During my last several streams (well, okay, pretty much every stream so far since I got back to streaming following my move), I’ve been playing Ghost of Tsushima. It’s a very good game, but it can be a little intense at times, so I’ve been doing my best to monitor my mental health as I’ve played. I wouldn’t want to stress myself doing something that’s supposed to be fun, but trying to stick to a stream schedule means I have pre-appointed times to play the game for certain durations. Unless I skip a stream or break away from the game entirely, I can’t take much of a break.

All of this hit a peak last week when I streamed the game for three days in a row, playing a total of almost twenty hours between the four streams (I did nine hours of streaming in two sessions on Monday, the 3rd of July). I was also going through the Iki Island DLC, which is especially stressful for me since it is thematically about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, flashbacks, and how to deal with those things (along with cycles of trauma). All things that are a significant part of my life and the landscape of my mental health. I handled it better this time, during my second play-through, since I knew what was going on and could prepare myself beforehand, but it was incredibly exhausting in ways I very much overlooked until I spent my morning trying to figure out why I so exhausted yesterday and today.

Turns out I’m still not fully recovered from the stress of the first six months of the year, so this experience left me drained in a way that little but several nights of not sleeping (combined with the spike in my depression that always accompanies multiple days of too-little sleep) can get me. Thankfully, I already laid the groundwork for taking a break from Ghost of Tsushima on streams. I decided on Tuesday, as I was preparing for my scheduled stream, that I’d take Wednesday night off of GoT and play some Stardew Valley instead. Everyone loves a little Stardew Valley and some farm action. It was my most-attended stream, other than the one night I was raided by one of my sister’s friends, since I started my current streaming schedule. Which, you know, probably goes to show you that I really need to figure out what my audience is and play to that if I want to grow to the point of having enough regulars that there’s always someone watching.

I’ve been thinking about why I’m doing this at all, lately. I know I’m doing it because I’m lonely and it’s a fun way to play some video games while having some people around to hang out, but there are a lot of other ways to address loneliness that are probably a bit more healthy than streaming five times a week (though that might be dropping to four, soon, for unrelated reasons). I told myself that I was going to give myself a month of genuinely putting in the effort: of trying to figure out the work required to make a go of streaming, doing it for a few weeks, and then seeing how I felt about it at the end of all that.

The goal is to figure out if this is something I really want to do and that I enjoy doing, or if I am going to be better off finding another way to fill my time and do some light-hearted socialization. I do know that having a specifically timed evening activity does put a bit of a cramp in my work schedule, since it means I have little to no room to juggle things around to account for the days when I have to interrupt my usual schedule by leaving work early or for a couple hours in the middle of the day. It also cuts into my creative energy a bit and while I do enjoy streaming and talking to the people in my chat, I know that I’m spending energy on this that I could be spending on my various attempts to put together a tabletop roleplaying game group or to work on a writing project.

I could also try to do writing streams, but I’m really not sure what makes those enjoyable and I doubt I’d be able to focus if someone was chatting with me while I wrote. I also don’t think I could focus if I know people are watching me write (well, specifically if I know people are watching the words I’m writing appear on screen) and I really need to focus if I’m actually going to make writing progress rather than just sping my wheels for a few hours. I guess other people probably bring stuff they can work on with them to these streams and just enjoy some working companionship, but I would still feel weird since my mind always goes into “be a good host” mode whenever I stream. Which is why I’ll probably just stick to playing video games for now. It’s less complicated.

Until I get everything figured out, though, and rest up from my lastest bouts of stress-based exhaustion, I’m going to just keep plugging away while also being much more conscious of my mental health so I don’t push myself to keep playing Ghost of Tsushima when I need something more light-hearted (or at least cathartic) to unwind with. It’s not there’s much of an end to Stardew Valley, anyway. That game can keep running for quite a while. Most of the time, I don’t really get bored with it so much as get distracted away from it by something else. This farm I started for my stream (I called my farm “The Crick” since I am playing it on a little stream and “crick” is an dialectal form of the word “creek”) might wind up being the one to go the furtherst since, as long as I’m streaming, I’ll probably continue returning to it as a source of relaxation and fun. There are few other games with that kind of longevity and replayability, but maybe I’ll even work some of those in eventually. Only time will tell.