YouTube and Gaming
My Favourite Quote Ever:
“The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” - Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf YouTube and Gaming.... And TwitchTV, and Twitter, and Facebook, and OMGoodness, my life has changed. I'm happy to say, my dreams always scare me and seem ridiculously impossible - and I've never, ever been bored. I want to be writer, but discovered a number of years ago (when I won an award that put me in the public eye for a short while) that I seriously don't like being "out there" in public. Public speaking is fine, as long as I know my stuff; but being "known" (even a little bit!) terrified me to the point of rushing home to vomit when I was recognized from the TV or newspaper. While I'd been thinking about it for a few years, this issue caused me to decide to close down my company and take an early retirement. Immediately. I started staying home. A lot. Which caused me to wonder, "How can I possibly be a writer and hope to promote and sell books?" And the answer, at the time, was, "I can't." I've wanted to 'Be An Author' since high school and it seemed that after a life of waiting for the chance to do that, my dream was about die without a whimper because of fear. This website was born in 2004 as a hesitant step to put me "out there". Then I didn't tell a person it was online. I faced the daunting idea of joining Facebook. And made it so private no one could find it. I took baby steps along the way. I posted a few "real life" photos on a gaming site I ran for 6-7 years (How One Becomes Eva). I invited a few gaming friends to join me on Facebook and eventually made the page public. I told one or two close friends about this website. I was getting braver. Sort of. Slowly. But 'being out there' in any sort of meaningful way was still far beyond what I thought I could deal with. |
Eva and aKiss4Luck
YouTube: aKiss4Luck (a Let's Play Gaming channel) Twitch TV: aKiss4Luck (Live streaming games and the writing club) Youtube: Relish Every Word (Online writing club channel) Gaming Website: aKiss4Luck Website Facebook: aKiss4Luck Twitter: aKiss4Luck My YouTube Family and Friends: (The community I spend my life with) Then my son-in-law - YouTube Personality Quill18 - asked me to be a guest on his channel. That took three days of relaxation exercises, talking myself into dealing with it, every relaxing herb or tea I could swallow, and ultimately rather too much wine (and a bit of scotch) to sit in front of the camera next to him. But, I survived. The people on his channel were warm and welcoming and seriously wonderful. So Quill asked me to come back again. Which I agreed to; but it took months before I could actually go through with it again. Over time it was suggested that I start my own YouTube channel. Seriously? A channel of... what? I'm too old for such silliness. Obviously, that was a bad idea. However, it did scare me enough that I started thinking about it. What could possibly be better at getting me over a fear of being 'public' than me in YouTube? The idea was so terrifying that it sometimes sent me rushing back to the toilet with a stomach that was running for it's life. Years later, with much encouragement from friends, family, and the followers of Quill18, I decided to give it a try. It took several months to manage one 20 minute recording. So much fear! A year later: I had over 5000 subscribers in YouTube. Moreover, I have recently started an online writers club, and now I also do live stream events in Twitch.tv 3 times a week (with over 1000 followers there). I run two Minecraft servers where I invite subscribers and followers to come play. But, I've never told my relatives or local friends a thing about it. This page, right here, is my last step in 'getting out there'. Here I'm merging my two worlds: the "real life" world that encompasses my past, local community, and job as a nutritional counselor, and my online world of computer games, Minecraft servers, writing, and a growing international community of lovely people. Mona, meet Eva. I think you're going to get on just fine. |