Write It Down First, Think Later

There are things people do when the new year arrives.

Chief among them: setting fresh goals befitting a brand-new year. Swept up in that New Year energy, they catch fire with passion and draft plans of staggering, magnificent scale.

A kind of bucket list, you could call it. Not so different from making a wish while the New Year's Eve bells toll. Same general spirit as checking your fortune on some website, or getting your saju read at a place rumored to be especially accurate.

This year I'm going to lose weight. This year I'm going to get a certification. Everyone steeling their resolve. That was why gyms always packed out at the start of the year.

And I was no exception. I hadn't escaped the New Year's atmosphere either.

As a human being, I had to admit I wasn't all that different from ordinary people. I shared roughly the same sensibilities, roughly the same way of thinking, roughly the same patterns of behavior.

Which is to say—

"Hmm, anything else…? Come on, chat, give me some decent ideas."

I was currently drawing up my New Year's plans and goals.

Together with my viewers.

Truly, the wisdom of the crowd. Get enough people together and the ideas overflow. Of course I still had to filter out the ones that were clearly garbage, but the ability to hear a wide range of opinions and pick and choose was an enormous advantage.

What person on earth got to workshop their New Year's resolutions with twenty thousand co-conspirators? Even the chairman of some major conglomerate probably never had an experience like this.

…Or had he? In dramas, chairmen always had a private secretariat and a strategic planning office, so maybe the top brains in those departments did the heavy lifting for them.

Anyway, it wasn't a bad thing. Running a stream where I drafted New Year's plans when I had no real content prepared. Sure, I'd taken the idea from a single viewer and coasted on it — but coasting was a skill too. People who'd never done it always tried to freeload and ended up crashing and burning.

I called it freeloading, but the way a king listened to his retainers and incorporated their counsel, I too had heard my viewers out and put their ideas into practice. I had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a stake in this, is what I meant.

"No, that's not what I meant…."

Getting defensive over the freeloading accusation and opening my mouth had been the mistake. Leaving the viewers behind as they needled me about a fresh "controversy," I went back to filling out the plan sheet.

A fair point — but one with a visible gap in it.

"You don't get it. With plan sheets and bucket lists, the whole point is to write everything down first. Even if you can't actually pull it off, setting the goals big is where the flavor is."

"Dance reactions? Dancing? Fine, whatever. I'll write it down for now. Not like I promised I'd actually do it."

I added the demand the chat had been hammering on about for a while now as one more line. It wasn't locked in either way — something I might do, or might not.

Jotting things down at random like this served double duty: it fulfilled the stream content of building a New Year's bucket list, and it prepared me for the future.

Something to pull out on days when content was truly dry. An idea warehouse, basically.

Content was always like that — even the stuff you wrote down thinking this'll be fun carried the possibility of getting scrapped in an instant.

No matter how good an idea was, the circumstances might not cooperate when you actually tried to run it, or outside factors might force you to abandon it whether you wanted to or not.

So when the next absurd donation rolled in, I could accept it with a snort of laughter.

"Terrestrial TV? Isn't that harder than a million Vtube subs? You'd need connections at a network and all that. Fine, I'll write this one down too. Too messy? Bucket lists are supposed to be a chaotic mess. Weren't you listening earlier?"

Come to think of it, Ririyang had been the one to bring that up first. Just a few days ago, sitting right where I was sitting now, she'd slammed the desk and declared it with total confidence. Granted, she'd been completely wasted at the time.

Lately, ever since that stream, she'd supposedly been running a somewhat different style of broadcast. The people who'd flowed into her channel after our drinking stream weren't few, and the word "Broth" had even been newly designated as her fandom name.

As a result, Ririyang's viewer count had jumped and she was enjoying a second golden age. When I'd dropped in not long ago, her stream style had changed quite a bit too. Where she used to do soft, quiet broadcasts, now it was more like she was freely cussing out her chat.

Whether that was what she'd wanted or her new audience had strong-armed her into a different taste, it was a good thing either way. Ririyang, too, had made a fresh start befitting a new year.

In that sense, I couldn't afford to fall behind. I had to live hard too. I needed to try my best to actually carry out as many of the things written on this New Year's plan as I could.

"I think that's everything. Want me to read it back?"

You just happened to catch the right wave and ended up on TV, didn't you? Same as this time — I'd unintentionally tagged along with Ririyang, done an interview, and wound up on the news….

And yet the very next day at lunch, in a meeting with my editors, I was hit with some startling news.

"Um, boss. We've got a broadcast appearance offer."

"What kind of broadcast?"

Honestly, it was already strange from that point. If it had been a collab on another streamer's channel, or shooting a video together for a Vtube channel, she would have said "collab stream." The fact that she'd said "broadcast appearance offer" instead already meant something was off.

I was a little slow on the uptake. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Yu Sia continued, her voice calm but unable to fully hide her excitement.

"It's a program called Midnight Talk. On MTC — they air it every Thursday at eight p.m."

"Who's MTC…."

"MTC? That MTC?"

Kim Jae-jun, who rarely raised his voice, started making a fuss, and only after hearing the explanation that followed did it click.

Speak of the tiger and it appears — I'd been talking terrestrial TV with the viewers on yesterday's stream….

A terrestrial network had sent me an appearance offer.

To me.