Typically I sleep on planes. Almost every time I get on one I am out before we even take off. However, as I sit here on my flight from Newark to Atlanta, I can’t seem to stop stirring. Thoughts incessantly echo in my mind, “You should be working.”

At the beginning of 2018, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I vividly remember sitting on beaches and planes in Thailand at the beginning of the year and crafting out my goals and aspirations full of hope, with a dash of humor sprinkled in.

2018 Goals:

Make it to Twitch Partner
Get Promoted
Travel to at least 3 new countries (Not including Thailand)
Build a PC, stream there
Build a small YouTube following for my travel videos and daily blogs
Double my Instagram followers (640)
Make it to Diamond on Overwatch

But once I returned home from my adventure in Asia (during which I also visited Angkor Wat in Cambodia), life hit me – and boy did it hit me hard.

Leading up to that point I had been working on a brand launch for two full years. I had never been more proud of, or excited for a project ever before. It was scheduled to launch in February, and it did launch… for about two weeks. It turns out that there was ultimately a supply chain challenge and rather than spend what would have been a meager amount of money to alleviate the problem (and would have only taken a few weeks), management decided to stop shipping the brand immediately.

You think breakups are rough? I spent more time working on that brand than I’ve ever spent in a relationship. I worked on every single aspect of it. Choosing the fragrance, the ingredients, writing the copy, determining the price point, selling it in to retailers for distribution, developing the website, crafting the digital strategy, formulating the brand anthem video. Every. Single. Piece. Of. It.

And then in an instant management issued a stop ship order and I felt completely helpless. I couldn’t do anything to save my brand.

On top of this, I was still working on a team with my ex who at the time was working on planning his wedding only a year after we broke up. So, while my career just faced an incredible setback and my love life was floundering, his life was flourishing in all aspects.

My escape from these realities came in the form of live streaming on Twitch. While I had dabbled in the space since November 2017, I hadn’t really taken it very seriously. However, with so much going on, it was literally the only thing that brought me even a minor amount of joy in my life. Desperate for a change in my life and a new direction, I reached out to my friend Joe to see if he wanted to grab a drink and talk some about the industry.

We met at a bar a random Wednesday evening and he invited me to join him at PAX in April. I honestly had no idea what this was, or what to expect.

What I got was a surreal experience. PAX East was pivotal moment for my life in 2018, and was really what ignited my streaming career. Prior to PAX, I streamed on Twitch because a) I liked playing video games, and b) Joe told me I would be good at it.

Me, the Geico gecko, RyyGaming, & Swiftor (the man that started it all for me) at PAX East 2018.

During PAX, I saw first-hand how tremendously powerful the gaming industry was, and the potential for what it could be. Walking around with Joe and seeing how dozens, possibly even of hundreds, of people reacted to meeting him opened my eyes to how influential someone could be within gaming. Throughout the course of the event, I had the opportunity to connect with even more movers and shakers in the space, and that’s what crystallized for me that this was something I wanted to pursue with more fervor.

Later in April I took a bit of sabbatical from work, partially, to regain some mental grit and composure after a devastating setback on a product launch, but also to understand if content creation was something I could feasibly do.

My efforts were met with mixed results. I experienced extreme highs (randomly making front page during affiliate week), and lows (stagnant to little growth for months) from April through June. I knew I loved streaming, but pursuing it as a fulltime career felt like nothing more than a pipedream in the same way that young boys dream of becoming an NFL quarterback, or young girls dream of growing up to be international pop stars.

I book-ended my time away from the office with an epic trip. What could easily have been categorized as “the trip to end all trips”, the crowning jewel of all of my traveling experiences.

I spent an entire month traveling through Africa & West Asia, visiting 7 countries in total (Morocco, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Tanzania, Madagascar, and South Africa). Words cannot even begin to describe how incredible each of these experiences were. (But I will surely try in separate blog posts!)

Traveling always brings out the best in me. Escaping from my daily routine and being in a foreign place gives me an unparalleled sense of clarity. It’s almost as if I’m finally able to be alone with my thoughts while being simultaneously inspired by the surrounding beauty of a new location.

During our first destination on the trip, Morocco, we took a day-trip to the Atlas Mountains. I had expected a relatively easy, and picturesque hike. However, this was ultimately anything but. It was a several-hour, all-day, grueling expedition in the heat.

