Happy New Year, Farmhands.
I'm in mourning. (Hi, "in mourning", I'm Dad)
On April 22nd, 2018, I took a deep breath and clicked a button that read "Go Live." My cell phone whirred and the camera showed a younger and incredibly anxious me, in his kitchen, surrounded by the ingredients he'd need to make Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes. I was a cake decorator, you see, having been trained in the ancient ways of Sam's Club to frost and sprinkle atop freeze dried baked goods. With my move to Florida to marry my beautiful wife 3 years prior, however, those skills had been relegated to the hobby space and left to get rusty. Not anymore. I was adamant that I was going to teach myself the missing skill set, use my flock of chickens and their organic eggs to convince the health nuts in my area that my baked goods were somehow superior, and sell my cakes to them for money. And this was the first step in that journey; asking friends and family to watch me work as a way to pressure myself into consistently experimenting at minimum once a week.
My channel quickly evolved. What started as a simple motivating tool became it's own unique hobby; I switched to a refurbished computer running Linux, designed bespoke graphics, upgraded my cameras to only SLIGHTLY shitty laptop levels of cheap, bought cool new baking tools to try out- but mostly fell face first into enjoying being an entertainer more than being a baker. I made some damn cool cakes, tried and failed at perfecting various flavors (still haven't figured out from-scratch strawberry), and eventually got the bug to try sharing video games I enjoyed to my audience that were increasingly there more for me than for the cakes. I remember passionately regurgitating the talking points of the latest Matt Colville video to a friend who'd never read 4th edition. I remember cackling like a madman when my cat decided he needed to be on my shoulders in the middle of a frosting session, laying down on my back while I was bent in half to accommodate him. I remember starting to cry when I hit 100 followers and achieved Twitch's (then fairly lax) Affiliate status live on stream.
The thing is, as I write this, I'm remembering all the good times and only the good times. Being a Twitch streamer wasn't always candy and roses. I fought tooth and nail with my very shitty and cobbled together PC to
maintain any semblance of watchable video quality on an incredibly small
budget. My un-medicated anxiety made hitting that button and Going Live
feel impossible some weekends, compounded by the guilt of skipping a
week when the entire POINT was to make me bake often. I struggled with my internet provider, and in particular, a neighbor who twice CUT OUR LAND LINE because he believed the buried cord to be on his property. And all of that is before you take into account the amount of Dishes that piled up after any given baking sessh. (Beautiful Wife was mostly upset about the dishes.)
Existing as a creator on the internet is a lot of work, actually.
This is why, despite my love for the craft being as strong now as it was back then, I have made the decision to say goodbye to being a twitch streamer. Some may call it "graduating", a term popularized by Vtubers and the Japanese Idol culture that they've basically lifted outright, but I prefer the term "retiring." It isn't that I've aged out of the hobby, nor that I'm leaving to pursue bigger and better opportunities like a high school senior moving states to chase a specific college degree. I'm more like an old man who's accepted that maybe this grind isn't for him anymore. Even though I've long since switched the kind of content I produce from the live baking streams into interactive 2d puppetry Vtubing atop Video Game game play, this shit still isn't easy, and the amount of time required to keep it up and running just isn't available to me these days.
Saying goodbye to parts of yourself is never easy. Admitting that you're not the same person you were 10 years ago comes with a sense of grief. Very rarely do we get to have that realization until it's too late to properly say goodbye. So with heavy heart, I look upon my twitch channel, and metaphorically watch as the cake decorator in his kitchen with anxiety and hope pauses before hitting the "Go Live" button, and gently reaches over to close the door between us. It is April 22nd, 2018, and he has Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes to bake. It is January 1st, 2025, and I have a TTRPG draft to edit.
Until next time,
Farmer Gadda
