Twitch made me better and helped me survive for the three darkest months in my life

How well do developers live in the US? Do you really believe in fairy tales?

Last night I was in a rather desperate state of mind. Initially, I spent four hours at a time streaming all sorts of garbage (reading news from the DTF and the Fallout 76 video), and randomly googled words. Found on Reddy good post "Slow progress is progress" .

I went to Twitch to thank the person who wrote it. I was very surprised that he responded to the comment instantly and without any paid subscriptions. And he was very surprised that someone reads six months old posts. As a result, I got hold of another one of his creative, which I can not translate. Because it seems to be important ... to everyone.

Apparently, the author before he was either a game designer, or a developer of UI / UX, so this is a doubly interesting story. So, the word MKUltraKill, to the coolest streamer of our time :-)

I read a lot and almost do not write, but now I feel the need to talk about things that happened to me lately - I hope they motivate the rest in a difficult moment, especially if it falls on holidays. My name is MKUltraKill, and this is an article about how Twitch pulled me out of the most difficult three months in my life.

At the end of September, I lived somewhere in the backwoods of western New York (many consider it the “northern part of the state”), in the same house where I lived in my childhood, but rented from my aunt. It was a three-bedroom house with almost 3 acres of land in a great, secluded location. Up until September, living there was just fine.

Good housemates, privacy, regular parties. 20 years have already turned, and 30 has not yet come - the most it. The downside of the holiday was money - the house cost me a small fortune, because my aunt constantly changed the rent, because she constantly forgot the previous figure, and one of her housemates was fired, and since April he constantly did not have time to deposit his part, and even missed a couple months. I was in front of an impressive account, I had to take loans often. I tried to convince my aunt to fill a normal lease agreement, at the same time changing the terms of the lease and the cost, but she was always too busy to do it. A neighbor was a childhood friend, and it was difficult to just kick him out of the house. I had to do it, but we all make mistakes.

At the end of September, I was completely defeated, trying to drive a car one hour to and from work, driving the same way, trying to think of a way to pay the bills and make this life ... compatible with life. Every bloody day I came home sucked dry, knowing exactly how it would end.

Work became a way to escape from the harsh reality, because I was under constant stress in trying to understand why I could not cope with it. In the end, the bosses threatened with dismissal. Everything was going to hell unusually fast. I could have given up on everything and dumped, lost my job, but no one would understand me, especially the family. Too scary to do something in this situation.

Fire and hot water in the house worked on gas. It ended the previous winter, so I had to wash with friends every day before returning home. To replenish stocks you had about 600 bucks, and where would I get that kind of money? Every evening, I curled up in a cold room, looked at the hole that I had once nailed and tried to fall asleep for at least an hour before it all started again. Thoughts began to creep in: I am at the end of the road, on which there will be bomges. It was frightening. How did I run everything so far? I already sold almost everything I could. In the literal sense, all that remains in the room is a bed, a TV set, two pairs of jeans, 4 T-shirts, 4 pairs of socks with shorts and my favorite, wonderful, such an expensive gaming computer.

In 2015-2016, I played Overwatch on a semi-professional level, getting to the Grandmaster and the top 100 players for Diva. I played in a junior team with a coach who competed against a team like Kingdom or EnvyUs. So I had to buy the best computer for which I had enough money, and I started streaming all the matches and competitions. He did this for a year, and did not get more than four people online at the same time. It was very painful. I threw Overwatch and gave up, ceasing to stream ... Until that ill-fated end of September, the computer was used for a maximum of an hour or two in the evening, and then I stood off for the next 23 hours. I almost sold it to buy a ticket, rent an apartment in California and throw all the people I used to live with. Looking back, it becomes clear - there was not a single idea of ​​what to do after the move, and I would end up somewhere with the rest of the homeless on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. I was so lost that the brain could not imagine a single viable solution. There were solutions that made it possible to survive at someone’s expense, hurting family and friends, but I didn’t even consider them. Stupid.

The end of October was approaching, and I was ready to part with the last favorite thing and the last remaining property, the computer. The remaining hours I decided to spend with the computer, which was trying to save the whole of this year. I turned it on, launched OBS and started streaming a bunch of random things. From time to time I returned to the same toy - “Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide”. She came to me by chance, along with buying a computer, and had never run before. It turned out to be similar to Left 4 Dead with hordes of monsters and tasks, but that there you can grind and keep weapons, and edged weapons are much cooler than in L4D. It was awesome, crazy people started to add, who all watched on the stream ...

At the beginning, no one said anything. They simply tried to dig up something interesting, and ran across the canal. Someone fell off, someone stayed, others said “hello” and that's it. I thought: to hell with everything, I will continue to play for another month and see what comes of it. 5 days a week and a weekend I enjoyed what was happening, as if in a normal job. Suddenly, in the middle of the stream, everything turned off. They disconnected the house from electricity. There was only an empty cold house, impenetrable darkness, enveloping on all sides and sucking everything that was left. I was broken and crushed. What was left to do?

Four days without electricity. Perishable food has gone bad. I cried much more than I want to admit. No idea what to do next. It was so good streaming. My only bright ray in the dark kingdom. If it is not left, it is probably worth going to the forest and do something with it, and then the police will. This grim thought scared more than anything before. The very bottom, below does not happen. In the end, we returned the electricity. I got all the remaining money, leaked another 500 bucks off the credit card and gave it all to the power companies so that they could return the light.

