Work life Balance.

May 3rd until the 13th I vanished from live streaming. I did this because I have a huge backlog of footage. Roughly 1.5 terabytes of video and this number increases every single stream. I use a plugin called "Source Record" it acts like a filter within OBS and allows you to record a scene not shown by obs. Using this plugin I record gameplay of whatever it is I am streaming. This does not record my voice, Alerts, Twitch chat or anything else shown on stream during the game play. Just my footage POV and in game audio. I started doing this just before I began recording my highly viewed. "I played the worst map in Dwarf Fortress history"

Since uploading this back in August of last year I have been recording all of my Dwarf Fortress footage in this way. Building up a huge backlog of footage. I could easily make a dozen or so videos of things that have happened in the fortress over time. However there is something holding me back from diving into the editing hole and simply cranking out these videos. Time and funding.

Some of these videos do extremely well, When this happens it more or less covers the time I spend working on it financially. Then I often get an influx of interest from the videos and that is reflected in my stream. The process is simple, spend the whole weekend editing content and upload a video. The video does well and I reap the benefits. However, I had three videos in a row that did not perform as well and had a major impact on me mentally.

The first of these was "Caves of Qud: A Beginner Friendly Experience"

While I was really happy with the final video and many of those who watched it loved the result. The video did not perform anywhere near as well as I needed it too. Its slowly chipped away as time has gone on and at this point I would say the video was easily worth making. But that week I released it was soul crushing. I spent five days 8-10 hours per day working on this one. When it released it took a month for me to break even on time spent. After the release I knew I needed something to maintain the channels momentum so I kept my head down and released a video about Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode.

I released this video just two weeks after my video on Caves of Qud. The short run time and small portion of footage made for a much smaller editing lift. However due to a poor thumbnail choice by me and perhaps not the best title work. Combined with the shorter run time. This video did okay. Not great but just okay. I was happy with the result and moved onto the next project. I wanted to make something out of the footage I'd just finished recording for Halloween. It was for a fortress called Ghostcandy.

The idea with this fortress was the ghosts were hunting my Dwarves. Its probably my most violent and harshest video I've made. Things don't just go south they go SOUTH. I loved the process of making this one but again, I spent a whole weekend and then some in between my normal hours grinding. Then on top of that this video also under performed in a similar fashion to my video on caves of Qud. After the first day I'd made the money back that I had spent on commissions for art and it took a month for me to cover the time spent editing. While I love this video and recently re-watched it. I do think I over edited it in spots and I could see why the retention on it has not stuck. I think I made some ambitious mistakes here that I needed to learn from.

There was a gap in videos like this. Adventure mode released so my next project was a tutorial for Adventure mode. It was commissioned by kitfox so it was paid for regardless of how it did.

But I had this lingering feeling that I'd failed. The last three projects had not even come close to what I'd achieved with the first few. I could not even really figure out why at the time.

After these projects I moved. This took a chunk of me that tends to be taken when your life changes on such a massive scale. I was exhausted and did not even miss a stream. I kept at it until I started getting sick. It was just a cold, but it was a bad enough cold that I needed a break. I took some streams off and attempted to replicate my success from summer last year and took a bunch of footage of my Gremlin who became a baron. This was the result.

This one took off, it matched the success of my early attempts at these large scale videos. My main take away here is it does not matter how much work I put in or how I feel about the video. Sometimes due to things outside of my control or my own errors videos won't always perform.

Here lies the issue, If I cram through the weekend without skipping a stream to edit videos the quality can drop and I can misjudge the quality of my own work. It tires me out and negatively impacts my mood the following week. It hurts my health because I don't leave my desk for an additional 40-50 hours in a week. The sustainable way to make videos like this is to take the time and edit them in a way that is both healthy for myself and the audience. I decided then and there when I made my next project I'd take a week off and edit it and I did. In early may I took 10 days off of streaming. The first two days were spent relaxing like a normal weekend. I ran some errands and relaxed at a local brewery. After that I went to work. I got to work; The video I ended up making was a shorter project based on recent footage. The result was good! I think, while it has a shorter run time the response has been good. It could be performing better at this point but I think the time I spent on it resulted in a quality video. It took roughly 30 hours to make and has pulled 60k views at the time of writing. Most of my videos take 50-60 and break even at 100k views.

My week of editing was only half done, It was Thursday and I started work on another project. The next project has been in editing hell for about a month. Its about my Vampire fortress "Winterthrone" it started off as my holiday project. It's fitting that I'm editing it in time for the start of summer. That took up the rest of the week and I took off Monday as a breather before I returned to streaming. Overall this is a much more healthy and effective way to put together projects like this. It gives me time to work on things without the sleep deprivation of after stream editing sessions. I also get to actually take a day and relax during weekends. But the unfortunate part of doing this is its a net negative in a financial sense. It cost me about a week worth of gift subs to take this time. Without going into exact numbers I absolutely lost money that week. The video could also have been edited in the evenings and I could have simply worked harder and finished this project. That would have paid better but it would have cost me more, physically.

Some time has passed since that editing week and I'm still plucking away at the vampire video. I got some work done this weekend but my head was not really in it. I've considered looking for an editor on and off. However I'd still have to do quite a large portion of the work. Voice recording and likely a rough outline as well. Unless I want to pay someone to sit and watch my streams and I don't really make enough for that. While it would be cool I'm not in a situation where that would be the most responsible thing to do. I could send a project file to an editor with a rough draft. That idea becomes a bit complicated because I use an open source editing software called KDenlive. It is quite powerful for what it is but whoever I send the files too needs to use that software. They'd have to remake my work in another program or I would have to learn new software.

This is not a post where I am pretending to have any of the Solutions. If I did I'd be talking about how I solved the balance of work that I've built for myself. It is closer to a venting session. I love the videos I make and the response I've seen. I love the result of making them. Editing can feel like a slog and often takes a lot out of me. The result is worth it even if the videos under perform. I think I've come into my own as a creator in the last year and I'm excited to see where I can take it. Maybe one day I'll find the right editor or figure out a schedule that helps me work without crushing myself physically.

Thank you for reading this kind of vent(y) post this week. These are just things that are heavy on my mind and I need to figure out what to do going forward. I'll keep making these videos as my mind allows and I'll keep experimenting with scheduling until something sticks.
I'm streaming Tuesday - Friday this week.