A Creator’s Tale Of Feeling A Little Lost

Finding The Motivation To Be Creative Again

Rogan Chahine
Sep 2, 2018 · 7 min read

Overall, I’m not satisfied unless I’m working on something creative. I don’t know if that’s because I am, by definition, a creative person, or I’d just like to be labelled as such.

I just know that thinking differently was the only thing I was ever really good at, or at least, I thought I was good at.

When I’m not doing anything with that, I feel like I’m nobody.

It’s a realization I recently had.

My Story

I graduated from a program called Creative Communications in 2017. The program constantly forces you to be creative. Problem solve. Write, design, edit, perform.

I was in my element.

I realize now that the pressures of school, the common ones like getting good grades and impressing people who may hire you one day, are great motivators to do cool shit.

I mean, not ALL of what I did was cool. Most of what I did was pretty stupid actually. Especially the web-series I created.

Dumb, dumb, really, really dumb.

Hallways Episode 3 was the most viewed episode. It’s also my favourite. It’s cool that I did this for marks.

But fun.

Fun, fun, really, really fun (there’s a rhythm to the way I read this. Very curious to see if it translates).

Anyway, when I graduated, I was pumped for like a week, then started to feel a little lost. I no longer had that pressure forcing me to create and, for whatever reason, I couldn’t summon any internal motivation to start anything (“summon…” who am I, Gandalf?).

Maybe it was because I was so focused on finding a job at that point. I was obviously excited when I landed one, but that added another thick layer of justification on top of my lack-of-motivation parfait.

“I can’t do the things I want to do because… you know… Long days at the office… and, and… I’m tired” and so-on and so-forth…

But I could still always make time for getting hamm’d on Wine Wednesdays (WW) and Thirsty Thursdays (TT)? Yeah… I ain’t buying it, me.

Sorry, off-track.

I would go to work, come home, and consume.

Consume TV shows and video games.

Movies and music.

I’d watch YouTube videos featuring people who were doing exactly what I wanted to do. I’d listen to podcasts about all the things I wanted to talk about.

Consume, consume.

All input and no output.

I longed to be on the other end of art. And at the time, I wasn’t.

By the way, this is all starting to sound like I was extremely unhappy with my life. Please know — I wasn’t. I was just a little unfulfilled creatively and frustrated with my lack of motivation. Getting hamm’d on WW and TT was still awesome. I wasn’t faking the fun times.

As I started to get more comfortable working 9 to 5, I slowly regained my motivation. I moved jobs a few times in pursuit of finding something both challenging and exciting, and I was finally able to focus on other things.

A lot of people who work in creative industries are also, believe it or not, creative on the side too.

Since I graduated, I feel like I’ve met so many amazingly talented and inspiring people. People who write so eloquently and take beautiful photos and shoot these uplifting, delightfully paced videos — maybe these are the pressures I needed to get rolling on something fun and exciting. Surrounding myself with other people doing awesome things motivated me to do the same.

Getting Started

I recently started Twitch streaming, and it’s sort of exactly what I’ve wanted in a creative project, and more.

I’m a huge gamer, however, I feel like a piece of shit for playing them so often. It goes against my whole “ I need to be a creative person” mantra.

I didn’t really know much about Twitch before I started streaming. I knew it was pretty popular, and I knew Ninja made a lot of money doing it, but that’s about all the knowledge I had on it.

I had been trying to get a YouTube gaming channel going with a few of my friends, but that never really panned out. And that’s what led me to Twitch.

I was looking for a platform that allowed me to play games, channel my creativity, and simply be myself.

Twitch.

The answer was Twitch.

That is the definition of Twitch.

I started a channel under my gamer name, Martennson, which, by the way, is something I adore about Twitch culture.

There is something so special about how the millions of people that are part of the millions of communities across Twitch refer to each other by their gamer names. Most of my viewers don’t even know that my name is Rogan.

On Twitch, I’m Martennson.

Some people think my actual name is Marten, which, I mean, is adorable, but also, false.

Off-track again. Sorry.

