It's March 7th, 2025, and this is my vlog. Technically it's March 8th when I'm recording this, but this is my vlog for March 7th. Do I really need to say that every day? The biggest thing you might be interested in is that today I decided I'm going to start live streaming on Twitch again. I'm actually recording this live on Twitch right now, the next day.
Why I keep quitting Twitch, and why I'm back
Here's how this came about. I was talking with my friend TK while I was walking my dog. I've known TK since college, and he comes and hangs out on my Twitch sometimes. I've quit streaming on Twitch so many times. But earlier this year, I was saying that the one thing I want to be consistent on is streaming on Twitch, because I love recording my videos on Twitch.
What has consistently made the experience of streaming on Twitch suck for me is that I keep doing it in a way where I'm trying to become a Twitch partner and I'm obsessed with growing the streams. Most recently, what I was doing was giving a bunch of money away in chat. About a third of my streams were just me giving money away, a dollar or two at a time. Some streams I gave away more. I did a thousand dollar Bitcoin giveaway once. But I spent so much time and energy giving money away. Then I would raid these other Twitch streamers and give them a bunch of money, like $400 in February. And then I'd be watching these other people's Twitch streams, even though I'm not generally into watching people's streams.
I've been on this quest to get Twitch Partner so I can get that verified checkmark, so then I can go around and show off my checkmark in other people's streams, so then I can get even more followers, so then I can have my chat go too fast while I'm talking, so then I don't even pay attention to people and I feel overwhelmed, and then there's a bunch of critics and haters. So it's like, what am I even doing? I love just streaming on Twitch and hanging out with the people who love to be here. I don't want to clog the chat up with giveaways. I want to be here for the people who just want to watch, who want my attention totally for free, where you can just hang out and chat and it's easy. I want people who are here for the best free experience with me. I don't need to get a certain viewer count. I don't even need to make any money off my Twitch.
So I had this conversation with TK yesterday, which was really helpful. He said he missed mine, that he enjoys watching my live streams where I record my videos. I don't think he generally watches YouTube as much, and he doesn't seem to watch my YouTube videos that often. I do have a lot of YouTube channels, six of them, so I put out six videos a day. It can be difficult to even keep up with all my videos. But TK has consistently over the years enjoyed watching my live streams on Twitch, on Facebook, and even on YouTube. The main place he likes to watch is Twitch while he's at work, and he enjoys listening to me film my videos. That feedback is really helpful, because I enjoy having the live audience to film my videos with too. So at least on March 7th, I'm deciding that starting tomorrow I'll begin live streaming on Twitch again, which I'm now executing today.
The rest of the day
The rest of what I did today started with taking the kids to school first thing in the morning. Then I talked to my friend who's a music producer and asked him how I could get the loudness adjusted on my music in Ableton so I could play it live. He gave me a program that costs a few hundred dollars I could consider. For now, I'll just keep playing around and see if I can do it without buying that, and then maybe I'll think about it.
Then I went to my power yoga class and had a nice class. The Friday morning 9 a.m. class at Body Electric has consistently been my favorite yoga class over the years. I missed it several times in the last month to play tennis with the guys, so I'm glad I was able to make the class today.
How I show up to people versus how I think I do
I went to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting right after that. There was a girl there who's been sober a few years and has had some health challenges, and I'd been a bit cold with her. I was very warm when she first came in, but over the last year or so I've often been kind of cold, not talking to her, not saying hi. So today I made sure to be warm with her, to tell her I appreciate that she stayed sober through these health challenges. I'm always happy to see her, and I appreciate her being at the same meetings I'm at. I actually had that on my to-do list.
I think how you treat people in individual interactions is important. In my head, I'm so warm and loving and approachable. But I'm noticing, especially after an issue I had with a family member that I've thankfully released, that how it looks to other people versus how I think I'm acting can be drastically different. I often come across as cold and aloof when I want to be warm and nice to people. Of course, I don't want to be too warm. I don't want to be coming on to somebody's wife or girlfriend. I was a bit too warm in that yoga class a few years ago, and since then I've backed it off to being too cold in a lot of instances. So I'm looking to hit that sweet spot of warm and nice, but not too much.
