well. I couldn’t complain. On Twitch, I received donations and subscription money—along with a small supplement for ads that showed on my feed. I made some nice supplemental income from streaming my gaming, much to the dismay of several jealous colleagues.
Of course, I never streamed playing Dragon Epoch. That would have put my job in jeopardy. None of my random followers even knew I was a Draco employee as that was top secret info.
Given that the channel had been down several days, I was feeling the pressure to provide some sort of content for them. An idea occurred to me—why not stream while I was setting up my rig here in the new place? If I got my cameras and mic up first, then I could talk to my followers, broadcasting while I plugged in equipment and set up the room. That way, my followers had live proof of my work in progress and I’d have something to stream even though my rig wasn’t ready for game play.
Before that, I vowed to start the day off right with a little yoga to work out the kinks in my muscles from all that moving. To say nothing of the need for stress relief from the events of the past week! I slipped into my bright green and blue leggings with my black tank top and did an entire hour video from my favorite Yoga instructor on YouTube.
Feeling energized and full of excitement to get this new section of my life started, I went into the empty spare room Lucas had told me I could use. The other spare room was a den with his exercise equipment in it—weights, barbells and a massive and expensive-looking rowing machine. I tried not to spend too long picturing those arm muscles bulging as he used it. Hmmm.
For today’s stream, since I’d be moving boxes and equipment around, I opted to use my headset mic. Since I was a seasoned pro, I got my desk and computer hooked up in less than thirty minutes. Then I set up my two cameras—one atop my monitor and a GoPro mounted high up on the other side of the room.
I inputted the information for Lucas’s WiFi—which he’d already helpfully supplied me with—and then I was off to the races. The little green light flickered on, indicating that I was now live streaming once again.
Standing back away from the monitor so I could fit my entire body in front of the webcam, I smiled and waved. “Hey guys! Surprise! Your evil overlord, Persephone, has returned much sooner than anticipated. I’m starting to settle into my new digs. Do you like?” I opened my arms and turned around, indicating the spacious room. “Nice and big and full of so many possibilities.” After catching a glimpse of myself on the monitor, I smoothed a strand of hair out of my face.
Then I set to work opening boxes and pulling them out. I plugged in wire and connected auxiliary equipment—controllers, lighting, speakers—chatting away as I went.
I talked about everything—the components of my rig, which were exactly the same as the setup in the corner nook of my bedroom where I’d streamed from Heath’s place.
“So what was I saying?” I prattled on after being distracted by the surprising response I was getting on my chat stream. My followers were overwhelmingly enthusiastic about me being online again! There were donations coming in and the new subscribers count climbed quickly.
“Oh, I was talking about my latest gaming obsession, Covert Ops. I got to sample it at the last E3 convention and I can’t wait for its release. Just ten more days ‘til that puppy is live to download on Steam!”
I turned and opened the small box labeled game controllers. I had all kinds, actually—thrust master, paddles, steering wheel, old school joystick, PlayStation emulator, Xbox and Virtual Reality wands. I kept them all organized on their own little stand, ready to grab whenever I needed them. I also had to set up my PlayStation and flat screen TV, too. All of which I got done while babbling away to my unseen internet audience and not playing a single damn game.
I didn’t have time to read the chat stream but I could see from across the room that it was a banner day for new subscriptions. I was up several hundred new followers from this morning alone. Who knew that watching someone set up their new rig would be so interesting?