Mostly "no thoughts head empty" but also, family is over for family night, massively distracting, and my head is just...

...I've had thoughts but I don't know any of them right now, not really.

I had a thought right now that I might get around to, but let's review today accomplishment-wise. We did a fair amount of progress on art. We did a youtube upload of a vod and scheduled some extra ones. (Not the amount we wanted to tho. We wanted to schedule a full week.)

So like, given that this is a short day for us, that's pretty good, to be honest. It's not as much as we want, we didn't get to watch the latest paranormal detour video outside the premiere (we watched the entirety of the premiere live, but because it was live, we missed a few details here and there that we need to watch the video to catch), we didn't finish the collar on our drawing, 

But we're happy with the day overall.

It's a good day. Not great. But good.

I did have a thought earlier tho, that I feel I should express.

"You will be alone, you will be by yourself, you will not have another, you will not obtain fame, you will not obtain fortune, none of those things are in your future--and you need to be okay with that."

Not exactly the wording used, but it was not a negative. The message was more like. A prevention of the negative. A need for acceptance. A need for acknowledging the bad in us, but also, that the dreams we have are just dreams, that realistically speaking, we won't obtain them and we need to be okay with not having obtained them.

​I got the vibe it wasn't a doomsaying of "don't try". That it wasn't saying to give up altogether. But more like, that I need to be okay when trying doesn't amount to much. There's nothing wrong with the failure. I will never obtain those things, and need to be okay with that, but not trying to obtain them would still be a mistake, if that makes sense?

I suppose my go-to way to describe it would be the ending of Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher. (Note: we received an on-the-nose tarot/oracle as typing this which was genuinely the "embrace the flow of life" card, so like: it was genuinely 100% on the nose reaffirming we're right here. But, I digress.)
Basically at the end of that game, it more or less says, "there is no definition of morality, but the search for one is still worth pursuing", essentially. (Need to replay the game to remember it more specifically.)

In this context, it's the same basic idea.
No, I'm not going to get any of the things that I want.
But I need to be okay with that.
And then still try for them anyway.
Because the attempt to do so is something worth living for.

I'm not sure if I'm wording that well. I have the concept in my head and I know the concept in my head is right, but finding the words for it isn't easy. It's a message of acceptance and being okay, of being realistic but also idealistic. (Just got another tarot/oracle card reading confirming that I am on the right track, dealing with effectively: "do it anyway".)

Basically: I need to not expect to succeed. I need to not think I will. I need to know that I likely will fail, and be okay with it. To have peace with the failure, acceptance of it. The realism part of that. But that I should remain idealistic. Not get delusions of success, but rather, my idealism is more in keeping to try in spite of knowing there will be a high chance of failure.

If I don't try at all, success is a guaranteed 0%. But I need to be okay with knowing that my dreams of success aren't going to magically manifest. They need work and even with that work they almost definitely won't work out. It's a reading that is telling me that I need to keep going, but with an acceptance of myself.

​I am flawed. I am going to not succeed. I have issues. I won't manage to amount to much of anything. And this is okay. This is acceptable. I know what I am doing is right. I know that my mindset is headed in the right direction. I need to remember this, moving forward. What I wrote today. Because it's so easy to cave in.
​It's easy to get lost in the delusions of the future, which makes actually manifesting the future nearly impossible, as well as increasing disappointment when it doesn't. It's easy to get lost in despair of having not accomplished things and feeling like you never will. It's so easy to become lost and get overwhelmed by the pain.

I need to remember what I had revealed to me tonight. It's a lesson I've taught myself before, but I couldn't hold onto it. I need to have it stick this time. A shift in mindset and approach that sticks. I am okay with living the life of mediocrity and loneliness.

Well, no. Not really. I'm not okay with it, but I am okay with it, and need to be okay with it.

Emotionally, I am not okay with it. How could I not feel the pain of isolation and loneliness? How could I not feel crushed by my own failures to manifest my dreams? The emotional sting of knowing I am the only one to blame for my shortcomings is one that I can't freely discard. Emotions are emotions, feelings are not things that you can rationally discard.

In that sense, I am not okay with it.

But rationally, I am, and I need to keep that mindstate. To calm my emotions. To reassure my emotions that it's okay. I'm okay. And I am. I am okay with being on my own. I am okay with my ideas dieing with me. I am okay with never having the company of others in a more direct way. I am okay with never achieving my dreams of being a teacher, a mother, an influencer, a writer, a content creator. Those are things I am unlikely to ever obtain, and I need to be okay with this.

