My Intro and First Post on STEEMIT! From The Greatest Outdoor City in America! (Duluth/Superior)

Hello Steemit and Steemians! This is my first post and I actually have a lot to say so here goes nothing!

The sign-up process was very unique. In-fact, I have never experienced such a sign-up process before. I have to get approved? By whom? Which followed by a quick search on the process. After reading a few posts about what other users experienced and how it took up to two weeks to get approved, I felt I was in for the same wait and since I wasn't the first, I quickly accepted it. Then I read how some of these people had signed up on a weekend, which is exactly what I did. This made me wonder how the process of getting approved is even executed.

I was like:

To my surprise, less than 72 hours later, it is Monday night and I have an approval e-mail. This certainly caught me off guard - I set aside 2 weeks for this wait! Now I have time to get my feet wet. So then I was like:

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, my family and I moved to South Florida when I was 5, and I really don't have much complaints about my life growing up. The obstacles of life didn't appear til adulthood (I'm sure we can all relate!). As I stepped into adulthood, I began working as a land surveyor, but I always had a dream to be in the IT field, and build something great (I even had dreams of creating my own operating system, but after taking programming in high school I decided I didn't want to be a developer). I recall wanting to get paid to drive when I did land surveying and my clock started as I drove to the job site, and then I got a job in the IT field in 2007 and by 2009 so much in IT had changed that I needed to get a degree. Instead of doing that, I left the IT field and moved to Wisconsin where I met my beautiful wife and had my baby daughter. (Doesn't it suck that I left the IT / Computer world as Bitcoin was being launched?)

Getting on my feet in the Twin Ports was no easy task so I started driving a taxi. During my taxi days someone told me about bitcoin in 2013 and I quickly, and I mean quickly, hopped on board. The only problem I had was I couldn't find anyone in my city that was into bitcoins. I started my own website, I invested here and there, but for some reason I never exchanged my USD for bitcoins, and I've recently returned to the bitcoin scene this month after a 2 year break to be absolutely amazed by the progress and how much has changed. I've kept tabs on the marketcap, and I am even more impressed by what steem has become! The entire crypto world has changed for the better, and I feel like I have missed out considering I had the chance to buy dash and eth when they were each $1!

While I've been a little bummed by my losses, I've also gained a lot of appreciation for nature [and crypto] during my 2 year bitcoin hiatus! I want to share why!

When I met my wife, we got a house together and turns out she owed over 5 grand to the electric company. Living with her tied this bill to my name. Unfortunately it had been nothing but a struggle trying to pay it off, and I was involved in a bad business deal with the taxi company I bought into and I was illegally booted. It was going to cost me 7 grand to win the case, or 7 grand to pay the electric, so instead I started a new company that takes drunk patrons home from the bar in their own vehicle. This was my way of competing with Uber coming to Duluth with what I consider to be a better service. Quite the risk, since $7000 could have gotten me 7000 dashcoins and I'd have over $4 million but that's besides the point! A completely new concept for my city meant slow, painful growth and since I took such a massive paycut on May 3rd 2016 as I mined my 16th ethereum that electric bill finally caught up to me. We lived without electricity or water for 120 days (a full summer). It was one of the most interesting experiences I had in my life, as I had to learn how to survive without the luxuries of electricity.

This is when I was forced to "unplug" from the computer (since it was unplugged for me!) and go outside, where I rediscovered my love for nature, rocks and more importantly, survival skills like foraging and primitive technologies. It all started when I went on my first agate hunt. Turns out Lake Superior holds some of the most treasured agates in the world, and I live right down the street! I've gotten my fishing license since then, and have researched a lot on mushroom foraging. Did you know that dandelions are edible? It lets me know that I can eat all summer -worst case scenario!

Here is a beautiful agate I found during that long summer with no electric:

Hand picked mini-agates from the beaches of lake superior and childrens playgrounds:

It was a major plus for me, as a year or two prior to this happening, Duluth/Superior (The Twin Ports) was nominated as the greatest outdoor city in america by Outside Magazine. There are miles of trails and so much to see.

Getting back on the grid it's taken me a while to get back into the bitcoin scene, because I experienced a computer crash from my pc being powered down so long so I lost a bitcoin wallet in the process. About $200-$400 worth, currently. Im not exactly sure how much as I haven't checked the addresses. It sucked but I got over it, and I am back at it trying to change my life.

My bitcoin endeavors taught me so much about business, ideas and MLM that I realized I had my own ideas I can try to start. I started a few projects including a kick starter for the homeless, a duluth outdoor city website full of content regarding the beauty of nature in this great city, as well as a few others, however none of my projects have gotten off the ground yet. I kick myself because had I just put up 20 bucks a month since 2013 I'd have the ability to make all my ideas a reality instead of just my business, which by the way I want to mention that I am running the first and only business in the Twin Ports to accept bitcoin and we are listed on coinmap! I look forward to putting my business on the ethereum blockchain but I need help to make these things happen. I also have my own bitcoin site that lists faucets but it is highly outdated, which means I have some work to do.

I feel STEEMIT will allow me to put out content regarding the beauty of nature around here, some survival skills and other experiments and things about life. I started streaming on twitch about 2 years ago but I didn't like it, I thought to myself I'd rather stream life and not games, but seems my calling is to STEEM life! but first I really need to work on a better camera. Just STEEMIT!

It seems difficult making worthy posts, and I have a much respect for those of you who are on here posting with so much enthusiasm. I also thank you, because your enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm of this community is what motivated me to make my first post. I just hope I can come up with more posts for people to read and enjoy!

All of what I have learned is thanks to God. I thank God and our Lord Jesus Christ every day for such blessings. It was the summer without electricity when I also rediscovered God and I have a story to share about that later on. My life has turned around for the best since then, and I have his guidance!

Thank you for taking the time to read my first post and I hope it wasn't too long! I surely hope it won't be the last, and I really look forward to all the great content on steemit. I read a lot of articles and watch a lot of youtube videos, and I typically don't share much on my facebook account because "what's the point???" and I have to say this whole concept is great. I have a purpose to share again.