Thank you @stevenmosoes for this wonderful contest to recap how the year went for us.

My 2018 has being indeed a great one with several experiences, learning, helping others and encountering some painful moments. I will be talking about my achievements and my failures but will love to start from the achievements because they are more than my failures for the year 2018.

My Achievements

* Meeting New Friends On The Steem and Whaleshares Platform

Coming in contact with the steem and whaleshares platform is one major achievement for me in the year 2018 because it opened doors for other achievements for me and also meeting my financial needs through the people I met.

I joined the steem platform early February this year through lordidama1 in my search to raise money for my extra year in school because I had an issue in school due to finances that lead to me spending an extra year in the university.

I joined the platform since I was good in writing but the earning was not favorable enough because I was still new. I met some friends and they advised me to make an appeal to raise my school fees. I did the appeal APPEAL FOR 50 SBD TO HELP PAY MY SCHOOL FEES AND MY ACCOMMODATION FEE OFF CAMPUS then three great people on steemit saw it ( @paradise-found, @hefziba and @mickyscofield ) gave me steem dollar(SBD) donations which I used to pay my school fees.

As time went on, @paradise-found whom I regarded as my steemit father sent me steem and sbd at intervals to help in my schooling. @hefziba who is a doctorate degree holder in Pharmacy and a mother of two from Netherlands wrote an open letter to me " A Letter To A Steemit Friend On The Other Side Of The World " and pledged to be sending me all earnings from her blog which she was faithful to.

Also on the whaleshares platform i have met great friends both within and outside of Nigeria and have opened me up to opportunities of learning and improving.

* Improvement On My Writing Skills

I opened a blog last year on Google blogger Inspiration And Stories where I was writing stories and inspirational write ups, but as Google Adsense delayed approval of my blog for earning I abandoned the blog.

When I came on the steem platform my writing ability improved because I try as much as I could to write at least five articles a week and more so being on the whaleshares platform. With time I was able to put up an article of 300 words plus in less than 30 minutes. Funny enough I was studying Mathematics and Statistics in the university but that didn’t stop me from improving on my writing.

* Helping The Needy

The love I received from people made me develop a compassionate heart for the needy ones because I was at some point hungry last year and in need, so I understood what it means not to have. When the prices of steem and steem dollars were high, I was able to help friends who had nothing to eat and were struggling in school. I remember one of the days, I went to the market with a lady who was in my fellowship and I bought food stuffs for her and at other points I gave out cash to friends to help them with their school work.

Around March or April of this year, @mickyscofield (known as @micky on wls) won a contest on the steem platform and with that; I, himself and a few others used the Steem he won to visit an orphanage here in Niger State of Nigeria with some food items as seen in the images below. I felt so happy after the visit because we were able to help the needy.

After that visit, we brainstormed on how to help more needy people and that gave birth to the Steemminna initiative to help the needy around us. So we got a few sponsorship and we visited a primary school with a tailor, were we selected 20 children who had bad uniforms/no uniform and those without school sandals. A week and few days later we went back to distribute the uniforms and school sandals to the selected children as seen in the images below. However, we couldn’t do more because we didn’t get any further sponsorship due to the fall of steem/sbd prices.

* Acquiring New Skills

This year I learnt new skills online. I met the person that brought me to the steem platform ( lordidama1 ) on a telegram group where I was learning how to trade cryptocurrency on binance, cryptopia and other trading platforms. With the knowledge I got, I was able to buy the android phone that I have being using since January of this year.

I have being learning about Forex and binary trading for a while now, lost some cash when I started learning in March but on daily basis I have being improving better than I started. I also learnt little about web design and with that knowledge; I am able to detect scammers online by carefully examining any website link I receive. I also got to know the differences between https and http and the risk involved, and how to avoid one’s online accounts from being hacked.

* Learning Life Real Experiences

Spending an extra year in the university taught me some real life experiences because I faced hunger and the project supervisor I was given to supervisor my work made life so terrible and miserable but I learnt the need of patience and consistency when dealing with tough people. I also learnt the following

• Every failure we encounter in life is meant to build us to be better people and not to kill us.

• Your last failure was a success teacher and not a life partner.

• You may not value what it means to give until you come to the point of not having.

• Be nice to everyone that you come across in life because they may be God’s means of answering your prayers.

• The people who refused to help you when you needed financial help were only trying to tell you that Every millionaire started small, so be the next millionaire

My Failures

Despite the successes that I highlighted above, I still had some failed moments in the year 2018.

* Unable To Finish A Book In A Month

At the beginning of the year I made a decision that I must always finish at least a book in a month but I couldn’t keep to that because I was busy on how to raise money online and to help others. So I was able to finish only about five books from January till now.

* I Was Angry At Some Point

I use to be the angry type many years back which I worked on but last year due to the many frustrations I faced financially, academically and emotionally, I became angry most times and it even resulted to a fight last year December with a neighbor. I felt so bad because the last time I remember fighting with any one was about 12 years ago when I was still in junior secondary school. This year I made a decision not to be angry yet the attitude of people made me offended, but I tried all to easily forgive and reconcile with the person who I offended or who offended me.

The above were the achievements and the failures I encountered in the year 2018. Although there are still more to write but due to time constraints, and to avoid boring you with too much talk, I will stop here.

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