And, largely, I am. I just need to remember that I am, and that I'm okay. I'm no great beacon. I need to be okay with being who I am. Now, I do need to take caution. I should not fall into apathy. I should not be careless. I should not be reckless. If I am too okay with who I am, I'll end up progressively becoming a worse and worse person. Some checks/balances are needed in order to ensure that I don't become despicable without having noticed.

It's easy to lose sight of important things, so I can't forget who I am. Which is why I need to strive to be better. I need to keep doing what I do, in the aim for being better. To keep doing what I do, in the hopes of achieving what I want to. Keep doing what I do, in order to strive for the dream. But to be able to accept I won't reach the ideal.

Betterment is a process where I may never get any better. I may end up exactly the way I am now, and I need to accept that, and be okay with that. That 20 years from now I may be precisely where I am right now. Alone and without having succeeded. But I should still try anyway, because the trying helps stop me from being worse.

I need to accept who I am, and accept who I become, and accept I won't be who I want to be. But still try to be who I want to be.

I hope that makes sense. It's not a bad thing. I'd say it's actually a good thing.
​I just need to hold onto it.

We had constant internet woes with unending issues there, and then our staff meeting at work was moved to be two hours earlier, and we have family night tonight, which is always hard on us, so like. Today is not a good time.

I guess there is something we do want to do tho; we figured we might as well plug something.

We were going to catch this live, seeing the entire premiere, but see above for why we didn't.

​To make up for it, here's a link to it.

We'll have to see if I can figure out how to embed videos in my wix mirror to the blog. (As a reminder, my main blog is on weebly, the mirror is wix, I'm updating both to not put all eggs in one basket and create a backup.)

On weebly, to create the embedded youtube video, I have to do text-YT-text.
But on wix, I've not done it yet so this will be an experience.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of Jordan (aka detune) DiSorbo's content, especially the Paranormal Detours, and have been waiting for the video to release, and today, it finally released the highlight video of the first one at the Bellair House.

Family is all gone, so I'm home alone. Is good for freedom and stuff, but we're not taking advantage of it. We're just kinda chilling like normal.

But we are trying to do things.

We're trying to just.

Find more of ourselves.

We know there's more.
What we know of ourselves is fine. We could live our lives as we are and it would be good.

​But we know that we've only scratched the surface and we feel like we can do so so so much more and better and just, know more about us.

It's out our Meism.

Our personal belief.

Name pending research on whether we can use it, since we inevitably won't be able to.

It's a pun on Deism, and how in our belief system, there's a strong focus on the self.

Anyway.

We really want to make it.

But we know ourselves.

We never will.

We wish we would.

But we know better.

Since we'll never get to make a blog explaining our beliefs, which we call Meism, you should still get our cliff notes version.

Keep in mind:
These are cliff notes.
These are works in progress.
These are incomplete.
These are not finalized.
These are ever-changing, ever-expanding.

And even with the beliefs set in stone, these are not meant as explanations of them; these are meant as notes so that we can explain our beliefs in a future blog.

The blog we doubt we'll ever make.

Since we probably never make said blog tho, take them since notes are better than the beliefs never manifesting in our reality at all.

MEISM NOTES:
(INCOMPLETE)

REALMS:
Mind/Thought (Headspace)
Dream
Astral
Spiritual 
Spirit
"Heaven"
Eldritch Hell
Demon Hell
Damned Hell
(Maybe more)
(Record of all thought and Perception / Akashik)

SATANS: (each can offer deals)
Lucifer, the Lightbringer, Fallen Angel, The Fallen (benevolent deals, tests of faith)
First Evil, Corruptor (very bad)
Satan of Satanism (research needed)
Eldritch Horror (not to be trifled with)
Lord of the Damned, King of Hell (services)

GOD:
(Heaven)
All combo's I've thought of, with:
Omnipotent, Omnipresent, All-Loving, All-Understanding
(Focus, Multiverse, etc.)