A crypto coaching call, and the cycles of business
After yoga and the AA meeting, I came home, had a quick snack, and then I had a call. One of my previous crypto viewers who'd scheduled a call with me before scheduled another one today. He has hundreds of thousands of dollars of crypto, including much more ICP than I do, and he wanted me to help him get it off of Coinbase. So I talked him through setting up an internet identity, securing his recovery phrase, and how to buy an internet identity as well, so that he could help somebody else exit and get ICP staked for even cheaper. He asked if we could go longer on the call. I had the time, so he paid an extra $250 for an hour and 40 minutes of my time, which was awesome. I really appreciate it.
At the same time, it cut into my video filming time seriously, so I barely had time to get out and record a couple of videos for my channels. But it's such a balance. Over the last few weeks, there's been hardly anybody who's paid to schedule calls with me, and now there's the one today. There's one scheduled Sunday, and somebody paid for one Wednesday. It's funny how it goes in cycles. I'm really glad yesterday's crypto video wrecked, in a good way. It went off as hard as any of my other ones, and I'm glad that crypto review channel is growing also. If you ever want to see how I work through this side of what I do, a lot of it lives in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
An unexpected date with Laura
After getting some videos filmed, my daughter went home with a friend from school for an overnight. My son came home, and then we took him to soccer. I talked to my brother a bit while I was at soccer, and Laura's parents showed up too. After soccer, my son went home to stay overnight with Laura's sister and her daughter. That meant Laura and I suddenly had, at 7:40 at night, a time just the two of us, kid-free and unexpected. I was like, we've got to get out and do something.
Laura said it might be nice to go walk around at the pier. I was thinking I'd love to go have dinner, even though I normally don't eat at night. I normally cut my eating off around 3 or 4 p.m. and don't eat until the next morning. However, I've learned that things in life should be looked at as tools, and there are times to use certain tools and times to disregard them, like not eating at night. When I suddenly get a date with my wife, yeah, we're going downtown to the pier at eight o'clock and we're going to sit down for dinner at eight o'clock. This is a time to go ahead and have a meal at night, because you can enjoy a meal with your wife at a restaurant she wants to go to. She said she's wanted to go to Doc Ford's at the pier for years.
We got there and they told us a 15 or 20 minute wait, which seemed crazy to me, since I don't even normally eat after 3 or 4 p.m., and here at 8 p.m. there could be a 20-minute wait to even sit down. But there's a time to go out of your normal routines. You don't want to be so rigid that you're stuck in "this is how I do things." But you do want to have healthy routines that support you on a daily basis. The wait only ended up being five minutes.
They tried to sit us right in front of the guy playing live guitar. I personally hate live music, unless it's like Deadmau5 or maybe some Eminem and D12. Almost anything besides that, I hate having somebody playing a guitar. It's just noise I wish wasn't there. Laura likes it, though. But the music was too loud, and we couldn't even talk without yelling. This isn't our third date where we need to get in each other's intimate zones and whisper in ears. We've been married since 2012 and we've been together for 14 years. I'm not trying to holler at Laura in front of a guitar. Thankfully, they sat us 30 yards away. Laura was happy to hear the music, and I was happy it wasn't too loud. We had a great conversation.
I asked for a veggie menu and got some vegetables, some vegetables with some stuff on them. My wife got a grouper sandwich and some fries, and I had a couple of bites of her grouper. Of course, the waiter tried to give me the grouper sandwich. He's like, grouper sandwich? Nope, that's for the wife. I'm the one who got the vegetables with some stuff on them. Then we went home and got to bed, had some extra quality time, which was really nice, showered, and were in bed before 11. So, responsible and fun.