On Fermented Cabbage, Writing & The Blockchain

Steem is a bit like sauerkraut. Homegrown stuff, you know, out of real cabbage. Plant a seed, wait an entire winter for it to grow, harvest in the Spring, slice with some kale and and add some fennel seeds and salt, and hope that it won't go mouldy. And then - wowsers. Awesome taste sensation that is good for you!

Wait what - steem is like sauerkraut? River, what the hell are you talking about? That's just it - I don't know. Maybe I have steem burnout. I wrote every day til the latest hard fork, like, every day. Obsessively. Without fail. And I had lots to talk about, and lots to say. Stories. Poems. Recipes. Psychobabble. And it was fun - I'm one of those rare people that don't really care about the rewards, but I've been pretty lucky with them. I've put them to good use, thankyou very much - I started a Tribe, of which I'm super proud.

Oh - maybe that's it. The cabbage needs to ferment. And that's what the Natural Medicine tribe has been doing. Not that they're all cabbages, far from it - but all those hardworking people in the jar have made something pretty tasty. Good things have to sit for a while to truly bring out the flavours.

Perhaps I'm just a little tired of writing and reading. It's hard to give everyone a bit of love. You end up stretched quite thin. Like you can stuff and stuff and stuff brassica in the jar and it's still not quite reaching the top. There's cabbage floating to the surface and despite your best efforts to weigh it down to shut the lid it keeps floating to the top. So you just give up and hope for the best. Hope you haven't offended anyone or neglected anyone. Sit it in a dark corner overnight while you rest. I'm overworked and tired and overread and out of things to write about. Mostly.

Or maybe it's just that I've been working sooo hard on the www.naturalmedicine.io backend stuff that I'm neglecting the front end. Chatting to devs. Figuring out token economies. Working on logos. Fixing bugs. Running a challenge to reward users. Talking to people about bots and what they can do for us. Team meetings. Curating and commenting. Organising people. Rewarding people. Helping make Natural Medicine the best darn natural health front end on the blockchain and relying on people to help me do that, without asking too much of them, because they're all busy too.

And so too with the fermented cabbage. The glass jar full of green goodness looks amazing on the outside and damn good on the plate, but man - do you know how much goes into a garden to plate experience? There's a bit of visualisation or conceptualisation going on. Like - in a few months, I'm gonna want sauerkraut, so I best dig over that bed. Take out all the weeds, keep the chickens out. Nurture the seedlings so they don't get eaten by bugs - that is, once I've made sure I've watered the tray of seedlings to start with so they don't dry out. And then bringing them in and de-slugging them. So many slugs. Slicing and salting, finding a jar, washing it. That's just this jar's story - and meanwhile, there's a wind a-blowing and I have to stop the artichokes from falling over. The chooks are tapping at the back door because they've run out of food and are quite indignant at the sparrow thieves. The man wants me to help him stop being depressed over the landrover because he hates bodywork with a passion, and he's got a slight hangover and his blood sugar is pretty low.

But darn. Look at that pretty jar of cabbage. Just look at it.

And if you have time, have a look at this other jar of fermented prettiness - a.k.a the Natural Medicine front end I'm pretty proud of the work I've put in to do my bit on the blockchain. And I hope you are too.

https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmcGSZxvsXD8YbSCNAo6KWc4a9RjXyRCjWupZdPXJapkXk

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