Heaven: 
How it's both God, and yet, every individual, connected to all that ever was, all that ever will be, maybe all that ever COULD be, networked to _everything_

POWERS:
Occult, Witch, Spiritual, Religion, Perception, Belief, maybe more 

ENTITIES:
True Demons 4+ (Eldritch, Corruptor Evil, Fallen Angel, Malevolent Ghost/Spirit/etc.)
False Demons ??? 
Fae
Spirits
Angels
Guides
Ghosts 
gods 
(Definitely more)


MULTIVERSE THEORY/CORE BELIEFS: 
Everything that you do, matters.
Strive to create the best worlds, so that as many "trees" have good roots as possible. 
While infinite numbers of worlds exist, many trees can merge, and there are far fewer trees in the infinite than we think as a result;
Some worlds are more probable than others, so Strive for the best
Some worlds don't actually exist in spite of their theoretical ability to;
Worlds perceived are more real;
Some worlds are only visible in other plains

REINCARNATION: 
Separation of Heaven, Soul, Spirit, Mind, Body
(Soul: every incarnation, Spirit: specific incarnation, Body: Vessel, Mind: Medium between realms, Heaven: connection to all life)

FATE/DESTINY:
One immutable, the other changeable. 
What WILL happen in YOUR brach,
Versus what COULD happen in your future, and the most LIKELY braches.

Can be assigned either way, but keep it consistent, with one always correlating to one term, and the other always correlating to the other; they aren't synonymous.

​Belief matters;
Reality bubbles (spark of the divine/connection to heaven), influence on manifesting current world and reality;
More effective on self and immediate surroundings, less effective on others and across distances

I legit just forgot to make one until now for the last couple of days.

A lot of stuff has been happening. Breakthroughs in my plurality, realizations about my spirituality, and also game grinding. But unfortunately, I am trying to plan things smartly so I need to go to bed now in order to get to where I intend to be.

Still been in a pretty trash mental state and also been somewhat consumed by what amounts to, to dangerous degrees of neglect in other areas of my life, an obsession with completing a story I found to read online, Everybody Loves Large Chests.

I've wanted to make a blog entry there, but have been too tired, too preoccupied, too exhausted, too distracted, too forgetful, and so on and so forth and just haven't. But, to put a long story short: I picked up the story approximately 3 weeks ago. I believe it was 3 weeks ago's Friday, making it 22 days ago, approximately at the very end of July.

In that time, I've gone from the very beginning to closing in towards the end of the story. I've read what has to have been 3-5 years' worth of content, in 3 works. In a story that I believe updated very frequently, nearly daily, for a long long time, with each update containing literally hundreds of words. Hundreds of words, almost every day, over 3-5 years, and I've gotten through all of that.

I still want to blog more about that story, but that isn't why I actually came to my blog to make a blog post, believe it or not. (Come to think of it, did I actually make a blog mentioning ELLC before? From that story I got a perfect reference image for Elemental Ruby and I know I wanted to make a blog about it, but I may have neglected it and left it as just something on twitter. OOPS. Ah well.)

​What I actually came here to blog about is something else that I've wanted to blog about for quite some time, but never really had a good chance to do so. Well, having a breakthrough there thanks to the recent part of the story I'm reading which got me in a philosophical mood where I was really pondering some deep questions I actually made some progress there.

And the subject at hand?

Religion.

​I do not follow any faith. I am not too terribly religious at all, in fact. While I respect people's beliefs, deep down the vast majority of them I cannot find myself actually truly believing. But while I don't follow their beliefs, their beliefs can and have inspired my own beliefs.

I am a deeply spiritual person. I am also fascinated with "witchy" stuff, as it were, which is why I always enjoy watching a Witch doing twitch streams (originally every Wednesday but now three times a week, even!). 

I've wanted to do a blog detailing my, continuously evolving, beliefs, especially since certain aspects of my belief system I know I could forget and need to rediscover later. I even considered writing a "Book of Meism" at some point, being a Biblesque piece of literature (well, probably closer actually to Dante's Divine Comedy in that it had a couple of main viewpoint characters on a journey through the universe and it was through the lens of the guide and the main character that my beliefs and viewpoints would be shared, and the final punchline at the end of the book would be a summary of some of the most important aspects of my Meism beliefs).

​Unfortunately me being me, I never actually did most of this so a lot of my beliefs have regressed, where I lost important spiritual discoveries that I had worked hard to develop, but at the same time, other aspects of me have progressed, where in some senses there was a draw and discard aspect of my beliefs. Drawing in new things that got added into my beliefs, but losing core aspects of my beliefs, not out of them becoming obsolete or being replaced, but simply due to having forgotten what should not have been forgotten, where I am lesser because of the loss, but it's not all bad because I'm also greater due to the gain.

