My Twitch Streaming Experience (So Far)
It has been a while since I updated the blog! I had to focus on work more intensely within the last month, which caused me to miss making a post in April - but now that things are settling down again, I’m here to talk about an interesting creative outlet that I have been exploring for a few weeks: Twitch streams. While I’m far from being the first person to stream stationery and journaling on Twitch, I wanted to share my experience of what it has been like for me and why I enjoy Twitch as a platform for sharing my love for all things analogue.
What Got Me Started
I first became interested in the idea of stationery streams on Twitch when April (@penguinscreative) interviewed Miranda (@havokrosewrites) on The Stationery Cafe podcast. If you’re curious and haven’t listened to the episode yet, please check it out here!
I had always thought of Twitch as a place for games only, so the idea of sharing your journaling process live while interacting with your audience piqued my interest. Although other platforms like Instagram and YouTube offer the ability to go live, the idea of fun exclusive emotes and bits (i.e. Twitch currency that you can purchase with real money) was new to me. Having to figure out the setup intimidated me at first, but the helpful document that Miranda created as a follow-up to a stationery Twitch workshop on Zoom hosted by April, Miranda and Joy (@ohaijoy) really motivated me to experiment with OBS.
This picture shows my current setup! Well, without my phone, which is the main/desk camera, because I used my phone to take this picture.
One of the things I appreciated about that workshop was that all three ladies encouraged everyone to use what they had. For me, that meant a few tech gadgets I had alongside things that just had to make do:
Face camera: Existing webcam on the MacBook Pro, which is not ideal. But hey, it worked.
Desk camera: I paid for the OBS Camera app on my iPhone to connect it to OBS. Again, I could probably get nicer equipment here, but I wanted to use what I had.
Mic: I was gifted a Yeti Nano for Christmas two years ago when I was briefly contemplating the idea of making more videos and doing voiceovers. Although I’m still tweaking its settings to figure out a good audio balance, this mic has been a solid performer for me when I’m streaming.
So with those three things and some basic scenes set up in the OBS software (starting screen, streaming screen, be right back screen and ending screen), I dove right into my first stationery stream ever at the end of March.
My 1.5-month Twitch Experience
As of this blog post’s published date, I’ve been streaming stationery regularly on Twitch for about a month and a half. I can’t tell you how nervous I was before my first stream - my heart rate shot up, my hands were sweaty from anxiety (sorry if that’s gross, but it’s true), the whole thing. But once I started interacting with chat and began to really feel connected with my audience, the nervousness slowly began to dwindle over time.
It also took me a while to get used to a regular streaming schedule. As of right now, I stream for an average of 3-3.5 hours per week - once on Wednesday night, and once on Saturday morning. With a regular corporate job that I’m responsible for, this schedule was the most realistic one I could keep up with long-term, and so far I haven’t had too many issues with it. Something else I enjoy about the current schedule I have is that there are other folks who stream after me, so I can “raid” them (bring my viewers over to their stream automatically) to spread the sense of community even further. Feel free to take a look at The Stationery Brew team page on Twitch to find channels within the community who stream stationery on a regular basis.
One of the things I enjoy most about a platform like Twitch is that it defies my “everything must be 100% planned and executed to perfection” planner personality. While having this tendency works well for my day job as a project/program manager, it doesn’t translate well to things like making videos (“this one audio clip doesn’t sound good and I don’t like these 30 seconds in the video, so maybe I shouldn’t upload it anywhere”) or if I’m being honest, even updating this blog (“I don’t like how these photos came out” / “I don’t even know how to take photos for posts like these"). But the thing with Twitch is, once I’m live, it’s live, and there’s not much else I can do. If mistakes happen or things go wrong, thankfully the audience in the stationery community is very understanding, so I hit the BRB screen and sort things out before coming back to the stream. It feels like a safe environment to experiment with different types of content thanks to the kind audience I have, so I feel like I can let go a little and not have the entire stream planned to a tee.
Now, I’m obviously a beginner here and my audience is small. I don’t ever plan to make streaming into my main job, let alone rely on it for any kind of steady income - if I get something out of it monetarily, that’s just icing on the cake, but I would like to keep sharing content in this way regardless of what happens with that. It’s hard not to look at or care about numbers as part of human nature, but I’ve been trying not to pay too much attention to that aspect of it, because I feel like that changes my intention of why I started streaming in the first place - live interactions with the people who love stationery as much as I do.
Things I’ve Learned
In my short Twitch stream experience so far, there are some valuable lessons I’ve learned about my own tendencies and what makes me happiest. After all, if I’m not enjoying it, the audience can feel it, too.
I enjoy sharing my everyday/regular journaling - so far I think these types of “journal with me” streams are my favorite kinds to do. The way I see it, I’m sharing a genuine part of my week, which is journaling in my weekly spreads. I feel noticeably less nervous when I do streams like these because the journaling part is so ingrained into my routine already.
I’m getting used to maintaining a consistent speaking volume. On some streams, I do a good job of maintaining my energy level consistently. On other streams, I feel wiped after chatting for an hour and a half because I’ve been talking too loudly and my voice gets hoarse.
I’m also learning to be okay with silence - whether it’s my own, or the chat. I want to create a chill environment where people can drop in and out of the stream as they please, and they can journal alongside me. This means the chat won’t always be active because people are going about their own lives while tuning in! I don’t have to fill this silence by talking continuously or feeling forced to create commentary. I can take a minute to write in my journals or focus on decorating for a while without saying anything.
All in all, I’ve had a great time so far sharing journaling content on Twitch. If you’re ever wondering about starting your own, please do! Maybe one day we can finally have our own ‘stationery’ category on Twitch (wouldn’t that be a dream?). I’m still very much learning things myself - I adjusted the mic setting to block out unnecessary background noise (e.g. laptop fans, outside noises) only about two weeks ago - but it’s fun to play around with a new software and put my journaling journey out in the open in an honest way.
If you’re ever curious about what I’m like on Twitch, you can head on over to my channel and check out some VODs (video-on-demand, or basically recordings of past Twitch broadcasts). I hope it’s a nice way for you to unwind as you scribble in a journal yourself!
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