Streaming Set-Up

 I just wanted to take a minute and write down some of the items I'm using for streaming and gaming

All these links are my personal Amazon Associate links to the products I use for streaming. These are for Amazon.com, if you would like to purchase from Amazon.ca, please write in the comments.

Camera: https://amzn.to/3cgPa4A
Mic: https://amzn.to/3vSNtlH
Ring light: https://amzn.to/3wWUguG
Headset: https://amzn.to/3icygrL
Controller: https://amzn.to/3wWUq5g

Streaming, streamer, streams, twitch streams, twitch streamer, twitch

How To Link & Use Your Amazon Prime on Twitch (Mobile)

 Here I show you how to link your Amazon Prime and Prime Gaming to activate your prime benefits and get FREE gaming loot and 1 FREE subscription to your favourite streamer on Twitch using your Mobile!

If you didn't know, Amazon owns Twitch and it's called Prime Gaming, just like their other prime services (like Prime Video, Prime Books, Prime Music etc.). In this case Prime Gaming is actually included in with Amazon Prime's shipping and Prime Video so you don't pay any extra for this feature and now you can sub to your favourite streamer at no extra cost!

Watch my quick video to find out how!

How Gaming Helped Me

TRIGGER WARNINGS (mentions)

• Suicide
• Depression
• Abuse

I have mental health problems. Most anyone who reads this would already know that. If you're new, I'll let you know: I have Anxiety, Chronic Depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have lived with these things for most of my life. I've know about them for only half of my life.

I moved out of my family home at 17 years old due to mental and physical abuse. During the year that followed, I did attempt to take my own life. I thankfully had someone in my life that I give much credit for saving my life. She talked me down, she treated me with love, she made me feel safe. It was years later that I was finally diagnosed and started my (slow) journey to getting better.

At 18, I met someone who I thought was my soulmate and we had twin girls just before my 19th birthday. Sometime in this period of my life where I was a stay at home parent of twin littles, we got an Xbox and a couple of games. While I had played a few shooter games in the computer lab during lunch hours at high school before, never had I got really into it as much as I did at this point. I started playing Gears of War and Ghost Recon.

When we upgraded to our Xbox 360 we got a copy of Call of Duty 3 with it and that's what really started me on playing that franchise. My mental health deteriorated and I turned to video games to escape from my every day life. Eventually I became so depressed I didn't even play games. My relationship ended and I began the journey of single parenting.

Now we know that winter months can be especially hard on people with mental health problems such as depression. I started taking up gardening in the summer, getting a social life and a new relationship and building a 90s tuner car. During the winter I would spend my down time playing Call of Duty and eventually got myself the Xbox One.

These last few paragraphs spanned the better part of, or even more than, a decade of my life. I have met some really great people while playing these games. Some of which I still speak to, some 10 or 15 years later after beginning our friendship. Some of which I have been lucky enough to meet in person event! The entire experience has been such a big part of my life I cannot think of what my life would be without these people, playing these games.

Gaming has helped me escape from my life when I needed to. Gaming has helped me talk to people when I would otherwise have not. Gaming has helped me pass the time when I had nothing to do/nobody to talk to. Gaming has been a community of friends that I know I'll always have. Gaming has provided me with a distraction from being inside my own head when I really needed it. Gaming has given me friends I would have never met otherwise, friends that I truly cherish.

Adventures In Streaming

By now it should be common knowledge that I've been live streaming gaming content on Twitch, Youtube and Facebook. This has been such an adventure for me. An adventure that I didn't know if I would be able to make something of or not. I still don't know if I can, but I'm trying and that's alright, you know?

I know a lot of people who are doing this use the money to pay their bills, which is totally cool. While I may not be there yet, I do earn a little bit and as that money is not part of my monthly budget, I had been saving it and using it on upgrades for a better viewing experience.

I purchased a prebuilt PC from Best Buy on Black Friday. That was the biggest purchase. I saved all my tips, bits and payouts from the moment I got my first payment from Twitch. I saved them up for that, and I just purchased some new ram for said PC with my most recent payout. While I know this PC isn't the best, what I was working with before was just too underpowered for what I was trying to do with it so I really needed to get something that would produce what people are accustomed to seeing on stream.