My meism draws a lot from various sources. It actually has a fair amount of scientific viewpoints mixed in with various religious beliefs and also concepts that I fully believe in such as various forms of Systems and also dreamscapes but also involves spiritual realms and entities and a fair amount of what may be called "woo-woo  stuff".

​I've lost the details I put into pioneering this theory, but one thing that I had a belief in and still do I just forget how it works is a tie between the realm of dreams and imagination and a spiritual realm, how the two in spite of working completely differently can accomplish much the same end result because they are not entirely separate, they are linked.

I believe that there are spirits, guides, entities, angels, ghosts, and whathaveyou, although I've lost the details in how I tied them into the above, our world, and more.

I believe in a form of life after death, and it is actually from this that a lot of my core beliefs are derived from, from this form of life after death, it literally ties somehow into almost everything in some way shape or form although in most cases I've forgotten how. (Again, consequence of not writing down breakthroughs in my belief system.)

And I'll talk a bit about this form of life after death because it's vaguely tied to the breakthrough I had Thursday Night as I was going to bed (so like, technically speaking 7 am on Friday morning but I still call that Thursday Night).

Basically, a belief I've had for quite some time is that any entity capable of 2/3 of these is worthy of being called God with a capital G:
-Omnipotence, being All-Powerful, able to rewrite the rules of reality and/or outright break them, in being able to mold, shape, create, etc. the Universe and even Multiverse as they will;
-Omniscience, being All-Knowing, able to see not only into the current universe but to see into EVERY universe, past, present, and future, seeing all of the infinite branches expanding out endlessly;
-All-Loving, being able to empathize with humanity, loving them, cherishing them, wishing humanity the best, always trying to help them, always trying to do the right thing for them, always trying to guide them, because they don't want harm to come to them.

But a long-standing question of mine has been. Any entity with 2/3 of those could qualify for being God with a capital G, sure, but...how could our world exist as it does with an entity, a being, that is truly 3/3 of them? 

For the longest time, I had only one possible answer/solution to this, but on Thursday I developed not one, but TWO possible breakthroughs. Note that, by and large, most of these are not mutually exclusive. You can have a God that is 2/3 and a different God that is a different 2/3 and you can have a God that is 3/3 and theoretically, all three Gods with a capital G could exist--all of them worthy for being called God with a capital G but not truly being the 'one true God' as we tend to think of God with a capital G as. We tend to think of capital-G God as singular, as in, if you pray to God, then God is the highest form, the ultimate (and sometimes only) divine being, singular.

After all, if there were multiple Gods with a capital G, 1: wouldn't they be gods with a lowercase g, and 2: who would your prayer to God with a capital G be to? Every thank, every wish, every prayer, if there's multiple Gods with a capital G surely there would be some sort of conflict in who you are praying to, right?

Not to me. I'm not sure that there's three Gods with a capital G, but I do believe in at least two. One much much much stronger and more fundamental than the rest as that God is directly tied to my belief in life after death considering that God basically IS the life after death. (Not quite, it's more complicated than that. God and Heaven at not entirely one and the same entity, but they are linked together.) That God is omniscient and all-loving because it is literally made out of all of us and vice-versa, with us shaping that God and that God guiding us but sadly is not omnipotent.

That God I strongly of strongest beliefs in is able to subtly guide us, through various forms of connections that I don't remember the link to, in the spirits, angels, entities, guides, whathaveyou, to subtly try and direct us down the better paths we can live but cannot rewrite the rules of reality, merely subtly guide them. Small miracles that are not impossible but are freak occurrences for the better, and helping hands to try and give us help.

It's a two-way street as well, because one of the core aspects of my Meism is that we have an influence on our reality. Reality is slightly shaped, and molded, by us. I don't mean just through physical actions, I also mean through perceptions, beliefs, etc. Our minds, quite literally, make it real, to some extent. Not to the ludicrous examples shown in media where we think, therefore it is, not to our beliefs singlehandedly fueling gods or God, but still there in a form. Where we helped shape and mold the universe as we know it, as part of God. Not to the point of God being omnipotent, mind you.

