Thirteen Years Later

(photo chosen because teenage-me would have set it as my MySpace photo)

I love the concept of “Make your 13-year-old self proud.”

Today, I was cleaning my office and stumbled upon my 8th-grade year book. There was so much going on for me at this time, as there are for a lot of folks that age. This may be the year I remember the most, of my childhood. Looking back on it, I was surrounded by many wildly different people, who I watched in wonder to an extent. All were such strong personalities, or styles, or beliefs. I had a strong personality, perhaps too strong for some. I have to assume most young teenagers feel this way, but I felt I had no foundation. I was bouncing between all these people, trying to figure out my place among them. Some a terrible influence, some good.

Though, theirs are not my stories to tell.

I found my school photo, and there I was, directly staring my 13-year-old self in the eye. Me: Twenty-six, dyed hair, tattoos… I probably wouldn’t have seen the gingham dress coming. I’m releasing original music. I’ve performed on a stage. I’m still enjoying The Elder Scrolls as much, if not more than I did then. I still shout My Chemical Romance lyrics from my car every week (though..still haven’t seen them live).

All of this relates to something that has been very seriously on my mind for a few weeks.

I’m content with where I am, right now. I’ve mentioned this before, but I put so much pressure on myself in the past to grow my following, gain more subscribers, etc. That if I wasn’t, what was the point? Artists want their work to be seen, after all. But I had a moment where I looked at my average Twitch viewers, the likes I get, the viewers on my videos (which are lower than they’ve ever been)… and I find myself thinking “Wow 300 people watched this, that’s so many”. In 2014, I was angry if my video didn’t get 1k views. I felt like something must have been wrong.

I have no idea if anyone even reads these, I realized. But if someone does, that’s great! And if they don’t, I still have fun writing them. It’s something nice for me to look back on.

I currently have on average 10 viewers during my streams. I truly feel if that never goes up, I’ll be content. I love my streams as they are. Obviously, I’ll always love having more folks join! And that artist part of me will always want to share my art with as many people as I can. Even currently, I’m trying to push people towards my new YouTube channel and this is what had me questioning. Why? Do I really care about my numbers? I want to make sure that folks who are interested are aware. I want people to see my hard work.

But I know I’m doing my best against a system that’s not built for taking it slow. And that’s okay, I’m spending my time doing these things because I enjoy them. As long as that continues to be true, I’ll continue to do them.

I know 13-year-old me would still think I’m pretty cool. :)