G'day everyone, happy weekend! Can't believe it's already late July, this year been bloody mental! π΅ I've been working real hard lately getting back into the grind and there have also been some important things happen in my personal life I wanna discuss. But first off, let's talk Hawktober!
Those of you on the retired Behind the Scenes reward tier, please check your direct messages for important information!
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Current Hawktober Plans) So as you can see by the GIF at the top of this post, we're doing things a bit differently this year. I'm gonna be covering all of the EA Skate games for a single week in September and calling it 'Skatember' because I'm a stupid idiot and at this point, Hawktober is just an annual reason for me to bulk overwork myself in order to get a boost in the analytics ahahaa! π Seriously though, Skate is something people have wanted me to talk about for a long time now, I didn't really know how it would be best to approach it but I've been feeling like revisiting the games the past month so I thought fuck it, let's just do it!
So far I'm planning for 6 videos which is the golden number for Hawktober week special. The current lineup is:
- Skate (already played, script completed)
- Skate IT Wii & DS (Wii is all done, waiting on the DS ver. to arrive)
- Skate 2
- Skate 3
- Skater XL (never played)
- Session: Skate Sim (also never played)
I wanna really deep dive and focus on the alternative style of the skate simulation games and coming off of Thrasher: Skate and Destroy in 2022, that video did really well. I'm interested to get into some different stuff and finally round out the other half of the coin with this genre.
Right now I'm quite focused on getting through the games one at a time, working on scripts as I go so that everything is fresh. Not planning to do anything crazy with the photography or anything, just keeping it simple and chill because I also have something else planned for October which I will not reveal until it's ready! So yeah... Jak is working hard at the moment.
Other Content Plans) In the meantime, I've got two more episodes that are ready to be filmed. These are on the Toy Story games: original on SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis and Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue on PS1. I started working on these back in late May and have simply been too busy with travel and Crash Team Rumble to work on. The hope is that I'll get those filmed within the next week and ready to go up through August. I also want to do a big finale game testing episode, no idea when that's gonna happen though as reviews are the priorty.
Once I'm through the majority of the skateboarding games, I plan to try and do some live streaming a little more regularly both testing games and playing through others just for fun! π
Personal Life Stuff) To be completely honest, life has always been kinda rocky as those of you who've been around the past few years will know. It's mostly a mental health thing but I'm in a better place currently. Taking a few BIG steps into improving the overall quality of my life the past few months and I'm starting to feel the pay-off within myself.
- Speaking with psychologists; not a new thing for me but I'm at the point where I'm tackling some of the bigger things related to trauma and functioning with my conditions (autism, ocd, depression etc.)
- I'm finally getting support at home. In Australia, I'm eligible for disability support which means someone comes now once a week to help clean, take me to places I can't get on my own and mostly just to build a structure.
I haven't had regularly weekly routine since maybe... 2019? And as a result the channel has suffered numerous times. I'm a very routine based creature so now I'm really excited to get that part of my life back on track, even if it is just one day per week. I can plan the rest of what I'm doing around it.
- Finally... I'm going to the gym regularly!
This has been a big one for me for a while now. It's just the commitment and initiation of it I've struggled with. Never been an active person but I'm at the age of 27 now where I'm looking forward to how life might be down the track and just wanna make sure I'm trying to be healthy. I've got bad eating habits, that's one thing. But now thanks to having a support worker, they'll ensure I go to the gym every single week as I get started so that there is no more hiding from it. Starting slow with it at the moment but I've got a membership, I want to drop some weight and improve my heart and muscles a bit. Once my body and mind is tuned into the routine of it all, I plan on going multiple times per week for more targeted exercises.
So yeah... that's me at the moment! I'm tired, motivation is lacking in some other areas but I am really happy to be more focused than I have been on getting YouTube work done, but also working on myself and ensuring I'm living the life I want to live. Which means I'm gonna be unstoppable in the future, gearing up for 200 episodes early in 2024 so fucking hell... a man needs to be in a good state of mind for that!
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Closing Thoughts) That's pretty much everything for this months update everyone. I'm happy with the very first Exclusive video for the update reward tiers, was a lot of fun and I'm stoked to have a lot of ideas and plans for those in the future. My goal is with a combination of strong content and having my routine back, we'll be able to start building this thing up some more and taking the channel to the next level by this time next year.
But until next time you hear from me, I hope you all have a great fucking day and thanks so much for reading. New videos coming real soon, cheers! π