How We Became Growl Louder Adventures: Part 3
Welcome to this week's journal and this one is lovingly known as the "Kasakari" era of how we came to be. Each leg of this journey represented changes that would ultimately lead us to where we are today, and also the journey I took mourning the loss of a son.
Kasakari was the gaming username I adopted forever ago when I started playing an online game called Final Fantasy 11. The first character I ever made, I randomized the name and it was Kasaro. The next day I had character creation remorse but I liked the first part of the name; "Kasa". It just kind of resonated with me I suppose. Eventually after playing with a what seemed like a million other names, finally I landed on one I liked; "Kasakari". And that has been the name that has stuck with me to this day on most games.
Now back to how this all comes together! I had been closed off to the world for several years, leaving myself to my thoughts, anger, guilt, and sadness. Those nightmares still periodically visiting, the bear still crying out from the cliffs, and seeing my son on that table. It was the most consistent thing in my life at the time, the rest all just kind of existed to me. I could hide behind long work hours, and escape to video games after. Thankfully I had already quit drinking some time back or I probably would have fell deeper into the bottle.
It was around that time that I started seeing people excited about a new streaming platform and the community around it was to be honest inspiring. It made me start to realize that in mourning Austin, I had stopped living. I was functioning, but there was no life left. there was no compassion, hope, faith, or anything else. I began to stream games again, I began to interact with folks, and with that came Porch Coffee daily posts.
The first component of Growl Louder Adventures and #GrowlLouder was born. Each andf every day, we would have the dogs out on the porch and I would post something to help folks get through the day. The mission is and will always be to show folks that there is a brighter day than the one we normally see, and a much better one than politicians, social media, and the media in general paint for us. They want us to feel like shit, they want us to doom scroll, they want to be able to control us through what they feed us. My mission is to show the other path, the brighter path, the path we could take if we chose to be about ourselves and our neighbor in the right ways instead of every possible wrong way.
So we streamed games, we promoted positivity, and we kept at that all while healing from the loss for a few years. Much like most gaming streamers, things never picked up despite a huge time investment and it became a job rather than something to enjoy. In time, we moved away from Twitter, Twitch, and Kick, and made our way back to You Tube and making videos which was much easier to commit to a schedule considering work hours. That marked the end of the Kasakari live streaming era, and the the first time I focussed solely on You Tube. We were still Kasakari at that time, but the seeds had already been planted for us to become much more.
I hope you all enjoy these journal entries and next week, we wrap up this mini series, with Part 4 of How we became Growl Louder Adventures. We get into the transition from gaming to exploration and treasure hunting, the road to becoming a prospector, and all of the other fun stuff! See you all next week and remember to make your day, do not let your day make you!
