Day --3: The real resolve for 2019

I was sitting in bed today thinking about all the things that I want to accomplish next year.  I realized that I had wanted so badly to do so much that would get my name out there and then I felt bad for feeling the need to be more popular or famous or whatever.  I sat thinking about how I wanted to build a community and how I wanted to go and make a difference and I realized that one of my biggest strengths is in making people feel welcome no matter what the circumstances might be.  So here are some more things that I will be trying to accomplish this upcoming year.

1. Community

I want to build a community of people on the internet that is not all about tearing people down or making people feel that they are not welcome in the communities that we are developing.  I want to stream with likeminded people, and interact with people that will be working to make the world a better place for all around.  That being said I will not be allowing any political talk, homophobic or transphobic speech, or anything else that is not polite in society to take place across any platform that I will be on.  I may not be able to make a lasting change but I feel that I will be able to make a small change in the overall gaming community.

2.  Environment

I want to help change the pollution levels that are around my city.  One of the hardest things to witness is the brown cloud that is constantly flowing around our buildings and our foothills.  I will be more aware of the amount of time that I am using resources and will be doing monthly or maybe biweekly neighborhood cleanups to make the world a better place for any and all that wish to join in.  I was blown away by an article I read on Japanese Times a couple months ago where communities would not be cleaned by municipalities but would instead be cleaned by the people that lived there.  I hope that we as a society will one day work just as hard to keep our neighborhoods as clean as our homes.

3.  Personal Growth

I feel that I have spent a lot of time thinking about what I want to accomplish that would maybe make me feel better about myself, I realize that I am not going to be super happy just by working on what people think about me in an online environment.  That is why I have a goal of reading 30 books in 2019.  I also started to learn Japanese on duolingo the other day and I have decided that I will be working hard to try and at least become somewhat competent with that language so that I can cross traveling there off my bucket list.


Thank you all for taking the time to stop by and join me on my journey to better myself this upcoming year.  I think we will be able to accomplish much and I look forward to growing with you all as we push to become a greater force for good in this world.

Day --4: Setting the stage

I have still not done much for the setting up of my goals for the year of 2019 but I took today to spend some time with my wife at the Phoenix Zoo.  I have to say that even though I did not do anything to build my personal brand or to get myself set up for the perfect launch.  I did however take the time to utilize the different social media sites while I was at the zoo to test out some of the tools that I could use to help my business grow.

Today:

I was extremely happy to go do a mini date day with my wife.  I loved seeing the different animals and watching the people that were around me doing their thing.  We had the opportunity to go to the zoo with some friends that had young kids and there is something magical about seeing the zoo through a child's eyes.  If I could capture that magic and apply it to my video game streams this year I feel that something great could happen.

I am still trying to figure out the best way to set up this site.  I think that I will have a running commentary on the goings on of the day as well as the goings on in my overall goals.  I look forward to moving forward and as the new year gets ever closer to us I can't help but feel excited for the opportunities that 2019 will bring us.  My wife is telling me that by the end of 2019 she hopes to be making 10k a month, me I just want to be happy and feel like my life is going in a direction that I can be proud of.

No matter what next year brings I promise you all that I will continue to post this experiment and share with you the joys and pains that will come with putting myself out there.

Here is how my closing is going to look....

New Followers on Twitch:  0/50
New Followers on Twitter:  1/100

Overall feeling of the day:  Average (Nothing amazing happened but nothing bad happened either.  I would say that this day was one of those days where life just moved forward.)

Day - 6: Goals for 2019

Okay folks it is time to get serious about what I want to accomplish with 2019.  I know that it is a little early for the new years resolutions to come about but I believe that it is always good to be setting goals and making things happen.

I have decided that this coming year is going to be the year of the stream.  I have always had a lifetime goal of figuring out how to make my passion for gaming become a little more than a hobby.  Yes I know that many of you that are reading this are probably rolling your eyes and saying "oh great, another wanna be streamer looking for a payout"  I would be doing the same thing if I were in your shoes but I plan on doing it differently.  What I mean by this is going to be the year of the stream is that I will be pushing myself to put myself out there.  I have always been a little on the shy side and a total introvert, but I will be pushing myself to not only stream games but interact with as many random people as I can.

This year of the stream project of mine is more of a way to get myself to interact with life.  I want to be able to go outside and talk to people in the streets and not get tongue tied while doing so.

So now that you know the nature of the project here are some of my specific goals for the 2019 year:

• Design a Logo, for branding purposes
• Increase my Twitter Following to 300 (a lot harder than it seems as many people seem to follow you just for follow backs)
• Utilize my Instagram account for more daily posts
• Maintain a daily blog to talk about the ups and downs of putting yourself out there
• Set a streaming schedule of one day a week minimum and stick to it.
• Interact with other streamers in the game genres that I will be playing and make some connections.
• Practice to become one of the best gamers that I can be in the games that I play.
• Read some self help books to learn more about acting, and the art of improv.
• 50 followers on twitch
• 20 YouTube subscribers

I feel that if I am able to accomplish these goals during 2019 I will be better equipped to take my life one step closer to my ultimate goal of making my hobby something I am able to benefit from.  Thank you all for joining me on this great journey.  I look forward to improving myself with you all this 2019.

Guess Who Is Back

Dropping a quick line here to let you all know that I have made it back to the blogging world.  After some difficult times and a lot of time constraints I am back and ready to write once again.  I am not going to change things up or do anything like that I will be picking up where I left off.  I look forward to all the games that we will be playing in the future and all the games that we will be streaming as well.

I appreciate those that reached out during this hiatus to see if everything was okay, for the rest of you... Yes everything is okay.

