had a severe case of depression, 2) that I may never get better, 3) that our government takes care of people like that.

Her second point was the most discouraging: that I may never get better, that this is my new normal, my new reality. I’ve read around five books on depression, including one on existential psychotherapy, and most of them said the same thing: that approximately a third of all cases of MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) are incurable. So I was really wondering whether I was unlucky enough to be in that category.

Today, five years later, I can definitely say that over the years my condition has improved. Five years ago I was in a far worse state than I am today. So for that I am thankful. However, my condition is still not well enough for me to live a normal life or hold down a job.

One rather expensive doctor, a psychiatrist, told me that basically I will have good days and I will have bad days, and that there is nothing I can do about that. I just have to endure the bad ones, just wait for them to be over. And I guess she was right.

So here I am, a period of bad days has begun and I don’t want anything at all. I have no motivation to do anything productive, anything of substance. I neglect my friends, I neglect my streaming schedule, neglect many other things.

But I’m not complaining. And I don’t want your pity. But I will appreciate you understanding the state I am in.

Final anxiety

Confession time. After being a streamer for 18 days and having overcome many anxieties, I still have one final anxiety remaining – meeting new people.

You see, I am currently actively looking for friends on Reddit. I read people’s posts, I leave comments, DM people, and I make my own posts of course. Then on Reddit Chat there’s a bit of communication between me and the people I find. We exchange Discord usernames and the idea is that on Discord we will get to know each other better and go into voice chat. Possibly even play games together. But that’s when it becomes a problem for me.

As soon as we are in Discord, I kind of close up. I know that I was the one who initiated the contact on Reddit. I know I am the one who asked to be friends in voice chat. But I just get this bad anxiety of taking that one final step of starting a conversation. And so instead of just diving in regardless of anxiety, I simply turn off my laptop and go to sleep, hoping that when I wake up, I will finally have the courage to start that conversation.

Don’t get me wrong, once the conversation starts, once we get to know each other, then I feel quite comfortable talking and sharing. Once we are friends, then there’s no more anxiety for me. But making that leap of faith into our first conversation is where I am failing so far.

Prediction: I will get over that anxiety eventually. But until then, this is my confession - for any potential new friend to read and understand me better, understand why I may seem disinterested on Discord.

If you are reading this, dear future friend, there is something you can do to help me get over my anxiety. You could take the first step and message me yourself. I will definitely respond. Maybe not right away. But I will respond. And we will get to know each other, and we will get the conversation going, and become true friends. So just message me :)

Friends first

Today I was interviewing BunBun, a streamer on Twitch who has a small but dedicated following. And one of the questions I posed to her was: if I am a streamer who’s alone on stream, with nobody in co-op and nobody in voice chat, what should I do? How do I entertain an audience? She said: find friends first. She said that for her streaming was not that hard to start doing, because she had friends in co-op with her from the very beginning.

And that makes sense, I guess.

So now I will definitely be spending more time on reddit, looking for more friends. First get friends, then stream games with them.

Monastic

I thought I'd write a bit about why I chose the username @monasticgamer, particularly the "monastic" part.

At 37 years of age I have lived through my fair share of existential crises, which made me see life in a different light. Not only that, but life has chosen to gift me with clinical depression, which sets my goals, motivations and desires very low. To put it simply, I don’t want things… in this life. If I really contemplate it, there is really nothing in the world that I want. Neither travel, nor fame, not success, not riches, not women. I don’t want things. I don’t want experiences. Nothingness is the only thing that I want.

For my monastic life at home, I’ve set up the following routine: get up at 3 AM, eat oatmeal, shower, and then start fasting, and fast for 12 hours while streaming. This is to have a religious dedication to streaming, to make it a spiritual practice almost. I listen to calm meditation music in the background.

Occasionally, I do meditation.

Like a monk, I reply on alms to keep me going, I rely on support from other people. I mean, I’ve worked most of my life and supported myself and it was fine, but now due to depression, work is simply painful for me. I’ve tried. I can’t. So I have my family now taking care of me. Wish I could reciprocate.

One other thing that makes me akin to a monk is that I am celibate. And this is due to medications that I have been taking for my depression: the meds just made me inactive in that way, disinterested, disconnected. I am not drawn to it at all. It’s kind of freeing, actually.

Not an ordained monk, of course, but still monastic in more ways that one.

Sincerey,
@monasticgamer

No pain

Interviews. To have interviews you have to have guests. And to have guests you need to send out invitations. So I have been sending invitations on Twitch, Twitter, Instagram and via e-mail. It takes me roughly 6 hours to send out 50 invitations – that long because it takes a while to go through a streamer’s profile, watch them stream a bit, see which way is best to contact them, etc...

But anyway, I am an introvert, so even reaching out to people online was a bit of a pain. I really had to push myself to get out of my comfort zone, to do things which felt really uncomfortable – sending invites. I know, I know. What’s so hard about sending invitations, right? But for me it was hard. Painful. To a point where I just wanted to turn around, leave my laptop behind and just crawl into bed and sleep – just to avoid sending invites. This is what it’s like being me.

The story has a good ending, though. After sending about 150 invitations over several days, I kind of got into it. I got over it. It no longer felt uncomfortable sending invites. And the more responses I’ve gotten, the motivated I was to keep doing it.

So, thanks to these efforts, thanks to me just shouldering the pain for a while, I now get to do interviews, I get to talk to new people, I get to learn about streaming. All of which I appreciate.