(Again, sad to say, the details of how this process works have been lost. I thought them up, I had them, but I've since forgotten how the exact process works. I lost so much that I don't even truly remember why I gave my belief system the name Meism but I know that name was not chosen arbitrarily, that it was actually tied to this 'we shape the world' and connection to the God that is connected to the afterlife/heaven/it goes by many other names which is the all-loving all-knowing not all-powerful entity.)

​This was a big part of my only answer to the trifecta for a capital-G God. I believe in a God that is 2/3 for sure, but beyond that, I've been less certain. I don't know if there is a God that is all-powerful and all-knowing who happens to not be all-loving, but if such a God exists, they would have a thought process utterly alien to any human, with humanity utterly incapable of comprehending that God's thoughts, and vice-versa, too, with that God unable to truly comprehend humanity.

It's definitely possible that God exists, but I'm not sure.

Still, though, that's what I was getting at. ELLC made me revisit the subject of the trifecta for a capital G. The first and for a longest time only solution was that there couldn't be a God that was all three, that we could have one or two Gods (theoretically three I guess but I don't imagine an all-powerful God that was all-loving would be so blind to humanity even if they aren't all-knowing so I don't think that combo exists, it's the other two 2/3 combos which are plausible imo) that were 2/3, with the omniscient all-loving God definitely existing and the other all-powerful all-knowing God being possible but being more of a maybe rather than a definite.

​The breakthrough was in realizing there was not one, but two, possible ways for there to be a God that is actually still all three.

Neither of these ways is truly mutually exclusive with each other, and neither actually contradict my first belief. Neither of these I am sure about to the same extent I am sure about the God tied to the afterlife. (That is the only God that I am positive exists, but I continue to explore my faith for considering, thinking about, etc. the possibilities, plausibilities, probabilities, etc. of the other potential Gods with a capital G.)

The first idea I came up with, and the second overall solution to the trifecta for God issue, was simply a breakthrough in realizing the infinite nature of the multiverse.

What I mean by that is, if the multiverse is constantly branching out infinitely, who's to say that God hasn't done more? There could be realities where God has directly intervened, where God has directly influenced events, where God altered the rules of reality, either blatantly or more subtly.

...And that we just so happen to have the misfortune of being in a reality where God didn't​ do that. Think of it in the terms you often see time traveling to the past rationalized in fiction where it is not in fact a stable time loop:
The moment an individual travels in time, they are not traveling back in time to their own timeline, their very existence in the past automatically branches reality out in two. Their original timeline still exists, and the altered timeline from their presence also exists.

Now instead of a time traveler, imagine it being God intervening blatantly and overtly. The reality where God intervened blatantly and overtly exists, but the reality where God doesn't intervene blatantly and overtly doesn't magically disappear just due to God having made the intervention. That reality continues to exist.

Of course, God could delete the reality where God did not intervene (or vice-versa I guess)...but why would God do that? It'd be murdering, killing off, all of the individuals ever born in the reality God deletes. Yes, those individuals would still exist in different realities, but just because they'd be 99.9999999999999999% identical doesn't mean they are quite literally the same exact individual across reality.

Each individual in each individual reality is slightly different. Which makes each individual in each reality their own person. And if God is truly all-loving, then how could God decide to effectively kill off one version in favor of another? An all-loving God would love all of God's children, and each individual reality would have their own version of the individuals and God would thus love every single version of them.

​In other words; it's not that God can't intervene or God refuses to intervene. It's that God already can has and does, but we just so happen to live in a reality that these interventions are either minimalistic or nonexistent, and while better versions of us exist where God did more than what God has in our reality, God didn't have the heart to delete our lesser, so to speak, 'inferior' reality because we are still different people, even if we are less happy versions of people there are more happy versions of.

There will always be versions of us that are worse off than we are and there will always be versions of us that are better off than we are and given the infinite nature of the multiverse, they basically all exist. (Now, granted: infinite may not be truly infinite. There might actually be far fewer paths than we think, but I still believe the ever-expanding tree of the multiverse still has 'branches' so to speak, meaning it is our responsibility to try and live the best lives we can and to give the best lives to everyone else we can so that as many of these branches as possible are better. Just because the possibilities are endless doesn't mean some possibilities necessarily actually exist, so it is best to try and steer the possibilities towards the better ones, just in case.)

