Thoughts and Musings

Content Creation 2026; Reflection Goals

Just recently, one of my closest friends and roommate in college sent me a photo with the caption: end of an era. The photo was a comparison of his newest loose leaf tea infuser with a bottom spout looking all neat and slim and new, and right besides it was the old loose leaf tea infuser, so cloudy and wide and to be honest a bit clunky. But this was the tea infuser he would always have in the fridge with barley tea in it. I remember the nights of joy and nights of stress and even nights of deep sadness with this teapot between us. Nights of us cooking dinner together, nights of us coming back from a donut run down the street or a taco truck in the area.

I told him he should throw it off his 2nd story balcony from his apartment. He sent me a video back of him chucking it 5 feet into his kitchen trash bin. End of an era.

I say all this because it's a reminder that I'm getting old. We're getting old. Time is short. There's lots of things I haven't done yet. Lots of things I want to do. Things that I think I won't be able to do or feel that I should have done it years ago so I feel like I can't do it.

One of those things is just existing on the internet making things. You know that one meme hat that's like "ever since I was small child I knew that I wanted to be indoors on the computer". The internet was my childhood, and while it may seem like sad to some, for me it was one of the few places when I was younger where I felt like I could express myself. Through niche forums, through games, through chatrooms, through just making silly things and getting some reactions out of them. It was an era that I am glad was there for me at the time, but one that I feel doesn't (and with the way the world is turning out to be shouldn't) exist anymore.

Past that era I started creating and being on the internet less as I picked up a new social presence through being in band, but it started a new era I was into: let's plays. Inspired by duoes and groups and not so much solo youtubers but some, I always dreamed of doing what they were doing. Playing games with a partner, editing compact videos, and sending out to the world. At the time though, I had way other pressing responsibilites but I always kept that idea in the back burner.

I would say that that era ending when I graduated college, and maybe I started that transition into my next era when I graduated high school. By then, I had started trying to develop a brand as Mog Knight - the Kupo Brand. Kupo Writes, Kupo Talks, then eventually Kupo Cafe. I started streaming in 2022 after I got my first vtuber avatar (though I did some streams before then). I uploaded covers, did some streaming over the summers, and I would say got to a spot where I finally feel comfortable doing all this "content creation" stuff. Not entirely successful numbers-wise one might say, but I started to have fun expressing my dumb and silly self in this way.

So now, 2026 has come. I have come to my crossroads with everything that I have done so far. Continue on this era? Or start anew?

Continuing would mean continue my pace of sporadic streams and inconsistent content until the summer where I do the bulk of my work. Starting anew would mean giving it a real serious try of growth and being known and being involved in this community sphere of whatever.

To be honest, I'm so heads and tails about it. I've been so heads and tails about it for a really long time.

Looking back at my goals for 2025 (and even on 2024's, which is posted on my thoughts and musings page), I feel like I've accomplished most of my streaming goals. But to be honest, I don't feel all the most fufilled with them. Happy to reach those small number milestones, happy to have streamed and do all those music streams too. But looking at the big picture, I ask myself "what's the end goal"? Big following? Making friends? What is it do I really want?

bless ups to Kai, whom I met this year and is super cool check out her streams~

Something I realized over my time on the internet is that if I set my focus on numbers, often times I either get short-term happiness seeing something I made pop off or reaching a milestone, or I enter a moderate phase of depression and self-doubt. I've gotten better on managing it, but sometimes it still stings. Motivation opportunity, right? But this year, I don't want to set a numbers goal. Maybe a small nothingburger one, just to be a bit silly.

I did also mention in my goals for last year to join and be a part of a community, and to start my own. I struggled with this last year, partially because I was so focused on my job that I didn't have time to really be active on the internet and peoples' spheres and partially because I have a long record of social anxiety that sometimes gets really bad to where I intentionally and unintentionally ghost people. To be honest as well, I don't see myself as a good community leader in the sense that I don't think I can pull off that role as good as others due to my own personal time and responcibillites in my own life. When I am in charge of something, of course I want to do a real good job at it. I have the skills to be a leader and community member, but I have other focuses in life that take up more of my time. Sometimes when I get home my social battery is so drained that the last thing I want to do hop on in a chatroom full of people or be in a group voice chat. Maybe this year will be different as I feel like my job is more stable compared to last year. But maybe not a repeat of that goal again. So, what is it that I want to do with all this vtubeing and writing and music-making and everything else that constitute as "content"?