And yet, in those hills, trekking up thousands of kilometers of terrain, I could feel the gravity push against each step that I climbed. I could feel every bead of sweat drip off my body. I could feel every ounce of heat touch my skin, and radiate back. I’d never felt more in the moment, and more “inside” of myself than I ever have before. In the middle of nowhere I started to rediscover who I was and what I wanted next.

For a brief moment I stopped and let the tour guide and my friend I was traveling with hike ahead. I took in a deep breath and enjoyed the vista surrounding me. Breathtakingly gorgeous nature surrounded me. I took a picture, looked down at my camera and knew this, content creation, THIS is what I wanted to do.

Later in the trip, we were in the Serengeti with a group of friends, and over the course of just a few hours I became the groups designated photographer. As my unit posted pictures that I took to their respective social media accounts and they each accumulated a record number of engagements and received comments like “This looks like this should be in National Geographic”, it further reaffirmed that this was a space that I could be successful in.

I spent the second half of my Africa trip trying to strategize how I could become a full-time content creator. What would it take? What would I need to do? How fast would I need to grow? How much would I need to earn? I hadn’t reached any conclusions, but captured enough as much static and dynamic content as my devices would allow and loved every second of it. I couldn’t believe my life throughout that entire trip – Poor girl from Baltimore, grows up, sees the world, and gets to share it.

I returned to work at the end of July. I wasn’t really ready, but I couldn’t take anymore paid time off, and rent in Jersey City is exorbitant. They placed me on a team without asking me if I was interested in it, or even taking into consideration what my aspirations were. Luckily, the team I was assigned to was one that I had worked on previously, with a manager whom I had also worked with before and adored. My project scope was actually interesting – leading a company-wide initiative to activate around Women’s Empowerment in 2019.

As August faded into September and then October I progressed through my project. While I received ongoing praise and encouragement, I couldn’t help but feel trapped. I knew that regardless of whether my work resulted in billions of dollars of revenue or a profit loss, everything I did was for the company. While I might get a slight hint of personal satisfaction in knowing that I led an amazing initiative, every ounce of work was ultimately for a higher entity, rather than for myself.

Each passing day I craved independence and a life centered around content creation where I was the steward of my own destiny. A few times per week I streamed in the evenings and got a glimpse of the liberation inherit within. I controlled every aspect – what I wore, what I said, what time I started, what I played, what I did – all of it. And while I couldn’t directly control how much revenue I made from subscriptions and donations, it still seemed as if my talents as a content creator would eventually correlate to revenue.

Unfortunately, concurrent viewership is a bit of a necessity on Twitch and by mid-October my average continued to drag in the 20’s with no hope of growth. Back in August on a quick trip home to Baltimore, I made a spur of the moment decision that I would attend Twitch Con. So, I felt a bit of buyer’s remorse at this point in October that I had no progress to show for myself. Twitch Con was scheduled from October 25 – 28, and my 1-year affiliate anniversary was November 28. I made the decision to give myself one more month of streaming before finally calling it quits and letting it go of what one could have classified as nothing more than a meaningless side hobby.

Twitch Con 2018 was hosted in San Jose, CA. This was an incredible experience because I finally had the opportunity to meet some of the moderators within my community and connect with people in person that I had interacted with each day online. But, while this was definitely a highlight of my Twitch Con experience, I also attended the con with the intention of listening to panels in hopes that it would help me refine my craft and networking with companies and organizations in hopes of gaining a sponsorship and earn additional revenue.

Me with some of my wonderful moderators at Twitch Con 2018. (From Left): cannotcatchme89, underworld20, heavenslastcrush (me), ninjaxperia, overtstorm.

Spending time doing these activities made me realize that I already possessed a lot of the skills that it would take for me to be successful in this industry – marketing, branding, easily building relationships. However, it also make me realize what I lacked to be successful, namely, differentiated content.

Admittedly, I’m still working through that piece. But, I think I’m starting to make strides in the right direction. I can group my historical content into three categories:

Content I love, but doesn’t get good viewership (i.e. Overwatch)
Content I don’t super enjoy (mostly because I’m so bad at it), but gets good viewership (i.e. Fortnite)
Content that I enjoy, that yields strong viewership (i.e. Just Chatting)

Since I’ve learned that I particularly excel in the Just Chatting format I’ve started to create new ways to bring this to life. I’ve done a few co-streams, and one multi-stream to date and just launched a book club. I’m still working on experimenting with how to innovate in this space and do something differentiated.