Starting out, I was really able to bring out some of that creativity my life was lacking. I designed all the assets for my channel — the banner, my offline image, some animated scenes to let people I’d be right back or that the stream was starting soon. I gave the channel a visual and tonal identity. Bright, clean, a little cheeky. It was cool. I loved putting myself in a position to make all of those decisions.

Once the channel was ready to go, and my PC was built (which was a process in and of itself. I’ll write a blog post about it later. Just know, it was expensive.), I started streaming.

I streamed a lot.

Like four times a week for around four hours each stream.

Playing GTA 5 with some of the amazing people I’ve met through streaming.

I met some amazing people. My good buddy (Cam, check out his Twitch channel too) and I started a Discord server together, which is essentially a chat platform with multiple channels on various topics that people can hang out in. It’s a good way to build a dedicated community.

And that’s exactly what I strived to do. Build a dedicated community.

I really tried hard to be engaging and make sure people came back. Getting recurring viewers was my main goal, and I’ve been, for the most part, achieving that since I started streaming.

However, I realized about a month and a half in that it had turned into less of a creative project, and more of a community management project.

But management is the wrong word for it.

Management implies that it was work, which it wasn’t.

It was just fun. It’s fun playing the games I love with the people I love even more. The people who, for some reason, watch my stream consistently simply because they like me.

It’s a great feeling.

But just under three months in, I started to feel burnt out. I focused too hard on the numbers, and less about how much fun I could have been having. I got down on myself when I wasn’t bringing in an average of at least 15 people per stream.

In case you don’t know, a 15 viewer average for a stream is high for a streamer of my size. Some streamers who have thousands of followers don’t even get an average of 15 per stream. I currently have 292 followers.

Around mid-June, I had a few larger streamers raid my channel, which meant they sent all their viewers to my stream once they were finished with theirs. It was a massive stroke of luck. They had found my channel browsing other streamers, and just decided I was the one. There wasn’t much to it on their end.

But for me, I hit the jackpot.

My peak viewership for that stream sat at around 290, which is insane for a small streamer. I was the number one most viewed Fallout 4 stream that day.

Here’s my reaction to one of the raids. Super awesome.

Following the raids, there was a period of around three weeks where I’d get an average of around 16 viewers per stream, and that became my expectation. Anything below that was disheartening.

Pushing myself so hard to reach my unrealistic goals was exhausting, so I had to take a step back. Take a break.

And now, here I am. Again, a little lost.

Onward

So why am I writing this?

Well, I honestly don’t really know how I got here. I was originally going to write something about how pumped I am for Cyberpunk 2077, but here we are.

(By the way, here’s some Cyberpunk gameplay. If you haven’t seen this, get ready for your whole butt to be blown off. It’s going to be dope.)

Anyway, I guess I wrote this because it’s good to feel lost sometimes. It forced me to search for the right path. Don’t be down on yourself for not being where you want to be. Just push hard to get there. That’s all you can do.

And that’s what I’m GOING to do.

But also, who am I to give you advice? Do whatever you think is right. All I can do is tell you what I know about how my brain works and how my life goes. Hopefully it can be of some help, and if not, oh well.

I’m also writing this because I’m feeling that creative itch again. I’ve decided that my Twitch numbers don’t matter because my stream will now be about having fun with the amazing people I’ve met doing it.

I love my Twitch community, and I’m still going to stream as often as I can, but my creative passion lies in words — putting them together and making them sound good beside one another.

Specifically, I’ll be writing video game-related content. With all the new games coming out — Spider-Man, Red Dead Redemption 2, Fallout 76, so many more—I’ll have a lot of content to cover.

I’m guessing some of you aren’t super into video games, and that’s cool. I appreciate you making it this far. I’ll let you know whenever I post something a little more broadly applicable.

I don’t know how Medium works yet. Follow me? You’ll be notified whenever something new comes out.

And finally, thanks for listening. I’ll see you when I’m looking at you.

Rogan Chahine

Written by

Just a silly guy writing about games. I’m a copywriter by day, streamer by night (and by day sometimes too but that sounds less cool… this sounds less cool.)

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