Looking towards 2025

Just a few weeks ago, I would have said that this year does not sound real. Now that it is here, however, it is like every other year. The calendar updates, and it is hard to remember what year to write for a few weeks. Then the feeling fades, and life goes on. At the same time, the new year is a good opportunity to bookmark and look back at what you have done during the past year. With that perspective, you can start planning the next few months. Before my life was focused on running an independent business, I never really concerned myself with the new year outside of a few jokes and the expectation of a tax return. However, when you have to file taxes and update a lot of paperwork every year, you are kind of forced to work within it and plan things. At least a little bit.

Let's look back on last year first. Simply put, it was my best year ever in some ways. In others, it was the worst. I want to start by looking at how it was good. It was my best year on YouTube ever. While I got roughly the same views as in years past, the change in video style and upload frequency made the channel significantly more profitable than in previous years. Revenue is up significantly over the same months a year ago.

This was a good year for YouTube and it helped push a good amount of traffic to my streams on Twitch. This helped me maintain stability as a creative on the internet. The biggest success I've had on Twitch was maintaining the top level of the Plus program, which gets me a 70% cut of subscriber revenue, also helping increase my income and keep things steady.

Outside of content, life has been busy. I went on more vacations last year than I ever have in a single year. In June, I went to Montreal for five days; in October, I went to Vegas with some friends and saw a festival. I also had the stability to take extra days off when I needed them. This job is an all-or-nothing thing, and it can be hard to take breaks on weekends when I should be resting. I think in 2025, I should aim for roughly the same amount of time off work. During that trip in October, I also spent some time on Vancouver Island right before Halloween. It was then I started looking at apartments. By mid-November, I made an offer, and it was accepted. I get the keys on January 31st. I'm stressed, excited, and scared to all hell. I mostly want the whole thing to be over so I can focus on moving. I'll have till the 15th.

Last year was full of exciting life changes and a new normal that I never thought I'd have. Hopefully, it'll lead to a healthier and happier day-to-day for me than I have where I currently live because the year had just about as much hardship as positives. I lost both my grandmothers, spent time in the hospital and a psychiatric ward, finished my allowed free therapy and mental health counseling, and was unable to find a satisfactory private alternative. Every single counselor I tried was a disappointment, leaving me feeling ripped off and depressed. I tried three and gave up. I did not take great care of myself; I was active through the summer, but I need to eat healthier again, like I did a few years ago, and I should absolutely tone down my vices where I can. Mentally, I've been dour as much as I've been up. I think my general personality on stream has been better than in years past, but I'm still far from perfect. In 2024, I burnt out a few times, and it shows on stream when I am not in a good headspace. I need to keep working on myself where I can and take as best care of myself as possible. The good news is, for me at least, the environment that I live in changes how I act dramatically. I have lived in the same tiny space since 2014, and the walls feel closer every day I am in there. I think moving will do me a lot of good and hopefully help push me to be the best person and entertainer I can be.

Looking forward to 2025, I want to continue to improve the videos I upload. I think I've gotten to a point now where people know to expect the bigger event videos from me. I hope that I am able to push big numbers on them as they take a large amount of work to build. The last few releases I've had did not perform as I'd hoped. The first adventure mode video and my Caves of Qud story both missed the mark I wanted them to hit. The Qud video is getting there slowly, but the other, not so much. I just released my Ghostcandy video. It is doing decently at the time of writing, but it could definitely be performing better. It is still early days on that, so it'll probably improve with time as the videos tend to.

My big goal for the year is 100k YouTube subscribers. Since the content change, I have been getting roughly 2k subscriptions per month. If that trend continues, I'll be at 92k by December. With a little luck and a lot of consistency, I can hopefully hold that number and pull off 100k instead.

My main goal for Twitch is the same as always: keep the growth and numbers consistent, hang onto level 2 of the Plus program, and continue to slowly grow and entertain, while being the best person I can be and, of course, having a lot of fun.

I finally finished the video for Ghostcandy. That is a big wight off my back for a bit. I'm going to go easy on myself for a week before starting to piece together the next project. That'll take as long as it takes.

Schedule for this week is Tuesday - Thursday streams. I might do a friday stream depending on how I'm feeling. I got rather burnt out by the end of December between the holidays, streams and editing workload. To be honest all I can think about is moving and at the time of writing that is only 26 days away..