Thanks, 2016.

2016 having been all sorts of terrible is pretty much a meme at this point. There was (and continues to be) plenty of suffering and upsets to go around even for those of us who aren’t too fazed by celebrity deaths, but the year certainly posed some personal challenges for me, as well.

Coming into 2016 I was already suffering from a lack of motivation to study due to a number of problems with my new department at my university. (I first studied mathematics for a few years with the intent to become a teacher, then discovered language technology and in 2014 decided to switch my major subject to that instead.) My university has recently had its funding cut rather severely, and the staffing issues manifested as poor teaching quality and very few classes being offered. This left me feeling generally lost, and I couldn’t help wondering whether I’d made a truly shitty life decision in abandoning my math studies. As a result, Twitch and streaming played a much bigger part in my life at this point than my university studies.

At the very beginning of 2016, however, my department finally got a couple of new professors, and many of the classes I needed for my degree were finally going to be offered in the spring term. I was desperate to advance my studies and actually learn something, and fortunately I was not disappointed. I was finally feeling more optimistic about my studies instead of being on the brink of quitting, although my newfound resolve was of course soon tempered by my injury. My hand and wrist pain was increasingly affecting my studies, streaming, gaming, skating; I couldn’t use a keyboard or mouse for more than a few seconds without a kind of burning, tingling pain setting in. By the end of the spring it was affecting my everyday activities, to the point where it was preventing me from sleeping. Despite this, I foolishly made grand plans to stream full-time in the summer, although in June I finally had to face my situation and see a doctor. I was told the only way to start the healing process was to completely avoid using my hand and arm for several weeks, so in July I took the plunge and spent almost a month as a one-handed lefty.

As I was resting, I couldn’t help but think about worst-case scenarios in which I’d have to give up on becoming a language engineer after all, quit streaming, essentially avoid any computer usage, and such. Once it became evident that the break wasn’t really helping at all, I started to feel a kind of desperation and resignation that sucked pretty much all energy and joy out of me. I knew I needed to get to work on my bachelor’s thesis and I had courses coming up which would require a lot of coding, typing and writing, and at the same time I felt like I had lost my momentum on Twitch. I also had to quit ice skating in the spring mostly due to the injury and a lack of funds, so it really felt like everything that was important to me was slipping away – all while I was just sitting at home not doing much. My inability to work also led to financial difficulties, so by autumn I was mostly just feeling hopeless.

This misery, however, was truly at odds with my concurrent experiences as part of the GameChangers program, for example. Which brings me to the good – or even mindblowingly amazing – things that happened to me this year.

I think it was sometime in March that I first got some mysterious PMs from BioWare producer ehlien/Billy, which included inquiries about whether I have a valid passport and such. (Which naturally freaked me out.) I won’t go into detail about the program itself in this post; I do plan to write out and/or make a podcast about my GameChangers experience at some point, but for now you can check out an archived Twitch broadcast on the topic if you want to know more. In short, I got to visit each of the three studios working on Mass Effect: Andromeda as part of a small, handpicked team in order to play-test the game and provide early feedback. I first got to travel to Edmonton in May, then Montreal in July, then finally Austin, Texas in October. Words can’t really describe what a unique opportunity it was to not only get a glimpse of ME:A‘s development and the chance to actually influence it, but to spend quality time with the developers and gain so much insight into what BioWare does. I’d also never been outside of Europe before, so while we didn’t get to see much of the locations other than the studios and their immediate environments, it was still incredible to travel across the pond and back three times within six months. As a bonus, on the way back from Austin I had a stopover in New York City, which is the home of a long-time online friend of mine, whom I got to meet IRL for the first time and spend a few merry hours with. I will treasure these experiences forever, and clearly they were a highlight of the year – if not my entire post-Mass Effect life.

Nevertheless, to my dismay even the GameChangers events were somewhat tempered by my hand pain. After the period of rest (that didn’t work), August finally brought some significant changes in that department as well. My father-in-law hooked me up with an OMT physiotherapist he vouched for, whom I ended up going to twice. After examining me more thoroughly than any doctor ever did, he told me the problem was not with my wrist and hand, but instead with my shoulders and neck. A few years ago I’d suffered a repetitive strain injury in my right shoulder due to a summer job I had, which had left some nerves damaged and the muscles in the shoulder area weakened. I did receive treatment for it at the time, but I terminated the rehabilitation once the pain was mostly gone. Then I got my first desktop computer in late 2013, which was when things started going downhill. Apparently my joint hypermobility makes me very ill-suited for stationary work and thus prone to problems in the neck/shoulder area; I didn’t even realize how utterly tense those muscles had become and how it was limiting my movement until the physiotherapist started working on them. It was illuminating to see how the range of my arm swings clearly increased after he got the muscles in my shoulder joint to loosen up a bit. The reason my hand was also affected was because the nerves got pinched all the way back in the shoulder area, which resulted in the disorder extending all the way to my fingertips.

The therapist’s brutalizing of my shoulders and neck provided some relief and a starting point for further treatment, but he stressed that it has taken a long time for the muscles and nerves to get this way, so it’s going to take a long time to undo. Regular, careful exercise and awareness of my posture are key to not only healing this condition, but also to continually preventing this from happening again in the future. (To illustrate, I previously thought I had excellent posture and that surely it had nothing to do with my hand, but it turned out my neutral position was in fact constantly hurting my shoulder, as my weakened muscles aren’t doing what they should be doing. Fixing that still requires a lot of conscious effort.) I had a very intense autumn term at the university which necessitated plenty of mouse/keyboard usage and unfortunately counteracted the healing, but for the first time since these problems started I feel like I’m on the right track. Thanks to regular exercise and stretching, I can fully extend my arms to the side with just minor unpleasant tingling – a motion that would cause me to gag just a year prior. Looking back, I’m grateful I got the help I needed before things escalated further – just having hope that I’ll get through it eventually has made all the difference in the world.

