My Life Situation Right Now And The Suspension Of Activity Of The Game Design Lexicon Streaming Community.

Summary

Three Sections here:
- The Short Of It. - A brief explanation.
- The Situation. - How I got here and a long-winded version of my recent history.
- What This Means for The Game Design Lexicon. - How this is going to effect TGDL and the platforms it occupies.
- Will It Get Better? Will TGDL Come Back? - Will my situation improve? Could I come back to my historical level of content creation and streaming?
- How Can I Keep In Touch? - How to not lose contact with me and know whether I'm going to get this all started up again or not.
- That Is That. - My Final Thoughts.
 

The Short Of It.

My life situation is becoming complicated again and it is heading into a possible tragic outcome. Due to both this situation becoming dire and my inability to deal effectively with reality due to my mental state, I am having to indefinitely, if not permanently suspend my activities contributing to the production and running of The Game Design Lexicon.

The Situation.

Disclaimer: This summary contains events as I understand how they transpired as I type it. My account may not be accurate, especially during times where I was experiencing diminished mental faculties. My perception as well as my memory could have easily misunderstood or misinterpreted my reality as I was experiencing these traumatic events.

To those who have been watching my VODs either live or on YouTube, first off, thank you for being there and consuming my content. But by now you are probably somewhat aware of my current situation. But in case you need any type of clarity, here's where I am.

In 2019 I graduated college with my bachelors in computer science. At the time I had a fairly robust job and even had I been on my own I would have easily been able to support myself living in Utah where I was at the time.

Unfortunately with the compiling mental health problems I was suffering due to living a lifetime with undiagnosed ADHD and Autism, combined with being in a mentally abusive relationship for 20+ years, my mental state quickly collapsed.

The job I was working was extremely stressful and with all my other issues, concentrating on maintaining my performance at that job turned me into a shell of a person in every other aspect of my life. I was unable to maintain positive friendships, and my relationship with my partner took to even worse turns.

I quit my job with the intention of taking a breather, reorganizing myself, and looking for a job I'd be more comfortable with. I didn't know that it would be the last job I worked for over five years. When I quit I had nearly $30k saved to deal with anything that I might need as well as paying any debt incurred by my college tuition loans.

Between paying my loans and paying my partner's mother a hefty rent at that time, that money was gone very quickly. Once my money ran out, my partner's tolerance for me quickly followed.

I had to scramble to reconnect with my family back in Texas as I was in a state of ever increasing fear that I'd soon have to deal with not having a place to live. Which given the events that happened shortly afterwards, were completely justified.

Within weeks of reconnecting with my family, I had learned that my partner had moved on and started seeing people they met on a dating site, without telling me until they had a serious enough relationship that I would be getting in the way of. Shortly after that I was told that I needed to find another place to live. Needless to say my mental health was so greatly affected that packing my stuff to leave consisted of 3-5 hours of working to collect my stuff followed by 12-18 hours of mental breakdowns.

I had come to the realization that my partner was very much the horrible person I had been hoping and pretending they weren't for the entire time I knew them. Needless to say that my mental state did not take this revelation well.

My sister, who up until a year before had been living with my parents, came to my rescue. My mom had died a year before this and as much as I would have rather reconnected with her before she died, I wouldn't have been able to reconnect with my remaining family had she not. My mother gave me panic attacks and she is the main reason I had went no-contact with my family most of my life.

Within a few weeks I had reconnected with my sister and my father and she had made a commitment to take me in if things didn't work out with my partner and my current living situation. Which they did not.

My sister flew up to where I was and helped me gather my things into the back of a rental SUV, and drag them halfway across the country to her place. I have to remark that the rental was provided by my now ex-partner's mother against my partner's objections. At the time she would have been satisfied with just dumping me and my possessions in the street in front of the house.

While I was trying to regain my mental health, my sister provided a fairly stress-free environment for me to recover in. It was rough adjusting. I wasn't happy coming back to Texas, being fully aware that it was regularly on lists of 'Worst Place to Live for XXXXX Reasons'... but I really had no choice. I also had to deal with my father passing away while I was living there.