The last thing I did with the remainder of the money I have earned streaming, was that I paid a close friend who has been doing graphic work, to make up an intro that I'd been visualizing. With that intro I made a new channel trailer that can be seen on twitch and facebook.

I have spent the better part of a year trying this "streaming" thing out, and you know what? It's alright, I'm having fun, making new friends and learning new things! I wouldn't call myself and artist but I have learned a lot about graphics and video editing. I'm learning about branding and marketing too. Many skills I have learned along the way are skills that can and probably will help me with so many other adventures, should I choose those paths.

I'm going to keep at it and see where it takes me :-)

Long Time No Blog

 I've been a busy little bee lately. It's been quite the year! You'd think with all my time at home I'd have time to write but honestly, there hasn't been a whole lot to write about.

I mean, sure, I started live streaming gaming and creative content, but it's actually consumed me so much it's really hard to think about anything else at the moment. You know when you discover something new and you just can't get enough of it. You just want to learn more and watch videos and talk about it all the time and all you friends and family are just like SHUT UP ALREADY lol

So yeah, I've been busy, to put it  lightly. I still work, but on my spare time I'm streaming. Or, learning something new related to streaming. Or promoting my stream. Or networking. Or creating content in other ways. There's a lot to do, and hopefully, one day, it will all pay off right?

This year has been funny. I don't mean funny in the "ha-ha" sense, but more like it's been an odd one for sure. Never in our lifetime have we dealt with anything of this manner. It will be affecting not just our generation but many future generations as well. This will be in history books and kids will learn about it all in school. We will all get to an age where "the kids nowadays will never know..." and they wont. We'll be blown away with the fact that there are people alive that didn't live it and will never truly understand.

This post is in NO way meant to be controversial. Regardless of if you think what is going on in the world today is real, or fake or made up or whatever... It's still happening and it's still affecting us, no matter what "side" you're on. Don't make this more than it is. I don't want any discussions, debates or opinions on this, that is NOT what this is intended to invoke. The intention of this is to simply express my observation of how crazy this last year has been, and how it is and will affect the future. I also just wanted to write something in relation to my very busy status.

If you don't understand these facts and can't grasp what I'm saying at all, then please, just move along without commenting. If you do comment giving opinions on weather or not what's going on is WHATEVER, it will be deleted. 

Have a good day. Thanks for reading.

Lets Talk About Depression

Anniversary

12 years ago today, I was diagnosed with PTSD and Chronic Depression. After this diagnosis, I learned a lot of things about mental health. I am still learning. For a long time I was working on my depression, not really understanding the PTSD. It doesn't go away if you ignore it. Depression doesn't cause PTSD, it's the other way 'round. Today I take this time to write just a little bit of what it's like to have PTSD and help people understand a little bit. 

 You think of PTSD and you often think of soldiers but you don't think of everyday people who've suffered severe trauma in their lives. Enough trauma to have lasting, long term, life changing effects. Keep reading if you want to learn more. 

 PTSD can stay with you for the rest of your life, and that doesn't mean reliving the trauma that caused it. That means your brain decides what's traumatic and what's not. Even when something isn't traumatic, your brain and body can react as if it is. It's confusing for the person when you didn't think that thing was traumatic at all. It can change things that have happened, INTO traumatic "memories" (my best way to describe it) that you can relive in flashbacks of things that didn't even happen. Or have flashbacks of things and feel the symptoms of PTSD over something that didn't seem traumatic and you think "wtf brain?" 

 Anyone who knows me: Ever wonder why I'm so forgetful? Perhaps it makes sense now. Did you know that if you have suffered enough trauma in your life, your brain will just start blocking things out that *might* be traumatic to try to help? Your brain tries to protect you the best way it knows how, but when you have PTSD, your brain turns sort of, over protective. 

I hope this helps even 1 person understand that people with PTSD aren't always soldiers and that PTSD doesn't just go away over time. I personally was trying some cognitive therapy before covid but I am now just getting back into it and it sucks to feel like your starting all over but I NEED this. 

 Sorry for the long read, but if you made it this far: THANK YOU! I appreciate you taking the time to read this and I am here if you have any PTSD related questions.