Jumping in to the 30 Days Writing Challenge

I've been seeing the tag challenge30 popping up quite a bit so I decided to check it out and found out it is a challenge proposed by supersteemian and witness @dragosroua to write a new post each of the first 30 days of the new year 2017. This was quite in line with my current thinking, so I figured now is a good time to jump in.

Some background first

A few months back, I learned about Steemit from a colleague. Not knowing anything about it but already having planned to try to get a YouTube channel started up, I thought I'd check it out and see what happens. I'm still very new to cryptocurrencies and have been learning on the fly, but I have to say that Steemit has been a fun social media community to enter into.

Successful YouTubers like to talk about the YouTube community and how great it is, but I've found the Steemit community to be much more accessible and rewarding, both on a personal and financial level. Like YouTube, it is still somewhat of a competition for views and likes, but the difference is that the system of incentives here encourages people to want others to be successful moreso than other platforms. If more Steemians are successful, then the platform will be more successful, and then the currency will hold more value, and that will benefit us all. Plus, the libertarian side of me digs the whole cryptocurrency idea.

Why I want to do the 30 Days Writing Challenge

I'm generally a very private person and historically have kept to myself on the internet, so the idea of being more active on social media is new to me. I suppose my motivation is part of a far off dream to become a full time traveler/drifter/nomad/wanderer/whatever you want to call it. I know there are plenty of people who have done it through various outlets such as YouTube, and I'm curious to know whether Steemit can realistically afford such an opportunity, either on it's own or in conjunction with other outlets. I know some users such as @knozaki2015 are already pursuing Steemit as a means to this, and it's been exciting to follow along.

When the new year rolled around, I wanted to take the opportunity to give some thought to the direction I want to head. I've been encouraged by the initial success I've had in the time I've been on Steemit - it's been cool to earn some Steem/Steem Power and my first bits of Bitcoin - so I decided I would try to put in some more effort here and see what happens. With that in mind, I was planning to try to post nearly daily for a while since that would definitely be necessary if Steemit ever had the potential to become more of a full time gig. When I came across the 30 Days Writing Challenge, it seemed like a natural fit and a good way both to keep the motivation to post and to engage with more and more fellow users. I've already been posting on a more-than-daily average so far in 2017, so here we go!

Why I don't want to do the 30 Days Writing Challenge

This isn't going to be easy. I feel that a large part of the success I have had on Steemit thus far has been due to the fact that I have only posted when I felt I had something interesting to share. If you post crap on Steemit, the community let's you know by not upvoting it. I've largely agreed with this semi-silent feedback that I've received on my posts thus far, and I feel I've largely avoided posting uninteresting garbage for my part. I certainly don't want to change that now for the sake of a challenge, so if I drop out, this could well be the reason.

It will also be difficult to find the time. That's true for most of us, but between important things like my full time job, keeping my girlfriend happy, staying in touch with family and friends, etc., it will be a real challenge. There's also the time I will spend traveling. This month, I will be spending 4 days in the arctic archipelago of Svalbard followed immediately by 4 days in the mountains in Austria. I'm very excited to make films and other content from these trips, but I don't want to miss out on the experience of being there just so I can put up a new blog post that I could just as easily do when I get back home. At the same time, it could be good practice to see what being a full-time blogger really demands.

Eyes on the stars

There's plenty of cliches about shooting for the stars, but since the winter is dark in Norway I've had to pick up night photography as a hobby, it works for me, and there will probably be plenty of it coming this month (hopefully with the Northern Lights mixed in), starting with some time lapse tests with my new GoPro Hero5 camera:

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Adventure Every Day is a travel & exploration channel started in 2016. In addition to the Steemit blog, I post weekly short films of my adventures to the Adventure Every Day YouTube channel. Please follow and subscribe if you enjoy the content - it inspires me to keep making more and better!