Our first official coming back post will be an overview of the new World of Warcraft expansion.  There is so much going on and the community has been very divided over the whole thing.  This is shaping up to be an amazing expansion and I look forward to covering some of the twists and turns that have popped up in the expansion itself.  The new expansion goes live on 8/13/2018 so the news and reviews will be going up within the next couple weeks.

I look forward to seeing you all then.

Yearning

Have you ever wanted something so much it hurt when you didn't get it?  Have you ever realized that you did not even want that thing until you had been passed over on it?  That is where I am at right now.  I have worked very hard to try and make something happen, to learn a new skill, and to be the best that I can be to others that I am able to.  If you do not know what I am talking about, I am in the passed over for belt promotion blues in my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class.  I have been a white belt for about a year and a half and even though I know that I am not quite good enough to be a blue belt, I am sad that I did not get the nod for promotions this Saturday.  I do not know how to get better and I know that we all earn our ranks at different speeds and I should be happy that I just turned 34 the other day and have been blessed with a body that is able to learn a martial art, but I'm not.  I feel that I have let myself down.  I have pushed myself to be better but I am unable to get better.  I for whatever reason have spiraled down a rabbit hole of self doubt as I think of all the things that I could do better.

The funny thing is I know that this belt is just a stepping stone on the path to knowledge.  I know that it should not define me as a human being, or give me a sense of self worth.  I had started to believe that maybe I had something, that maybe I had grown a little more as a martial artist and was ready to show that I could step up my game and be the best that I can be.  Oh well I need to take this pain and self doubt and tell it to shove it.  I have worked extremely hard to get where I am, and maybe it is time for me to work that much harder.  I will have to learn how to push myself to be better every day.  I think in order to do that I have to do a couple of things, which will be difficult but not impossible.

First, I need to stop eating and drinking stuff that is not good for me.  My diet has left me lethargic and unable to perform anything to the best of my ability.  I have faith that if I get my eating habits under control the good will come.  I will be pushing myself to substitute all added sugar out of my diet and get into better shape through the diet that I have.

Second, I need to hit the gym.  It is not enough to just go to jiujitsu and think that I am getting fit.  No, I need to work my hardest to make myself a better person.  That means that I need to start putting on some strength that will help me to compete with those around me and help me get better at what I do.

Third, I need to start asking God for some help.  I have been trying to balance so much in my life and have been failing miserably.  I will be asking and thanking God for all that I do in my life at all times.  I was raised in a very spiritual church and I know the power that is God, and I will be trying to live better through that so that I can come closer to Him.  

Sorry for taking so much time on a rant, but I have been told that the best writing comes from emotion.

Tired of the Rhetoric: 30 Days of Positivity

There are times in our life where it seems that the world is spiraling out of control and we don't know where to grab ahold and wait it out.  I have recently entered one of those stages where things just don't quite seem to make sense.  My normal comforts seem to have been pushed to the side, and my go to places have lost their draw to pull me out of the strange feelings.

I started a series of Facebook posts the other day where I choose a good news story or quote to flood my feed with uplifting and happy thoughts.  I did this mostly because I have a hard time seeing the hate that has been permeating our society as of late.  I wake up every day and pull up my news app on my iPhone which is good because it helps me stay informed, but then as I search for a news story that has the pull of being uplifting I get sucked into a downward spiral of biased journalism.  I am not super conservative and I am not super liberal either and all I see is both sides of the spectrum berating and hating on each other.  I am forced to see the people that want all members of a cabinet to be routed from the country that they love enough to be in office, I see people spewing verbal slurs at those without a voice because they look different from themselves.  All I see is a world that is slowly starting to unwind at the seems and all the people in it are blaming others without taking blame themselves.

I was always taught to lead by example.  If you want the world to be a better place it has got to start with you.  My wife she put up a quote in our house that read "Be the change you want to see in the world."  I want to live that way.  I want to be the change that I want to see.  The first thing I want to see is that all people no matter who they are receive equal treatment.  I used to laugh and joke and say I was the most unbiased person in the world because I dislike everyone equally, now I want to be the person that listens to everyone.  I will continue my 30 days of positivity on Facebook, I will continue to push for people to be treated as people, and I will try to be a more compassionate listener to both sides of the argument.  If people are trying so hard to be heard maybe it is time for me to hear them and try to understand both sides.

The Joys of Hard Work

It has been a long time since I have had the ambition to write anything on this site.  It is not for lack of interest but mostly, and this may come as a surprise, marriage is hard!!!!!

I have given up a lot of hobbies to try and fit into this new partnership, but I realized that giving up on your being is not the way to make sure that you are able to give everything to your wife.  I have started to get back into writing, only to find that I am so far out of practice that writers block has become a constant issue that I am trying to get over.  This is not much of a problem for a hobby blog like this one, which nobody really reads, but my wife and I have decided that we were wanting to create a travel based website.  This I will be giving myself actual deadlines and work for the express purpose of entertaining those that come across the golden pages of our endeavor.

In all seriousness I am very excited for this next chapter in our lives.  We are in the process of creating content for the site and it will be full of many fun adventures for you all to experience.  I don't want to go to deep into what the site will be, or even what the url is, but I will say that this project is one that is very exciting and through hard work we should be able to create content that everyone would be able to enjoy.

What this means is that this blog that gets very little time put into it might fall by the wayside for a bit.  I am still a part of the community and will be working diligently to make sure that the content you care about will be coming here at least once a month, but I will be taking some time off of the posting of video games and pop culture to create a blog of journaling our process of creating our new page, short stories, and still the what I've been playing.

I hope you all enjoy our short journey as we get ready to launch with us.  Subscribe to the feed here and comment with the phrase: "We go where the wind takes us" for a special treat when our website goes live.  Also comment with some of your favorite expeditions you have done, whether they are local or abroad we want to experience them all.