​If this is true, then it actually does solve things to me. A God that is all-loving, truly all-loving, cannot in good faith kill off individuals born into a less-fortunate branch of reality, in spite of having the power and knowledge to do so. Such a God could still make as many branches as possible be as good as they can be, but we just so happen to be in one of the less-fortunate ones. Not the least-fortunate I'd imagine but not the most-fortunate.

It would thus fall to us with our own influence on reality (see above in how the God that is tied to the afterlife works) to do everything in our power to shape it as much as we can to maximize the good and minimize the bad, because while God already does that, we live in a version of the reality where God didn't do that because God refused to delete our reality after having creating the maximized-good/minimized-bad path.

​The second breakthrough idea I had, the third solution to the divine trifecta of capital-G God being omnipotent omniscient and all-loving was surprisingly simple.

What if God Himself (used 'Him' here because the dominant religions in the world which believe in God with a capital G usually refer to God with male pronouns, have tried to avoid using it but can't think of a non-pronouned way to say this even though I don't believe that any God with a capital G could have a gender, as any God with a capital G would be an entity that is explicitly genderless) made the universe in order to more or less experiment with something?

For instance. If God existed before anything else, then the question is: how did God come to exist? If God was the first thing to exist, a being all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, could it be that God has in common being a bit philosophical in wondering things like how God existed? I realize it can seem paradoxical for an all-knowing God to not know how God came to exist, but in some weird way it actually makes sense to me that God may not know how God came to exist in spite of otherwise being all-knowing because there's a bit of a loop. If nothing existed before God and God was the first thing to exist, God needed to basically will God into existence but if God didn't exist then how did God will God into existence? 

If God were to have some form of desire such as pursuit of figuring out the existence of God, then our entire reality could be a sort of experiment towards that:
All of the universe coming into existence as a first version of that. What caused the universe to exist and what caused the big bang of the universe?
The birth of life on our planet is another.
At some point, there was no life on our planet. But then at some point, life existed. What caused something that had no life to gain life?
You can in evolution probably have various other pinpoint questions.
Like what caused the birth of sentience?
What caused the birth of sapience?
We can, to some extent, answer many of these questions with our understanding of the universe with our scientific knowledge of evolution. Mutations that are favorable to propagating existence, the whole process, with a mutation being the cause of that.

...But what in that mutation made sentience/sapience emerge?

​And so on and so forth.

In that sense, the development of our world could be a bit of an experiment of God's. And if God relates to us, truly, then it is perhaps possible that God is an imperfect parent, that God has a, so to speak, "human" element.
Ain't no rule which says that "omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving" also means perfect and infallible.
In fact, it explicitly does not.
God is not necessarily a perfect being in spite of being all-powerful and all-knowing. Just because God is all-knowing and therefore would know of God's faults and imperfections does not necessarily mean that in spite of being all-powerful God would necessarily work to fix them.

A bit of a human mindset, sure. Humans might know what a problem is, but not necessarily choose to fix it in spite of having the power to do so. They are flawed, imperfect, and often selfish. Who's to say God cannot also be selfish?

After all, just because God is all-loving does not mean God necessarily cannot have desires. Humans can be fairly selfless, love their fellow humans, but they still usually are still somewhat selfish, and understandably so; if you give literally every bit of yourself to being selfless, you have nothing left for yourself and the result is that you quite literally die because selflessness without restraint, without holding back, is fatal without some selfishness to reign it in.

​God could be similar. God, being all-loving, would see what humanity wants and the suffering we go through and the misery and such and hurt and want to try and help us out, but have His (again apologies for the pronoun) own needs and wants and desires and be unable to intervene overtly for us while still attending to God's own desires.

I'm probably not explaining this adequately but both this idea and the second made a huge amount of sense to me as both being at least plausible.

Again, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

God could love everyone, but have some selfishness, but still not have the heart to delete less fortunate realities (ours among them), and there's still a different (technically lesser) God that is attuned to the afterlife.

Still figuring it out.

But I felt like recording this so that it's not forgotten.

...But as it is quite late and I am doing this after a night where I streamed (there's usually a good reason I don't blog on days that I stream--I get so tired when streaming that I usually go straight to bed after streaming), my thoughts are not as coherent as is ideal.

I feel like I should mention some of my mystical beliefs.

