[Hikari's Izakaya Diary] The Joy of Mooching Free Meals 2023/9/17

Didn't remember I'd forgotten to post my weekly diary until it was already the middle of the night. My brain's been crashing a lot lately — probably not enough nutrients, not enough exercise, not enough endorphins, the whole package. So today I'm just going to lead with a steak pic. This is from yesterday, when family came down south to visit and relatives treated us to dinner — look at the size of this steak, that glossy sear, a perfect medium (missed the shot of that part), and honestly the best part of all is that I didn't have to pay for it lol.

I've been working down south for a few years now, and since a lot of my relatives live down here, I genuinely get treated to meals all the time. And whenever friends pass through and swing by to grab food with me while I'm out here grinding away from home, they're always just as generous about picking up the check. I honestly can't count how much kindness and warmth I've been shown over the years at this point. So, to properly honor everyone's generosity, I've decided: every time I get the chance to mooch a free meal, I'm going to eat it to the absolute fullest, waste nothing — that's the best way I can pay it back. Guess I'm just fully embracing my role as a professional freeloader now www.

Last week I mentioned how the Shorts editing was going, and this week I'm actually starting to see some real results from it. Looking forward to pulling the numbers together in about two weeks and sharing them with everyone. But honestly, keeping up "one clip every two days" is still a grind. Today I hit that dreaded "running out of clips" moment again, so I scrambled to edit one out this afternoon — crisis averted, but tomorrow I'll be right back at it... this editing cycle just will not let me go.

I've also noticed lately that my gaming streams are pulling in more viewers, which honestly is a huge encouragement. I've always felt like my gaming content underperformed compared to everything else, with pretty low viewership, which is part of why I haven't done much of it over the past year or so. But lately, probably riding the wave of the whole Taiwan VTuber Triathlon buzz, I've picked up some viewers who genuinely enjoy watching me game, which has pushed me to branch out into more variety. After over a year of streaming, it's honestly such a good feeling to notice progress even in these small ways. Thanks for all the support, everyone — I'll keep playing more (and suffering through more) games going forward...