Who am I because of Steemit?
There is a lot of talk surrounding Steemit and Whaleshares, some of you may be sick of hearing the dramas by now. Well, don't worry, I'm not going to delve into comparisons between the two or why one is better than the other. This is because I don't particularly care.
Instead, I'll be sharing my thoughts on how Steemit helped me grow into the thinker I am today.
You can listen to me chat about this instead of reading if you like. One take as always.
I joined Steemit in December 2017. Naive and uneducated in the art of writing, expressing, and interacting. This was something I worked on in the early months of the platform and it's become an understanding that is still developing over time. So where did I start?
My first idea, and a series of sorts, was my Daily Knowledge Blasts. These were my way of condensing down books, typically self-help and development, into short 5-10 minutes reads. I grabbed the 5% of good information from these books and then presented an easily digested post for people to learn from.
The posts themselves weren't too bad for an amateur, but damn they could be much better (we'll get to this later).
They changed over the months as I started to improve my writing style, my post design/format, and also because I was discovering how to express myself easier through text. I also began to form values and principles that would aid me in my next endeavors.
My next step was joining The STEEM Engine community.
I decided to take engagement and interaction seriously after following a user named spiritualmax. He joined in the same month I did and was growing at a much faster rate. It was obvious that I needed to make some changes.
My morning routine changed and my first port of call was to visit the post-promotion channel in The STEEM Engine discord. This is where I would visit 3-4+ posts, comment on both Steemit and in discord, and would sit and drink my first coffee of the day.
After doing this for a while, I started to form my next idea. The community BuddyUP. The support I gained from The STEEM Engine in the early stages motivated me massively and helped to get the ball rolling for our community.
The initial idea of BuddyUP was to help members connect and pair up with people they wouldn't have usually stumbled onto. Some people find it hard to connect in #general-chats and they miss out on friendships they could make.
We somewhat achieved this by creating a pairing bot in our discord which would, like the name states, pair you up with another member who was registered to the bot.
This was our core. Something that I neglected and let slide as time progressed. Business mistake numero uno.
I worked on our Discord server and incorporated different features, roles, rewards, you name it, but I neglected the cog in the engine which made sense to our community. Pairing people up. Buddying them up...
My energy and mindset over time drove the community in a weird direction. A direction which put more focus on the community account and our communities values, rather than the values I was living in at that time. It's funny because I was projecting the need to engage and connect with others, but that was the one thing that was lacking from myself as I poured more time into the communities account and the server.
We brought rewards into the server in the form of the BTS BuddyUP token. This was earned by members for their participation in the various features and for their engagement with others in the server. It worked out for a little while, we had a system going, members were earning tokens, but we were just another community like the ones already out there. The difference being that their communities had a leader who was interacting and driving them forward on the back of their own personal stake.
Towards the end of the BuddyUP token era, where we restructured the server and started to focus on our communities content more, I started another project which required more of my time. Myself, wolv and penderis started up the account @themonstertrader, over on Steemit.
Check it out here, this was a lot of fun.
We brought a goblin to life in the form of a Steem Monsters auctioneer and made some great strides forward with it as the SM community began. Time got the better of us though, alongside other commitments, and we faded away as the official market was released.
After this, I decided to start creating graphics for the Steem Monsters community and ended up making a whole bunch of dividers and avatars that the community still uses to this day.
This was all happening while we were restructuring the BuddyUP community and aiming for daily content. Myself and some of the members who were there from the very beginning started to incorporate a different approach in the server. When members reached the top role, they unlocked a channel which had an application process for them to become a curator or writer for BuddyUP.
We had a great synergy in the core team and always kept on top of our quality. The problem was that it was all piling up the noise in my subconscious, all alongside personal troubles.
Ultimately, all of this led me into an abyss of a burnout. 3 months of pure numbness and the inability to express myself. Something I now reflect on as my negative-character. Not negative in that way, more like the negative of a photo. No light, no life.
It's interesting to think how our train of thought and the definitive mindsets we hold in the present, shape stages of our lives which we can't ever change or edit.
I returned to the platform and started small. My motor was in first gear and my mindset was adjusted to limitations. The first thing I found difficult was writing. It was hard to express myself via text when I'd spent months away from it in limbo with my thoughts.
This is when my voice appeared.
My plan was to record myself speaking about the posts I was visiting. Nothing major, just a screencast and voice recording sharing what was on my mind and what I liked about their posts. The initial recordings are a hoot, I'll share one of my favourites below.
I started this on Steemit under the name 'Rebuilding' and I managed to share a couple of them on the platform before I made the switch over to Whaleshares. My one-take recordings were the ultimate way to honestly express myself in the rawest form. This unlocked a part of me which changed my perception of what true engagement is. I found it exciting and freeing.
So how did I feel when I joined Whaleshares after the experience I gained from Steemit?
My first post was Rebuilding. I brought the idea over to Whaleshares and I decided to start up the series with the same intentions as I had on Steemit, that of connecting and learning.
Then something happened, a nudge from the universe I guess.
I went back to my old Daily Knowledge Blast posts and saw the opportunity to repost them over here on Whaleshares, remastering them of course and formatting the posts so that they were even more impactful and easily digested. Compressing the compressed so to speak.
This was the first one I picked, Born For This, and here is the remastered version, Have you found your hustle yet?.
The universe kicked into gear and passed something over in the ether in the form of a idea. The book, The ONE Thing somehow popped into my mind while I was processing the information that I had shared almost a year earlier. The book itself is fantastic, but the one thing I remember from that book is this:
Imagine a long string of dominos lined up one after the other, with each one progressively 1.5x larger than the last. If you were to knock down the first two-inch domino, you would set off a chain reaction that would, by the 57th iteration, produce enough force to knock over a domino stretching the distance between the earth and the moon.
The brief segment that gave me the idea for @domino. It complimented the action I was already taking and finding value from in Rebuilding.
This changed a few things though. Rebuilding was no longer about rebuilding. It had turned into reinventing, reinvigorating, and resonating with the fresh mindsets here in the Whaleshares community. It provided a change in my mentality. No longer was I working out of the numbness and lack of expression that I was previously in. I was now re-moulding my voice and my character.
Re-moulding myself using the insights and knowledge that I had gained from my previous experiences.
What about BuddyUP?
BuddyUP is still rolling. We have changed our approach and became more of a social community. Focuses have been refreshed and we've already begun the process of changing how much time we spend on growing the community. We still have our weekly show, Drop in the Ocean, and we have some plans for the future when time permits.
I want to get back to our core idea eventually to provide an opportunity for people to meet others that they may never have bumped into.
Where I have fallen short, I haven't drowned. The reflection in the water helps you have a good hard look at where you've been suffocated before.
I'm still growing.
There are still little steps being taken and I'm cautious of where I put my efforts. We are complex creatures but we only have a limited amount of willpower each day.
Steemit helped shape me. It helped me turn ideas into concepts. It helped me form friendships and alliances.
Steemit tested me. It held questionable opinions, characters, mindsets, and dramas that sapped away at my energy.
Steemit helped to break me. Add some enlightening shit right here.
Thank you for reading/listening if you have, it's a bit of a long post for many but I wanted to get some things off my chest.
I've left the post fairly unedited and raw because that's just how I do. You can make your own mind up about me and leave a comment if you'd like to find out more.
edit: I've edited the post so it's a little easier to read, but I didn't change the original message too severely. The only thing I would add would be a message saying how truly grateful I am for the support and friendships I found on Steemit.
Your opinion is celebrated and welcomed, not banned or censored!