I've always been a believer in more of the spiritual side of stuff. I have my own beliefs, so I don't blindly believe in all of the (as the streamer I watch defines it) "woo woo" stuff, but a fair amount of the witchy things that I watch from this streamer I put a great deal of stock behind, including her tarot readings, whenever they resonate with me.

The tarot readings basically told me that I needed to apply for the jobs, which I did yesterday.

But they also gave me hints that streaming Chrono Trigger tonight was a good idea, and the universe aligned to make it so; there was nobody online that I wanted to watch, no professional game of League of Legends I considered a must-watch, I had done everything I needed to do in the day, so it all lined up and felt good to do.

Streaming is fun to me, even if the possibility of monetizing streams is a one in a million probably-impossible dream...but there's multiple reasons that I feel like doing it even if it isn't a viable career.

The first is that streaming might allow me to connect in other areas. Streaming isn't exclusive to games. It also covers art, even writing! And, yes, even talking about things! It allows me to talk about passions tonight, for instance, tonight I touched upon my first-ever story that I began writing! Even if streaming isn't the key to my future, it could serve as a tool to help me key in to my future.

A stream could end up helping me focus on a project, a story, help talk about it, get it more tangible. A stream could connect me to people. A stream could help me find people to make projects of mine I am passionate about come to reality.

The second is that streaming helps me relate to streamers I watch. Watching streamers eats up a significant portion of my life. Every waking minute, I have at least one stream, often two (sometimes even three!), in the background. And in those communities, most of the people I am close to, some who could maybe be worth calling 'friends' (not sure if they call me friends and I'm not sure if I am objectively close enough to them to be worthy of that title but I would call them friends), are also streamers.

By streaming myself, I get to better understand their own experiences with streaming. So that when they talk about it, I know what they mean from experience myself, so that I can relate to them better. It allows me to connect with them more, talk with them more, interact with them more, from a perspective that is more knowledgeable than that of someone who hasn't streamed.

​The third is that streaming is actually amazing practice at just talking. I am not the most competent at talking, but I am getting better and better at it...via streaming. Streaming is actually teaching me how to talk, a skill I had lost from a year of quarantine where talking was kept to a minimum. Streaming to help me prepare for the outside world would be reason enough to stream, but there's more!

The fourth is that streaming allows me to practice other good practices, too. Streaming is giving me practice at managing social media. Streaming is giving me practice at social networking. Streaming is giving me practice at basically...well, being able to manage my life and aspects of it. These skills should, if I keep practicing them (and I do so every time I stream!) translate to any future endeavors of mine.

If I ever write something.

Whenever I make art.

The practices I am practicing on streaming, translate to those things.

It could even be a key for me creating a passion project like Phyrra and Cyrus! After all...if I am actively networking and keeping folks updated, the skills I am practicing now could translate into managing updates on a passion project and keeping it going, showing it off, etc.

But fifth and finally?

Streaming's just fun to do. Even if nobody shows up, even if I am talking to the air. I wouldn't do something I didn't genuinely enjoy. I think that I could actually be good at streaming, so if I could make money from it eventually, that would be cool! But, inherently, that would just be a bonus. It would be an extra. Even if I wasn't good at streaming, even if I never make money from streaming, even if streaming never helped me out?

It wouldn't need to.

Because streaming is just fun for me. And do I really need any other reason than that to stream? It's fun. It's relaxing. It's something I genuinely enjoy. After all, I am playing games in my spare time anyway; when I've the ability to, why not stream it as well? I wouldn't stop playing Chrono Trigger if I wasn't streaming, after all, but if I am playing it I may as well stream some of it.

This has actually gotten me to talk to someone at least once! I think twice, actually. Me being me, I didn't do nearly as much talking as is ideal so the folks I talked to probably lost interest in me, but hey, it was still nice to talk to them about a game I am passionate about, and that is something that I can't do while playing the game and not streaming.

I can talk about a game I am passionate about when not playing it. Say on a forum, on a discord, in a twitch chat (not that twitch chat talks have any permanence), you get the idea. I can play a game I am passionate about when not talking about it. But the only way to do both at the same time is to stream it. (Or record it, but same basic principle.)

And talking about games I am passionate about while playing them is fun. I enjoy myself a lot.

​I think I had more non-streaming stuff to talk about but I can't remember. This should suffice for a blog tonight tho.

Not a joke, if you believe in tarot cards I had literally like 3 consecutive readings tonight which all said basically the same thing:

"Bree, you should be doing the job applications."

