Setting Up A Twitch Studio - Get Back On That Treadmill from hairylarry's blog
Ok, this just happened to me and it will happen to you if you undertake a creative project with a schedule.
Things go wrong. Life happens. Stuff breaks. It's inevitable.
My router went out. And before it went out it went intermittent. So I missed a stream.
I checked everything out. I reset the router. I was at the piano. And before I even started to play the internet went out. I knew it just wasn't going to happen.
Fortunately I called my ISP and he helped me detect the problem and I had another router in place for my next stream. But it can be worse.
Way worse. Sometimes stuff comes up and you miss a week or more.
My advice. As soon as you can, get back on that treadmill. Yeah it was kind of nice not having to do all that production work and promotion. It's always nice to have a little extra time in your day.
Still periods of creative flow don't happen all the time. They are to be treasured. Get back on the treadmill and make it happen. Again. Churn it out.
This is a different issue than making a decision to take your efforts elsewhere. To write a game instead of playing some games. To write a book instead of writing more music. These decisions are for you to make. It's your life to live.
But don't let temporary technical problems or real life issues interrupt your flow. Get back on the treadmill.
There are some related issues. Sometimes you have downtime that doesn't affect the stream but hinders some other aspect of your work flow.
After my ISP and I determined that my router was bad I went and pulled another router off the back wall of my house where it sprays wifi out to the icosahedron. I replaced my router with this router (thanks Megan) and we had internet back. Except for one thing.
For my network setup I use the DD-WRT firmware because it supports virtual LANs. I have one LAN on 192.168.1.1 and another LAN on 192.168.2.1. The first is for our daily internet use, wired and wifi computers and other devices that need to connect to the internet. The second is for my web servers, the ones that host hairylarryland.com and hairylarry.rocks. There's a firewall. It's a security thing.
Unfortunately the router I pulled of the back wall doesn't support DD-WRT. So I ordered another, even more up to date router, that does support DD-WRT. Which means a weeks downtime on my servers.
So I can't post to hairylarryland.com and even worse my peertube instance runs on hairylarry.rocks. So it's part of my workflow to post to these sites and I can't so I have to devise workarounds to post my videos and promote them on time. I can still upload to the Live Music Archive and Youtube. I can still promote the Youtube videos but I can't promote the playlists which live on peertube.
And then when I get my new router in, burn DD-WRT to the firmware, and configure it I will have to play catch up.
Sometimes playing catch up will hit you in the back of the head. I played my Sunday stream just before everything went haywire. I missed my Tuesday stream. Then after I patched things together I played my Thursday stream and I logged my songs.
When I went to edit the videos I checked my Sunday stream for the notes.txt file and guess what? I never made these 10 videos. I logged them. Things went haywire. And I got off my procedure.
So instead of having 5 videos to edit I had 15. That's when you really have to buckle down. It's possible to catch up. I did it. It really helped that I was familiar with my work flow. I have to admit I spent less time on some of the videos than I would have if I wasn't playing catch up.
So here's your executive summary.
Technical problems or life issues. Get back on the treadmill.
Missed part of the workflow for a short period. Catch up.
The most important thing, however, is right now going forward. The essence of maintaining your creative flow is to absorb yourself in your project and to just do it. The most important stuff is the stuff you are working on right now.
Things go wrong. Life happens. Stuff breaks. It's inevitable.
My router went out. And before it went out it went intermittent. So I missed a stream.
I checked everything out. I reset the router. I was at the piano. And before I even started to play the internet went out. I knew it just wasn't going to happen.
Fortunately I called my ISP and he helped me detect the problem and I had another router in place for my next stream. But it can be worse.
Way worse. Sometimes stuff comes up and you miss a week or more.
My advice. As soon as you can, get back on that treadmill. Yeah it was kind of nice not having to do all that production work and promotion. It's always nice to have a little extra time in your day.
Still periods of creative flow don't happen all the time. They are to be treasured. Get back on the treadmill and make it happen. Again. Churn it out.
This is a different issue than making a decision to take your efforts elsewhere. To write a game instead of playing some games. To write a book instead of writing more music. These decisions are for you to make. It's your life to live.
But don't let temporary technical problems or real life issues interrupt your flow. Get back on the treadmill.
There are some related issues. Sometimes you have downtime that doesn't affect the stream but hinders some other aspect of your work flow.
After my ISP and I determined that my router was bad I went and pulled another router off the back wall of my house where it sprays wifi out to the icosahedron. I replaced my router with this router (thanks Megan) and we had internet back. Except for one thing.
For my network setup I use the DD-WRT firmware because it supports virtual LANs. I have one LAN on 192.168.1.1 and another LAN on 192.168.2.1. The first is for our daily internet use, wired and wifi computers and other devices that need to connect to the internet. The second is for my web servers, the ones that host hairylarryland.com and hairylarry.rocks. There's a firewall. It's a security thing.
Unfortunately the router I pulled of the back wall doesn't support DD-WRT. So I ordered another, even more up to date router, that does support DD-WRT. Which means a weeks downtime on my servers.
So I can't post to hairylarryland.com and even worse my peertube instance runs on hairylarry.rocks. So it's part of my workflow to post to these sites and I can't so I have to devise workarounds to post my videos and promote them on time. I can still upload to the Live Music Archive and Youtube. I can still promote the Youtube videos but I can't promote the playlists which live on peertube.
And then when I get my new router in, burn DD-WRT to the firmware, and configure it I will have to play catch up.
Sometimes playing catch up will hit you in the back of the head. I played my Sunday stream just before everything went haywire. I missed my Tuesday stream. Then after I patched things together I played my Thursday stream and I logged my songs.
When I went to edit the videos I checked my Sunday stream for the notes.txt file and guess what? I never made these 10 videos. I logged them. Things went haywire. And I got off my procedure.
So instead of having 5 videos to edit I had 15. That's when you really have to buckle down. It's possible to catch up. I did it. It really helped that I was familiar with my work flow. I have to admit I spent less time on some of the videos than I would have if I wasn't playing catch up.
So here's your executive summary.
Technical problems or life issues. Get back on the treadmill.
Missed part of the workflow for a short period. Catch up.
The most important thing, however, is right now going forward. The essence of maintaining your creative flow is to absorb yourself in your project and to just do it. The most important stuff is the stuff you are working on right now.
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