Personal Update (Patreon)

Hello!

Over the past couple years I have struggled with loneliness. You’d think with having active communities in Slack or Discord, tens of thousands of people listening to your podcasts, and hundreds of people watching you play Pokémon would solve that, but it doesn’t.

I’ve actually written this before and deleted it, but the reason I am posting today is because I am sitting on all these holiday cards to still send out. On top of that, I have three huge videos from Japan that I haven’t started editing, and I have multiple things from South Korea I’ve never posted.

That feeling of I am not living up to expectations is one thing I want to address and fix. I want to create unique and exciting things for people to enjoy, but this wave of loneliness hits me. I just stop everything I am doing because my focus is broken. Instead, I end up replaying conversations and scenarios in my head of how I got here.

Here is being surrounded by so many people who like what I do, but I still feel incredibly lonely.

I understand a lot of adults struggle with friendships and belonging. I also strongly believe that there needs to be normalization on friendships ending, since society only tends to focus on romantic relationships coming to an end.

I am in this weird space of having a lot of parasocial relationships. Almost every new relationship for me starts off as parasocial because of what I do day to day. I’ve been used and hurt from those who I thought were my friends, but just used me as a stepping stone. It makes me question the other relationships I have, which adds to these mixed feelings.

Why I am writing this?

Well one, to say sorry that I am behind on sending out holiday cards, getting those videos started, missing my own deadlines for episode 600, etc. I genuinely feel bad that I cannot meet my own goals because I haven’t been in a good mental space.

I think sitting on all these emotions for years haven’t helped. I’ve seen six different therapists in the past two years and while I think I am improving, that doesn’t stop me from having days just slip away.

Also, I figure maybe one or two people can relate to some of my struggles. While I show up every Monday to rant on a podcast and show up almost daily to distract people from the real-world on Twitch, there is an offline person who just getting through each day. 

I am trying my best and sometimes I don’t do a good job of showing that.

Anyways, all the postcards should have gone out. The holiday cards are being worked on and I’m sorry they haven’t been mailed out yet. My goal is those cards should all go out this week.

Thanks for listening to me write down a jumble of thoughts. 

-Steve