You could be forgiven if you thought this moment had already occurred. Since the week of thanksgiving my streaming schedule has been wildly inconsistent with some rather large gaps, mostly due to back-to-back-to-back deadlines at work where we were staying late pushing for important releases. Even regardless of the crunch, exhaustion and burnout have been an inevitability ever since I went back to work and tried to maintain my weeknight streams. I just can't sustain it anymore, y'all.

If managing time & energy were my only dilemma then I could probably wrap this post up now and all would be understood. "Hey we're just taking a vacation to recharge our batteries. We'll be back in no time!" But this only touches the most urgent and obvious concerns I have. For months now I haven't been satisfied with the state of the stream, and the essential purpose of this break will be to address the root causes of that discontentment. What are those exactly? Well, strap in folks. This will probably be a lot.

I occasionally get asked "What made you want to start streaming?" My honest answer to that question is as good an introduction to this retrospective as I'm going to find.

I'm not here to maximize (or even focus on) growth and engagement. I don't have ambitions of being a pro gamer or finding recognition for mechanical skill. I'm endlessly appreciative and grateful for the community that has built up around me (more on this later), but I'm also an intensely introverted person and forming new social connections isn't a primary motivation of mine. So why am I expending so much time and energy on something seemingly so at odds with my interests and personality?

For a silly side project with a coworker, I was experimenting with the idea of intractable effects/widgets running in a Unity application being captured and overlayed on top of live video. I had a successful implementation of this idea but it had some non-trivial limitations. After investigating some work-arounds for those caveats I realized the better option might be to **just embed the live video into Unity directly**...and with that thought my world exploded.

I instantly thought of streaming. My mind overflowed with the possible applications of a fully responsive and interactive environment that wrapped around real-time video with a live audience. The idea was interesting in it's own right as a creative outlet, but the fact that I couldn't think of a single major streamer with tech in this space was a force multiplier to my excitement. The realization of that potential, that vision, is the total and comprehensive impetus for my time as a streamer.

The depth and breadth of that potential is so unreachably massive that it will always dwarf whatever implementation I've actually realized, but that doesn't diminish my feeling that my current offering is still just a parody of what it should be. I'm struck by a line from the *very recent* season finale of an acclaimed HBO series: "...considering what he could do...he could've done more." As it stands the stream certainly has some flash and some production, but ultimately it's still just an imitation of the status-quo with some fun decorations.

Correcting this is the *real* reason I need some time. Between the moment I had my epiphany and my first time hitting "Go Live!" I had months to prepare the software. Afterwards my focus abruptly shifted from developing to actually playing with the toys I had created. I've had *so much* fun and I've learned more than I ever expected, but it's long passed due to focus on creating again and deliver something y'all have never seen before.

One thing that must be stressed in all of this: I am immensely thankful and consistently in awe at the level of support and kindness shown to me by the community of viewers, streamers, and folks I would consider friends that have been part of this journey with me. Fear of letting you down or appearing to abandon you is the greatest source of stress and anxiety coming from this decision. Rest assured, all of the support leading up to this point is still feeding back into the stream to make it better and more ridiculous. Regardless, If anyone feels cheated by this news I am more than willing to refund bits/subs/whatever.

For the immediate future, streams won't cease entirely but will be sparse and spontaneous. They will also likely have a different flavor; focusing on testing and/or showcasing some of the new stuff I'll be working on. I intend to post more development snippets and sneak peaks during this time as well.

For those, and all other stream related updates or announcements, look to to my discord channel or twitter!

There is definitely a melancholy element to this departure, but folks, I'm honestly beaming with excitement about what's in store! Time to get to work.

Curtis