Going through both of my parents passing in so short of time was ... enlightening? Their deaths were so unceremonious that it did little to bolster my view on life and the world I live in. Not that they had done that much for my opinions on both while they were alive.

I believe my sister's life had been in building turmoil since before my mom had died. It was amazing that she offered to take me in. However in the time I have lived with her that situation has only gotten worse. She was having similar problems with her job as I was with my last job. And her job also kept her quite comfortable, so her not being able to deal with it gracefully was a tragedy.

While I lived here she quit that job and took one that paid considerably less, but was less stressful to her. My dad dying had also left a huge monetary gap in my sister's abilities to make her bills. My dad's social security was at least paying some of her bills.

But even through all this, she kept most of it from me to foster as stress-free of an environment as she could manage for me to recover. And it helped. For the first time in five years I'm now employed. Albeit at a very minimal and simple job that earns negligible pay.

However as life has often demonstrated, it's almost always just a waiting game to see when the other shoe will drop. And it did in the form of our only security; the home she had been living in for 22~ years had recently changed finance companies. And due to the state of the housing economy in our country, it ballooned her payments by three times the amount before, which she cannot afford.

She informed me of this, and that she was going to start looking for a new place for us to live. Again, considering the economy in our country, this was going to be considerably less than what we have now. We are only three people, but apparently three people surviving on one extremely taxed income is out of the question in the United States today.

Today I was informed that the hunt for another place for us to live was not going well. Due to issues with my sisters income and/or her credit, she can't find a place for us to move to. Our choices are extremely limited.

About the only way I can think of to help is to accelerate my entry back into the workforce and find a job. Unfortunately I *cannot* do this while I maintain my streaming community.
 

What This Means for The Game Design Lexicon.

From most important to least:

Twitch

On Twitch I have suspended my schedule. I will no longer maintain my Wed-Fri stream schedule. I don't want to give up on streaming just yet. While I have a place to live and internet to broadcast on, I still may host occasional, non-scheduled streams.

Unfortunately with the stress of having to find employment, and if I do manage to find employment, maintaining said job ... There's little chance I will be able to maintain a scheduled stream, or muster the mental faculties to do more than maintain my streaming setup in the most modest way possible.

As long as I live under that condition, the occasional unscheduled stream is not unreasonable. However if my living situation worsens, you can expect me to give up on it all-together.

YouTube

If I am only doing unscheduled streams I could potentially still post them to YouTube. Otherwise, my YouTube channel will fall into abandonment. I have several months of catching up with my already published content and creating shorts of them. But that will greatly depend on my ability to work on it, which is in doubt at the moment.

If I am not creating content, and I don't have the ability or time to work with content already created, there will be nothing to post to YouTube.

Which of course is my biggest tragedy as it's currently my most popularly consumed media.

I will most likely still consume media on my personal YouTube channel. Possibly still consume game content on  the TGDL YouTube. At least as long as I have the ability to access it. I currently watch a *lot* of YouTube. It's literally the only video media I consume on a regular basis.

Reddit

Needless to say this post is going up on my Reddit, and my Blog. However unlike my Blog, I will almost certainly still frequent Reddit in a minor social capacity. Anyone wanting to stay in contact with me, this would be the place to do it. As long as I have access to Reddit, I will socialize on it.

There are many communities there that have helped me transition into my current life. Helping me with things like dealing with my diagnosis and current mental condition.

Again, as long as I have access I will continue to consume content, comment, and possibly post new content on Reddit.

Discord

With my pull-back on my streaming and content creation capabilities, and my need to refocus on getting my life back up and running, I will have little time for a lot of the communities I traditionally try to socialize on.

I am almost certainly going to pull myself back, and limit myself to as few Discords as possible, de-prioritizing Discords that center around streaming and activities I not only have no time for, but would rather not be distracted by.

However just like any community I've mentioned so far, as long as I have access to it, I will continue to participate on it. I will continue to maintain the TGDL Discord, despite it having nearly no traffic at all. If you are on Discord and want to maintain contact with me, joining this community would be the most reliable method.

Bluesky

Using Bluesky was experimental at best. I literally only did it to expand my community's reach. Which I would say that it was negligible at doing so. Regardless of any level of streaming I maintain, I will most likely pull back my maintenance on the community to not include Bluesky.