I have not done the job applications.

I have explained previously that the entire universe was lining up to give me the time, the chance, to do so--nothing for me to read, me having done daily stuff, nothing for me to play, being bored, it being way too early to go to sleep, etc. Instead I did nothing, stalling until I had an opportunity to stream.

Now, granted!

Streaming is not a bad thing! It is an incredibly good thing! It is something I may have a future in. But streaming is, explicitly: not something you go into full-time from the onset, from the getgo. You go fulltime on streaming if and only if you have grown to be able to be supported by it, which is...a long-shot. You need to get affiliate, get a bunch of subs, get a bunch of bits, get a constant stream of donations, grow your userbase, etc. Most people? Can't do it. The ones who do usually have viewer counts in the hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands.

I'm lucky to get one.

I realize that I need to do my research. I don't know what to research exactly, but I know that if I want to be successful as a content creator, I do need to do exactly that, the research.

I realize that it's not impossible--but even with research, even if I do everything right, it takes a lot of luck. Luck, research, connections, smart decision making, etc. I've currently got none of those. So it's a long, hard road, it's a big fight, it's something that I will need to dedicate serious time to.

So!

Given that the chance to succeed is like. One in a thousand.

I literally need the stable income of a normal job. It may not be my final path. I will be, ultimately, creating something. I will create stuff. Streams, art, stories, something, my final life job will not be just a part-time job.

But until such a time as I can get the big money in that dream job type area.

I need to be pragmatic and sustain myself on the normal job area.

And I'm not doing so yet.

Which makes me a complete idiot.

I had the time, I had the chance, I had the opportunity.

I didn't take it so I am stupid.

​I need to get it done; why is it so hard for me to actually do???

You may remember that my working title for Phyrra and Cyrus was INFIverse. (Or INFINIverse, I forget which.)
You may also remember that is an existing name of a 'verse. I didn't bother to do research on it, just enough to know both names were taken so couldn't be used as an original name.

Today I came up with that.

It kinda sucks. So if I can find a better original name, you bet I'm gonna use it.

But it returned an absolute zero on google results, which means it's unique to me: the colliniverse.

The meaning is not nearly as special or accurate.
The INFINIverse is accurate because of the concept of INFINITY. (I still need to give you that creation myth.)
The colliniverse takes a concept from there, the collision of INFINITY and Nothingness, but it's not quite the same especially since technically speaking it wasn't quite what you'd call a collision. (Again I'd need to give you that creation myth for you to understand.)

So for me I still consider this a working title. A NEW working title. A working title UNIQUE TO ME. But still, something which with luck I can think of something better down the road.

OH WELL.

For now, it'll do.

I am also beginning to lay the groundwork for further Phyrra and Cyrus work.

This will take me quite a while to finish, but I got about a third of what I wanted to do today, done. And that's progress!

Soyeah.

We're getting there.

​Slowly but surely.

A huge, huge, HUGE breakthrough on Phyrra and Cyrus.
I wanted to give the full blog today, but I was too busy today dealing with stuff to do that, so all I can really give you is that I'm on the verge of naming their world...and have successfully given their 'Verse a name: I gave it a working title of The INFIverse.

Now.

That might sound like a lame name.

But it's anything but.

That name has regards to do with the coolest creation myth I've ever made, and it took me HOURS of brainstorming to hash it out.

A quick google search indicates that I'll need to come up with something else as Infiverse seems to be taken even though I am quite specific about it being INFIverse (the extra letter capitalization holds meaning), but a working title which needs to be changed because it's taken is better than no title for the verse at all!

Still, since the name's apparently taken I'll need to work a little bit harder, but I'm oh so very close.

I also--and this is directly correlated to the creation myth--worked out what the most popular religion in Phyrra and Cyrus is. Quick note, there's no confirmed deities in existence, be it lowercase god or uppercase God, and yet there's numerous religions in existence revolving around the few aspects of the creation of their world that they don't have explained away with science.

Basically there's a very small gap in their knowledge, and that gap is where religion enters the picture; monotheism is more common than pantheism, and I developed the name of the most popular religion. It's probably the name of an existing religion but then again what isn't: Voidism. Again this'll make sense when I explain the way their world was created, which I can't wait to do, but unfortunately need to wait until tomorrow to do.

​I'm just so excited!