Honestly, I think with all the uncertainty looking into this year and probably with my growing age I don't feel like setting resolution goals and locking myself down for the entire year. This year I will make it as simple as I can: Go With the Flow.

This means when I have a thought in my head, just do it. Work on it. Test it out. Write it down for later. Make it happen. Heck what others think. Just do it. Heck if it's awful or messy. Just do it.

I want to approach 2026 with this mindset. I've been dealing with anxiety and depression a whole lot to the point where I end up doomscrolling or just laying in bed clutching at my pillows. It's fine to do that from time to time, but when my brain is yelling at me to get up and do something - listening to that voice more I think will help me get out of funks like that. After all, there's a difference between peaceful relaxing versus being trapped in my own thoughts. Go with the flow.

One of my professors started off his first day lecture like this: action conquers fear. At the time I thought it was just like a silly obvious thing. But looking back at it, I find that it is a truth that I keep on repeating to myself. Also because he was a weirdo in his own right but that's a story for another time. Go with the flow.

We'll see what happens this year, but I want to make it a good one for me. To be more in control of my brain, and to keep on understanding myself even better. To work with the energy inside of me, postitive and negative, so that I can continue on my quest of peace of mind.

To end things off, do you wanna know why I starting doing all this stuff even before the vtubing? When I was really young, like elementary school age, I had a thought pop up in my head: if I disappeared right now, would anyone care? I was never suicidal, I never had thoughts of self-harm. But I had a real issue of wanting to disappear. Wanting people to not care about me. Just wanted everything to stop, and for the people I cared about to continue on with their lives as if nothing ever happened. This was a dangerous mentality to have. I cared about the people who shown me kindness and love, but I always felt like they could do so much better than me. Sometimes I distance myself from those same people because I saw myself as a bother. My opinions didn't matter, what I wanted to do didn't matter. They were better off with others. For the longest time, I tried to make myself a kind of loner and really camouflaged myself as if to make myself not stick out. That's why I never really talked to other people (aside from my single-sided deafness), and that's why I was a bit reclusive. Labeled as shy because if it too, but if they saw me on the forums or on the chatrooms I loved to yap and discuss. Taking away the physical barrier of socialization was why I got so into the idea of being on the internet. I could be who I wanted to be, or at least thought I was, while in these online social spaces. I got into clans and groups and became a regular on certain small spaces online.

Once I started to get better mentally and began to develop self-confidence, I found that I have a desire to express myself. But those thoughts still remain in my brain. Even now, I find myself fantizing about deleting my social media accounts, delete every trace of me online despite me being on here for so many years. Would anyone even notice? Would they even care? To that, I answer back: yes, you dummy.

Human connection in this world of growing technology is growing more on the negative side, I find. The growing of AI technology, people losing a sense of decorum in internet spaces, and so many places that fester so much negative energy is all worlds apart from the small internet spaces I grew up in. But still, I want to put myself out there and find those people who I can connect and relate to. Maybe there's people out there with that same idea. That's why I decided to become a vtuber, to put myself out there. To create my dumb things. To sing my dumb songs, To be my dumb silly self. I want to be a positive force in the world, in this community. I want to make you laugh. To talk and think about things critically. To teach people that you can be doing all this music stuff too. Ultimately, those are my end goals. Ultimately, I just really want to be the best me I can be on here.

So, 2026 - my resolution this year in content creation is to go with the flow. Do what I want to do, and if other want to join me on this ride I'll gladly take them. I'll still be doing my summer bonanza, I'll be posting a short cover every week on my Youtube, and I'll be writing more on this site. Don't worry about consistency this year. Don't worry about growing this year numerically. Just have fun,.

Happy New Years, thank you for reading. Thank you to my family and my closest dearest friends who have stuck by me this year and years past despite me being who I am. Thank you to all the new friends I met along the way on this path of being a silly little Mog on the internet.

And as always: Stay Frosty.

Love,

Moguri Rayes aka Mog Knight

Mog Night, sleep tight~

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