Believe it or not, it’s another blog entry! Told you I didn’t abandon it.
Quite a bit has happened since the last entry back in those halcyon days of… 3 weeks ago. Principally the build streams got put on hold because the shop needed a massive overhaul. My actual usable workspace was being encroached on by the advancing drifts of cruft, so it was time to clear-cut back to the bone and rebuild.
Thankfully as reported in episode 9 of Pixels and Puppets, the clean-up has gone well and the build stream will be returning much sooner than anticipated.
I’ve been taking a lot of mental stock lately, as cleanups always give me space to re-evaluate. In terms of growth, O:P has stagnated a bit. Things are quieter than usual, but that’s largely on me. The build streams always generate activity and without them, it’s noticeable. The podcast is still getting solid numbers but they’re just holding steady, not growing, and it’s been a long time since I did any Frankie Play or episode of The Oracle.
A lot of this is just circumstantial, owing to my limited time. I’d love to do it *all*, all the time, but there are only a certain number of hours in a day, and as always running the shops must take top priority. Lately that’s meant the studio clean, which means that there hasn’t even been all that much building happening, so part of my “content creator” (still a horrible term) brain is panicking.
Now it’s time for me to take a breath and remember that part of my whole model with O:P is not to play the Capitalist fantasy game of “infinite growth at any cost”. Sometimes things will be slow, and that’s ok. What matters is how I and everyone in the community is feeling. O:P should be a Happiness Generating Machine, and that is the final metric.
I realized the other day that I really miss the Frankie Play streams, but I de-prioritized them because they are among the least-viewed content O:P does. However, I really enjoy them, and they don’t interfere with build time, so why aren’t I doing them? I may not be gaining eyeballs, but is that even important?
And that’s when I realized that things like the Frankie Play streams shouldn’t be viewed as “events” like the build streams. It’s never guaranteed an audience, but if we’re lucky, a few folks might stumble across it and enjoy it, and maybe even follow some breadcrumbs.
It’s busking. Digital busking, but instead of coins in a hat, maybe we’ll get some new people. Buskers have no idea if they’ll have an audience or not. It’s a totally random roll of the dice. They do it for the love of it. It’s organic.
I need some of that in O:P. There always needs to be practical considerations, but it’s healthy and uplifting to just do things for the joy of it. I got it so firmly lodged in my head that this year is the Year of More Eyeballs that I lost sight of the fact that part of what makes this whole thing special is just creating fun stuff for the love of the stuff.
Here’s to all the digital buskers out there. I think Frankie will be joining you again soon.