Breathe

morning.

Clay woke up completely entangled in his sheets, almost to the point where he couldn't move. The layers acted as a straight-jacket around him, pinning his arms to his chest and keeping him immobilized. It was comforting, in a weird, twisted way. The feeling of being embraced was not a familiar one to him.

Sitting up, Clay took a deep breath. It was morning, and that meant that yesterday was done. He made it past another long day and into a new one. But you never know, he thought, today could be different.

He managed to get himself out of bed and into the kitchen, where he poured his coffee and sat alone at his table. He thought about his day, about George, about the house, about last night, about George...

Clay snapped out of it. He couldn't think about last night, at least not now. It was morning, meaning opportunity bloomed. It was actually a good time to stream, now that he thought about it. A morning stream ? That might be nice, he convinced himself as he stood up and went back into his bedroom towards his monitors. 

Clay's setup was really nice, and, on that note, really expensive. Since Clay lived in an apartment on the first floor, he had to be quiet, or at least give people the notion that he was being quiet. A while back, he had purchased noise-cancelling foam pads to put on his wall. They were about $30 each, and he needed at least twenty. They lined the walls and ceiling around his monitors so as to provide as much soundproofing as possible.

He had three monitors- the one on the left was for managing streams and editing ONLY. Nothing else went on that monitor. The one in the middle was for playing Minecraft/screen-sharing during streams. He would also edit on this monitor. Finally, the third monitor was for playing music, doing research during streams, and any other miscellaneous jobs that didn't fit into the other two monitors. His keyboard had LED lights underneath the keys, which created a really cool ambiance in his room. He had run LED strips of lights around his monitor area as well, so he didn't really need the overhead lights if he had his LEDs on. They provided plenty of light.

He flopped into his chair and pulled up discord. None of his friends were on, which made him second-guess his choice to stream. There wouldn't be anyone there, so the people watching the stream would be going purely for Clay, or in this context, Dream. Would people actually want to watch his content if it was just him? Would he lose viewers? What if he wasn't as entertaining as he used to be? What if his viewer-base was just getting too old for him? What if-

tw ~vomiting~

He didn't make it to the next what if. Next thing he knew, the half a cup of coffee was making its way back up. Clay scrambled for the bathroom and made it just in time. Everything he had eaten the night before also made an appearance as he heaved over the toilet. He dry heaved for a couple more minutes before finally sliding down next to the toilet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and running his other hand through his hair. 

That needed to come out, he thought, flushing the toilet and taking a deep breath before standing up slowly.

tw over

After he cleaned up, he wandered back into his room, full of ambition and drive. The adrenaline from throwing up coursed through his veins, causing him to immediately start streaming without any second thought. He pulled up StreamLabs, Twitch, and Minecraft before he sat down. He clicked over to Spotify to pull up some non-copyrighted music and began his stream.

"Hey, guys! Hi. Good morning, or afternoon, or evening, or whatever it is for you guys. How are you all?" he paused. "I am good! I got frozen yogurt yesterday, so that was great."

Clay hopped onto the SMP and worked a little bit on expanding his base. He streamed for just under two hours, and when he finished the stream, he sighed in relief.

The endorphins released from being live in front of 30,000 viewers were intense. He felt so much better than he had before he started streaming. There was a certain rush to being live, even if the camera wasn't on. He still was performing and entertaining and providing interesting content for thousands of people all over the world. At the same time though, it was exhausting. While there was a rush to being live, there was also pressure. Don't say this, don't say that, that's not funny enough, they didn't like that and so on and so forth. Even though streaming brought him great joy, there was anxiety behind it, so ending stream was always a bit relieving. 

Before he got off of his computer, Clay messaged Nick.

snapmap - 2:46 pm

me

hey, sorry again for snapping last night. i was wondering if you wanted to tell george about the house together ?? that way we can officially start packing etc

snapmap

yeah !! i'm down

They got on a voice call with George quickly to break the news. Nick mostly did all of the talking. Clay was super excited to move into the new house, as much as his anxiety wasn't. There was going to be food and space and light created between the three, and he looked forward to it more than anything. He just had to push through a little bit, tell his mind to be quiet and let his body do some of the work for once. It was simple, right?