Aside from solving the content piece, I’ve also reevaluated the “Why” of what compels me to create content. This really came to life for me the other day when I was in a friend, Tofu’s, stream (twitch.tv/hihotofu). Each stream, Tofu posts a deeply thought-provoking question to engage his chat. On this particular day, the question was “In your heart of hearts, what is your true passion in life?”

My initial thought was “Oh, to help people. To make people happy.”. But, as my fingers began to type that response it felt wrong. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help people, but actually I wanted people to be able to help themselves. I typed something along the lines of, “In my heart of hearts, my true passion is to inspire people to be happy”.

I saw my response scroll vertically through the chat on Tofu’s screen and heard him read it aloud. But, hearing the words didn’t ring true either. That still wasn’t it for me. I didn’t just want to inspire people, I wanted them to act. I wanted them to try. I wanted them to do. And, I also knew from personal experience that happiness does not always lead to action. Sometimes it stems from discomfort, sometimes from anger, sometimes from a realization of a truth. Moreover, happiness can also lead to complacency and stagnation, and those things have never sat well with me.

It dawned on me, what I really wanted to do was ignite action in people. I want people to feel things, to discover their passions and fervently, relentlessly pursue them.

“In my heart of hearts, my true passion is to inspire, motivate, and ignite action in people to help them achieve their greatest potential.”

And there it was. My reason for streaming. Written out in a chat, out there in the universe. But more broadly, I didn’t just have my reason for why I streamed, but why I wanted to create any type of content for any medium. Further, as I thought back on why I pursued any of my ambitions (model, actress, elected official, marketer, professor), this notion of influence and inspiration was the common denominator among all of them.

What an amazing 15 minutes of self-discovery and reflection. In a Twitch chat, of all places. Thanks for that, Tofu. 😉

So now, here I am on a plane to Santiago. We’ll be landing soon, and I’ll be off on my last adventure of the year. Three more weeks away from home. Three more weeks to discover more of the world. This time we’ll start in Chile to explore Santiago, Valparaiso, and ideally some nearby wineries. Then, I’ll be embarking on a 10-day expedition to Antarctica. Afterwards, I’ll come back to Chile to spend some time on Easter Island before finally heading back to the U.S. to start a fresh 2019.

2018 started as a tough year for me work-wise, and in the relationship realm. But, as I truly think about the amount of exploration, adventure, self-discovery, and personal growth that happened along the way, 2018 may have just turned out to be my best year yet.

Looking back on my initial list of goals:

I did not make it to Twitch partner.
- But I did gain over 2,800 new followers in 2018 and am ending the year with 120 paid subscribers.
I did not Get Promoted.
- Because ultimately, I decided that it was better for me to take time off for myself. Time off which led to me understanding what I really wanted to do with my life. And while I would never pass up a promotion, I don’t know that getting one will lead to a greater amount of happiness for me considering where I want to be in a year.
I did Travel to at least 3 new countries (Not including Thailand)
- In fact, by the end of this year I will have traveled to 9, as well as Antarctica.
I did Build a PC, stream there
- I did this in April. I now know how to use OBS and SLOBS.
I did Build a small YouTube following but not for my travel videos and daily blogs.
- My YouTube channel was ultimately built on a few Fortnite dance tutorial videos, but I am hoping to branch out in the future. Through this process I learned how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, and a microscopic bit of Photoshop to create thumbnails.
I did not Double my Instagram followers (640)
- In fact, I kind of abandoned my personal Instagram once I got back from Africa. But, I did start a heavenslastcrush Instagram which has about 280 followers. (If I add this to my personal IG numbers it’s actually totals more than the 640 I would have needed, so I’m going to count this one as a success.)
I did not Make it to Diamond on Overwatch
- For some reason this was always the most unlikely on the list. And as always, we’ll try again next season.

2018 is going to be a year for the record books. I explored ancient temples in Cambodia. I walked where Christ walked in Israel. I floated in the Dead Sea in Jordan. I came face-to-face with lions in the Serengeti. I climbed among the Pyramids of Giza. I bathed elephants in Thailand. I hiked through the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. I gazed upon the most beautiful vistas in Cape Town. I finally understood what I wanted to do with my life. And I made countless friends along the way.

Each of my adventures so tremendously different from the one before it. Each concurrently stealing a piece of my heart, and building a part of my soul.

Cheers to you, 2018.

525,600 Minutes: 2018, A Year in Review