Direction

It’s been three days since I’ve started streaming and boy has it been eventful.

On the first day of streaming I couldn’t even find the courage to go face the audience of 0 viewers. So I didn’t even go online, essentially. Neither could I find it in me to message other streamers to collab or come do an interview with me about their streaming, which I thought I’d be doing. Anyway, I went to sleep instead.

On the second day I went online just fine, but after three hours of telling stories about myself to a silent audience, I was just drained, and so, feeling discouraged, I stopped after just those three hours of streaming. And I went to sleep instead.

On the third day, I streamed not on schedule, but I streamed for almost 12 hours, without any sound or commentary. And it was fine. I finally found the motivation for the game I was playing, which was a problem before. And at one point I even had 5 consecutive viewers, which is half of my goal, so it was nice.

And today, as day four is about to begin, I even messaged Athletic Greens about sponsoring me! :D I know, it’s too early to be thinking about any sponsorships, but hey, I really want their product and I don’t think I can afford it the regular way. So, sponsorship!

Anyway, with each new day, I am getting more confident and more direction-full, if that’s even a word. I am liking it! :)

Looking for friends

Okay... where do I begin?

So, you know that I want to try my hand at streaming games, right? I want to give it my all. But there is a problem. I have anxiety. Stage fright. I am afraid to go on stream alone, to the audience of zero viewers.

My best friend Garvel can only be with me on stream for a couple hours each day. But what do I do the rest of the stream, when he isn't there? When nobody is there. Who do I talk to? Who do I confide in?

I need friends!

I need enough friends to be with me for 12 hours of stream every day. Not an easy feat. But maybe it will be more fun that way. Think about it. Life is pushing me to reach out to people, to make real connections, to build a support group.

All my life I avoided people, I specifically chose my own company, not wishing to burden people with my person. Declined numerous invitations to hang out. Now all I have is my best mate Garvel and he lives too far away for us to see each other anymore. There's nobody else.

Time to change that!

From now on I will go on stream looking for new friends. And I keep looking for new friends until I have an abundance of them! God, let this be fun! :)

Hopes and dreams

I have been thinking a lot of this aspiration of being a streamer. “What do I really want?” I see streamers with thousands of viewers and I think “Woah, that’s a lot. I won’t be able to handle that. I don’t really want that.” Then I see streamers with one or zero viewers and I think “I don’t want that either. That seems sad.”

So, I suppose I would want some success, but not too much. Maybe a hundred viewers as an end-goal.

I’ve also been thinking that like with many new undertakings, this one is giving me a bit of an uneasy feeling. Maybe it’s the fear of failure. A fear that my streaming is not wanted. Will I be entertaining enough? Worth watching? Worth sticking around for? I guess the only way to find out is to try. Give it a month and judge by the results.

What else?

On one hand, in the past I’ve been told that I am an interesting conversationalist and a good interviewer. So perhaps there is some promise for me in this streaming business yet. I could make it my pastime to really interview other streamers. It would give me something to do, keep me engaged, and it will utilize the few skills that I do have. To my advantage.

Furthermore, I have the experience of reaching out to people, knocking on doors, so to speak. Maybe this is what all that preparation was for.

On the other hand, I lead a reclusive life, I am an outcast of sorts. I stay in my room all day, every day. I really don’t have that much experience socializing with people. At 37 years of age, I am unmarried, childless, partnerless, and I have no plans of changing any of that. I am perfectly comfortable leading this solitary sedentary lifestyle. Not just that, but I wouldn’t want to impose any of my issues on anyone new, to burden others.

What I do have in abundance is time. I have all the time in the world. 24/7 I can do what I want, I am left to my own devices. Yes, clinical depression makes it hard to find motivation to do anything productive with that abundance of time. But if I could just find a way to utilize those daily hours…

Streaming. Maybe streaming really is the way to go, my niche to take.

Honestly, I don’t set myself up with any expectations. God knows, I’ve tried many “projects” before and abandoned all of them. But… who knows? Right?

Interviews!!

Last night as I was laying in bed, restless, trying to fall asleep, I had a brilliant idea! I will do interviews! I will interview other streamers, who are in a same position as me: having zero viewers.

You see, one of the problems of new streamers is having zero viewers and thus zero motivation to talk and entertain a potential audience. I am in the same boat. I can't imagine myself just talking to myself on stream for twelve hours on end.

So, instead of just mumbling to myself occasionally to zero viewers on stream, I will go seek out other streamers on Twitch who have zero or just a few viewers and I will invite them into voice chat - to have a friendly talk - about streaming, their aspirations, their successes or failures, them as a person. Whatever they are comfortable with! :)

Hello World!

Welcome to this weird experimental journey into finding purpose, fighting depression and gaining sustenance.

You will see me trying and failing to be a streamer. Failing because I am un-charismatic, un-entertaining, un-articulate. I have low-tier equipment, a half-broken laptop, mediocre video making skills. On top of that, I have a persistent mental illness that makes everything in life difficult. And yet… and yet… I will put my lot with streaming video games.

As my username stands, I will treat streaming as me being a part of a monastic order. I will get up early, stream religiously for twelve hours every day, and I will fast while streaming. As is in my nature, I will play video games obsessively. Hopefully, it will prove entertaining for others.

My life is already monastic is many ways. Me playing video games for others to see will be a natural extension of it.

My hope is that despite all my shortcomings, I will find success, however small; garner a supportive community that will see me through thick and thin. Together we can do this, you and I. So come join me on this journey of ours! :)