The first thing I did was I wrote to all the people I could remember who had seen the stream last week, and personally apologized. I wrote to them personally and earnestly asked for forgiveness. Most replied "everything is in order", and the more I have not seen them. Someone stayed.

It hurt about as much as 4 simultaneous online viewers in 2016. It seems that a huge piece of what I was trying to build, took and fell off. To make up for the loss, I switched to 7-day regimen. Even if the damn house burns to the ground, everything is completely unimportant, as long as I am “Live” and “Streaming”. A month passed and my aunt added another 100 bucks to the rent, asserting that the rent had always been like that and that I was trying to deceive her. I was so exhausted that I just agreed, apologized and said that it was my fault. Who now does not matter. A little more time.

In October, my dear neighbor escaped, and this doubled the rent. It coincided with the moment when I started streaming 7 days a week. I literally needed not to think about anything more than streaming, and completely devoted myself to improving the stream and myself as the presenter. I did not sleep until 6 in the morning, at night studying how to make the stream better. I drew a picture in Photoshop and turned into an online entity. I tried not to think about anything other than Stream when streaming. Honestly, a couple of times I talked on the air about the problems in life, but for the most part, no one knew how bad everything really is (and even today, before this post, I did not disclose details).

This is not what is interesting to the audience. I am MKUltraKill, the coolest streamer you will ever see, and not the sinking Mickey Mouse . At work I was again told that they would be fired if I did not start working in a normal way until the end of 2017. Yes, and to hell. This is all unimportant. Back to streaming. It was the only outlet.

Around this time, my grandmother broke her leg around the heel and got into the hospital. She asked to look after the cat and I replied that the mother’s help would be needed (more precisely, the adoptive mother), because between the trips to and from work, the work and the “second job” of which became streaming, there was almost no time left, and this is simply unfair to the cat. I have 2 cats myself, and leaving them alone for 15+ hours a day (about as much as I worked) is not correct. Since the mother works part time, she has more opportunities. And despite the fact that I am happy to help, it would be better to connect her, in the name of the cat. Quite unexpectedly, I was told that I was not a child, but a monster, and how I dared to shift my duties to mother. What are the responsibilities? Are you under the substances? With all due respect, she works 1/4 of mine, and what is she doing there that can not help? This is not my cat, and I do not have time to take care of it, as it was once upon a time. I was very offended and said: “You understand that I am two steps away from becoming a bum, huh? Maybe you should take the cat to the shelter if I am the only one who can take care of it. I just don't have time. ” The first time, I behaved badly towards my grandmother. She said that knowing me no longer knows that I do not need a family, and hung up. Because of the cat and someone who does not want to help, because her free time is more important than my job, which earns money for life. Cool. I hope someday I will be able to explain things more clearly to people. I was very offended and said: “You understand that I am two steps away from becoming a bum, huh? Maybe you should take the cat to the shelter if I am the only one who can take care of it. I just don't have time. ” The first time, I behaved badly towards my grandmother. She said that knowing me no longer knows that I do not need a family, and hung up. Because of the cat and someone who does not want to help, because her free time is more important than my job, which earns money for life. Cool. I hope someday I will be able to explain things more clearly to people. I was very offended and said: “You understand that I am two steps away from becoming a bum, huh? Maybe you should take the cat to the shelter if I am the only one who can take care of it. I just don't have time. ” The first time, I behaved badly towards my grandmother. She said that knowing me no longer knows that I do not need a family, and hung up. Because of the cat and someone who does not want to help, because her free time is more important than my job, which earns money for life. Cool. I hope someday I will be able to explain things more clearly to people. that knowing me no longer knows that I do not need a family, and hung up. Because of the cat and someone who does not want to help, because her free time is more important than my job, which earns money for life. Cool. I hope someday I will be able to explain things more clearly to people. that knowing me no longer knows that I do not need a family, and hung up. Because of the cat and someone who does not want to help, because her free time is more important than my job, which earns money for life. Cool. I hope someday I will be able to explain things more clearly to people.

In November, I had enough and had to move in with my friends. I slept on an inflatable mattress, using a piece of drywall instead of a table. Having saved money for uHaul , officially moved on the 23rd, on Saturday. Aunt said I deceived her. A housemate who lost his job said I had deceived him. Before I left, I bought gas, and my neighbor refused to pay for this gas - despite the fact that I had used it for three weeks. All 200 gallons. I had a three-month debt account.

My loans were selected to the end. But I was fine, because I had a Twitch. Without him it was so unbearable - and now I was online every day, regardless of all these problems in my life. I proved to myself that I would be online every day. Streaming and content creation is all I need from life. This is the only thing that kept me from insanity. My family left me. I was thrown by friends. I was alone, and only Twitch gave me the feeling that I was not alone.

In early November, I was invited to the Twitch Affiliate program. After I started streaming 7 days a week, having fully invested in the idea of ​​becoming the best streamer, exponential growth began. I joined the TwitchKittens and Together To The Top groups, and they helped me deal with most of the problems. They are my new family. I have new best friends. The number of simultaneous online viewers is an average of 10 people in the last 30 days, and the peak value was 48. If you work hard on yourself, then you can achieve 100 this year already.

There is NOTHING that cannot be achieved if you do not give up. Anyone reading this now, please remember this. You can be anyone, do anything. Just let it happen, let it be your light at the darkest hour. And don't let other people control your life - believe me, this is a direct path to failure.

Forever Streaming,
-MKUltraKill