As a side note: a positive effect of The Break That Didn’t Work was that since I couldn’t cook my own food, I discovered an African lunch restaurant very near us which we got absolutely crazy about. I don’t think anyone who has followed my streams in the past few months has been able to avoid me raving about “The African Place™” at least a couple of times. We went there so often they started giving us discounts, and whenever they serve our favorite dessert (a type of Nigerian deep-fried dough), we’re offered to take some of it with us. After we came home from Texas, even the reclusive “Mama Africa” of the kitchen came out to say they’d missed us while we were away. Good stuff.

Another positive thing to happen this year was that my mom started actively watching my streams and even participating in chat.

For background, I’m generally extremely introverted and notoriously bad at keeping in touch with people I care about. My studies and other activities were obscure to most people around me even before I got into videogames and Twitch, and I’m not very good at talking about things that fall outside of my core fields of interest. Since streaming had become a big part of what I devote my time to each day, I felt like a chasm was growing between my mom and me: I couldn’t talk to her about what happened in a friend’s channel today, or how this new person in chat was really nice and knowledgeable, or how I’m sad that today’s stream didn’t go so well, or how I’m excited to try out my new digital audio workstation. My mood would usually reflect whatever was going on with my channel at the time, and there was no easy way to explain it to someone who was completely outside of the phenomenon.

I first told her about my streaming career in mid-2015 when I had acquired enough funds for a new desktop PC, but it went mostly over her head and she still didn’t quite understand why I never answered the phone in evenings anymore. It was in January about a year ago that I first suggested mom make a Twitch account so she could really see what streaming is about, but it wasn’t until a little later that I gave her the Twitch 101 and she first checked my channel out while I was live. She participated little or not at all in the first few months, but in the autumn she suddenly started coming by more – probably in large part because my regulars were very welcoming and nice to her. To my great surprise she took to chatting and even emote usage rather quickly (she interjects “Kappa” when we talk in real life these days!) and she seemed to genuinely enjoy hanging out despite not understanding much of what was going on game-wise. It was extremely liberating to know that she accepted, understood and supported what I was doing, and in a way she sees more of me now than she ever did since I moved out six years ago.

The 2016 autumn in general turned out to be a very interesting and busy season for me – a little too much so at times. My birthday stream in late September was nuts: as mentioned earlier I was afraid my channel was dissolving due to my absence, but the weeks leading up to my birthday really brought my self-confidence back. I had started saving up for a new and and more powerful gaming PC, tentatively hoping to be able to upgrade in time for ME:A‘s release, and on my birthday my community basically donated the goal of 1,200€ in one go. The nagging unease I’d felt over my injury and lack of streams was greatly alleviated by the general support I received since returning at least part-time, for which I still am very grateful. I was also very fortunate that by then controller mods were available for each of the Mass Effect games, since without them I have no idea what would’ve become of my streaming. (The pain when handling a mouse/keyboard was simply becoming too much.)

I had been a little overzealous in my course selections for the autumn term, however, and for most of October-December I had a very hard time finding windows to stream or just relax in general. Immediately after my birthday I additionally had some private issues, which caused me an unusual amount of anxiety over a period of several weeks. They were ultimately peacefully resolved for the most part, and I have some close friends to thank for getting through it relatively quickly. But while the past few months have been trying in many ways, there were also significant highlights other than my birthday: as mentioned the Texas trip took place in October, which is when I got to meet the GameChangers crew again, most notably my fellow Mass Effect streamer sizesixteens. My husband DarksignHunter/Nik was traveling with me, and we took an extra day in Austin to spend it with size and check out the city before returning home. We had a wonderful time: as we got into size’s car (he was kind enough to drive us around) he surprise-gifted us the Battlestar Galactica boardgame, after which we visited some key sights and enjoyed a meal at Torchy’s Tacos. I still find it hard to believe that actually happened, but fortunately there’s evidence. On N7 day not much later, we were at long last(!) allowed to tell our friends and communities about the real reason we had disappeared for a week at a time on a few occasions earlier in the year.

I was also looking forward to Christmas much more than I normally do, in part because the autumn was very stressful, and in part because I was going to properly introduce mom to Mass Effect. I usually spend at least Christmas Eve and Day with my family; this time I stayed three nights so we had time to complete ME1. In just under 18 hours we got the minimum of a meaningful playthrough – I let mom handle most dialogue as well as explore the SSV Normandy a bit. She definitely surprised me with some choices, being mostly neutral, but she saved the Council at the end (and we did reload when Wrex was accidentally killed on Virmire). She later mentioned that she now understands modern videogames a bit better, and that gameplay aspects like doing side missions makes more sense to her now. There was a lot of exposition to take in, but she enjoyed the story and is looking forward to ME2, so I’d call it a success!

Finally, on the second-to-last day of the year I finally had the time to sit down and properly look into PC parts. While I was at it I decided to just go ahead and order everything once all the kinks were hammered out, so now I’m just waiting for it all to arrive. Special thanks to transam617, Nadeslos, and JGDD for spending a highly non-trivial amount of time and energy on helping me sort the specs out. Can’t wait to assemble it!

All in all, while I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling a little apprehensive about some developments going into 2017, I’m personally very grateful for 2016. Some troubled times were endured, just like any other year, but difficulties were overcome and the extraordinary or simply good things that happened to me will stay with me forever.

(As a final note, my favorite synchro team also had a £%¤&-ing amazing space travel-themed routine! They claimed silver in the World Championships, but their choreography was officially the best of the 2016 season. [Teardrop])

Thanks for reading & happy new year.

♥ —star