What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to?

There are two things that I have wished I could do for a living. Streaming full-time, or becoming a full-time writer putting out books for the rest of my life.

Some people look at streamers, particularly the most popular ones that make a lot of money every year, and think “all they’re doing is playing games all day, that’s easy, I could do that!” I was one of those people at first but before I jumped in to try my hand at it, I made sure to connect with smaller streamers (some of them I’m still friends with even after I stopped streaming) because then I could get better interactions and responses to understand what they were doing. I could see the toll it takes on some of them (when they publicly shared that information) and saw the way their faces could light up with a shot of instant gratification when someone would donate/tip or subscribe. The things I’ve learned along the way tell me that if I really wanted to do it, I would have to put in so much more effort than I could muster to try and build everything up, from the equipment to the audience, just to even be able to take the risk of quitting my job and making that leap. So for now, that’s a back burner hobby that I don’t do very often anymore.

So the other option is writing for a living. By comparison, this one is much easier to accomplish long term because it would be less taxing mentally and emotionally. Where streaming would require tons of “on” time for being engaging, writing can be done at my own pace and will have sporadic levels of engagement with other people. That being said, writing DOES cone with its own problems. It’s a much more “solo” enterprise if you consider that when you write you’re doing it by yourself. You’re in your own head, typically without interacting with others. Streaming is kind of the opposite because your head and mind are in a different place, and you have constant interaction with tons of people who are all yelling (typing) to be heard and seen, cheering for your wins and laughing at your digital hardships. With writing you sometimes have to be your own cheerleader. Nobody will laugh or jeer in real time to the things you’re doing. Which is okay! Aside from all of that, the risk with writing is that you can put in so much effort and not see any sort of return for years, if at all, while trying the different publishing routes. I wouldn’t be able to quit my job to shift to writing full-time unless I had landed a publishing deal. Which I obviously don’t have at this time, but maybe someday!