I never liked Twitter as a platform, and after the entire X debacle it took me wanting to expand my community to frequent a similar platform to it. I will almost certainly abandon my participation on Bluesky.

MobyGames / IGDB

Same as Bluesky. I will not maintain any activity on these sites without being able to expand and maintain the community on platforms I find more important like Twitch and YouTube.

Everything Else

Anything not mentioned above....

If it's something I maintained solely for the community, it will most likely be abandoned. However I can't think of anything that I haven't covered in the above sections.

If there is something that I maintain a presence on because it was/is something I frequent for personal use, I will remain on it. Discord, Reddit, YouTube are all platforms I frequent and use on a personal level and would continue to use despite not being able to forward the streaming community.

Will It Get Better? Will TGDL Come Back?

I mean, I sure as shit hope so. But as my grand-pappy used to say, "You can hope in one hand and shit in the other and I'll take bets on which will fill up quicker..."

So far I've been able to maintain enough physical presence that give me the ability to build and maintain a streaming community. Things like a place to live, a working computer, an internet connection, and the basics such as food to eat.

Now a place to live and an internet connection are currently in danger of being taken away. That would also remove my ability to maintain a working computer.

However if I become homeless ... I don't know if I could deal with being homeless at this point. I'm not sure what I could do to avoid it if it were pushed on me. But at this point I'd have to say that I couldn't deal with it and would look for any alternative possible.

But that's the worst case scenario. Let's talk best-case.

Let's say I find employment. It will almost certainly be a forty hour a week position. It will most likely be some form of support position, as that is what I have the most experience I have behind me. It's also the kind of position combined with my experience that my education would most support.

Historically I have not handled *any* employment in a graceful way for an extended period of time. At my best mental ability, which I am far from, I have only been able to handle positions I have had for at most 3 years at a time before I break down. During those times I've been unable to maintain anything but the strongest social connections and even then I often damage them due to the overhead I have to maintain to do so.

Because of this I highly doubt I'd be able to maintain a full-time job and still have any ability to grow, expand and maintain a social streaming let's play community.

But I'm an overtly negative person and I could be wrong. I really enjoy streaming my game play. So much so that I don't really care if there's no one watching. I'm there to entertain myself. It's just a bonus to me if I entertain someone else.

While I want to continue doing live let's play, I doubt that my responsibilities and ability will allow me to do so.

But hopefully I'm wrong about that.

How Can I Keep In Touch?

One of the wonderful things about maintaining a Let's Play Streaming community, is I can more easily handle para-social relationships with people than I can handle normal relationships. Had my community ever 'blown up', I know with certainty that I could handle all the extra traffic and community communication.

In my personal life however, I have no desire to maintain friends. I'm not sure how that makes me look to outsiders, but I can imagine that it doesn't sound like a positive thing. But caring about these types of perceptions are some of the main reasons I don't want to maintain friendships.

I currently have my face-to-face relationship with my sister and her kid. I have a small number of people I am forced to have less frequent personal relationships with like my therapists and doctors. I also have an extremely small group of people I talk to intimately online. Easily less than 5.

If I manage to re-integrate into the workforce, I have less expectations on expanding my circle of friends than I have on my ability to maintain my Let's Play community. I'm almost certainly going to pull back on my presence on at least one of the platforms I more frequently use for socializing such as Discord. As it is, I'm on about ~15 or so communities. Out of those communities I have all but 4 to 5 of them muted, and recently I barely talk on any of them.

However I don't plan on abandoning Discord. And I've had my personal YouTube and Reddit accounts since 2006. Not anytime soon anyway. There are at least three places that I will always be available to anyone who desires contact with me. Email, Reddit, and Discord. As long as I have access to them.

If you want to stay updated with what is going on with me, those will be the best places to do so.
 

That Is That.

And I guess that's about it. Those are all the details. I've really enjoyed doing this. I've been blessed with the people I've met doing this. 99% of all the people who I've met through this community have been wonderful to communicate with, whether they stuck around or not.

Despite my misgivings about my ability, I *want* to continue to do this. And if I am able to come back to it, I will.

Take care and I wish well on anyone and everyone who has been a part of ... this.