Trail Thoughts ✦ October & November 2021 (Patreon)

Ohai everyone! It has certainly been a while since I have written a Trail Thoughts for you all, and I am very sorry about that! The first week of November went by so fast, and honestly, November as a whole was just a whirlwind of excitement and fun. Excited to recap the two months and talk about it all with you! As well as things to come...

October Stats:

• # of Streams: 14
• Avg Viewers, incl. Hosts & Raids: 47
• Avg Viewers, excl. Hosts & Raids: 36
• Unique Viewers: 2,494
• Unique Chatters: 318
• Chat Messages: 19,118 (avg 1,365 per stream)
• New Followers: 79 (avg 5-6 per stream) 
• Subscriptions: 152 (avg 10-11 per stream) - a lot of these were during my birthday/anniversary stream

November Stats:

Naturally, all of these stats are a bit warped because of how many streams I didn't do.

• # of Streams: 4
• Avg Viewers, incl. Hosts & Raids: 26
• Avg Viewers, excl. Hosts & Raids: 26
• Unique Viewers: 325
• Unique Chatters: 83
• Chat Messages: 2,629 (avg 657 per stream)
• New Followers: 18 (avg 4-5 per stream) 
• Subscriptions: 74 (avg 18-19 per stream) 

October Thoughts

October was a very consistent month for me, and all around a really great time! The month saw us continue through the Renegade playthrough of Mass Effect Legendary Edition (ME2, specifically), and finally finish Mass Effect: Andromeda! The community voted loud and clear for me to begin my first playthrough of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, so I started that on Tuesday, Oct 12. On Flex Fridays, I finished Lake, played American Truck Simulator on stream for the first time, checked out Treasure Hunter Simulator (not highlighted as it was split across three VoDs), and played The Shapeshifting Detective. The month was then wrapped up with a massive 8 hour long birthday + two-year streaming anniversary stream! It was a wonderful month and the celebration stream was an absolutely amazing time. It was my first time testing out a goal where it wasn't just restricted to subs only or bits only, but was all encompassing. I will definitely bring that back at times. My mods secretly arranged a Kudoboard for community members to sign, and I have gone back to read the entries often. 

Stats-wise, October was definitely the best month so far this year in terms of viewership and other metrics, like chat messages and subscriptions. My celebration stream definitely elevated this, but even the "regular" streams were really wonderful too. Thank you to everyone who hung out and said hi!

November Thoughts

November was nearly the exact opposite of October. As you all know, I only ended up streaming four times. The main reason for this was because I took off just over two weeks! I had told everyone that I was taking time off to work on some school and have a break, but the real reason was because I travelled to the United States to go meet SoEverdream, and other friends, in person! I was in North Carolina with Ever from Nov 7th through the 17th. We let our communities know via Ever's Nov 8th stream where I just showed up on camera and then we talked for 6 hours. If you missed it, go rewatch that here! (Well worth the watch, IMO. It was a great time!) While I was in NC, I got to meet fellow mod TheHereafter in person, along with a couple of Ever's IRL friends who come into his stream every so often (ImaGayFurrry and Stolen_World). We went out for sushi and burgers, did some Top Golf, explored downtown Charlotte, went to an engagement party, did a two day mountain trip that included a hike, some waterfalls, an alpine coaster, and a sweet cabin in the mountains. We made sure to also schedule a rest day where Ever played the new Halo for 9 hours and I put in about as many hours as that on Animal Crossing. On Nov 18th, we drove up to New Jersey to go spend a few days at Pho & HR's and we were joined by Yed, Slay, Goist, Bree, and Mace. We spent those days eating, drinking, playing games, and had an epic Thanksgiving dinner. On Nov 22nd, we all returned home. It was a wonderful trip that had been planned for a while and it was badly needed. I hadn't been outside of Canada since 2017, but that aside, it was really nice to meet and spend time with fellow streaming friends that I have been friends with for the past 1-2 years. Honestly, if you are not following these 8 individuals, you are missing out on some amazing people and content.

When I got home, I had intended to jump back into streams, and while I did have my return stream, which was a fun 2 hours of Just Chatting, overall I was not feeling motivated. I ended up cancelling a couple more streams. As a result, nothing super exciting happened in November! 

Stats-wise, it's really hard to talk about November because of how few streams there were and how all over the place it was in general, so I'm really not focusing too much on it. Weirdly, it was the first time SINCE MY FIRST MONTH STREAMING, where I didn't have any % of views from raids and hosts.

Honestly, this year has been a rollercoaster in terms of stats. Though I am still trending up, which is nice to see!

Thoughts for December (and the general future)

I'll be taking another break this month because of Christmas and final exams. The streams that will be cancelled are Fri Dec 24, Sun Dec 26 and Tues Dec 28. I am hoping not to cancel anymore (as I didn't stream on Dec 3rd because of the Nook Winter Charity Event), but we'll see how things go!

Sundays and Tuesdays will continue as normal with MELE and KOTOR. The Friday streams this month will be community decided! There is currently a vote going on in Discord for this Friday's stream (see the #schedule channel). If you haven't voted, please ensure you do!

I am going to close out 2021 with the 12 hour stream that I owe you all, that was one of the goals during my birthday/anniversary stream! This will happen on Friday, Dec 31 and will go from 1p-1a MST. Stay tuned for a formal announcement in Discord and on Twitter, as I still have to make the promo poster for it.

I really want to make 2022 a kick-ass year. I do plan on setting goals and really drilling down on the direction I want to go with my broadcasting and community. If you all are interested, I'd be happy to share those goals here for motivation and accountability.

Lastly, Patreon is really putting in the work to make some significant improvements to this platform. If you're interested in reading what is coming soon, check it out here. I'm most excited about being able to host videos for you all directly on Patreon (no YT or Vimeo required), along with the changes to billing (which has long been a frustration for pledgors), and the improved posts/analytics. 

Streams I Owe

There are many streams that I owe for the community and I haven't forgotten about them! The list of streams I still have to do are:

• Destiny 2 w/ SoEverdream and TheHereafter (NSCF)
• Camera's on Ella - Just Chatting Stream (NSCF)
• MummaKL Stream - Just Chatting (NSCF)
• Chat Voted Reading Stream (Birthday)
• 12 Hour Stream, scheduled Dec 31 (Birthday)
• Alien: Isolation Stream (Birthday)

I want to try my best to schedule all of these in January, apart from the MummaKL stream as that can only occur when she is at my home. Stay tuned...

As always, a big thank you for reading these posts and for just being a part of the community and my life. I appreciate it more than I can possibly express in words. The last couple of weeks have been a bit rough for me and being able to have this community in my life has been a huge help. 💙