A Love Letter to the Pond — Reflections on the Surface and at the Heart of the Minnow Support Project

in #minnowsupport7 years ago (edited)

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I had a beautiful travel photography post all queued up for Monday, but I decided to pull it at the last minute and spent some time taking a good look at myself and my work here so far. I thought maybe I'd share it with all of you.

I was flipping through pictures from Fiji looking for inspiration — feeding schools of silvery fish from my fingers (above,) and kayaking ten miles up a winding river to find sage advice on a blackboard in a native village full of children learning true community values (below,) and once again my work seems to line up with my internal struggles. I'm coming into my second month with the Minnow Support Project, and outside of the post I made about the creation of the new website, I haven't really written about the pond at all. If you're willing to go without some of my photography for one more day, I thought I'd share some of what's been going on with with me in regards to MSP. I feel compelled to explain why PALnet is the largest (and growing) off-chain Steemit community, and why it really matters.

On Monday, some stuff that had been creeping up on me came to a head. You may or may not know that I moderate for the Minnow Support Project, as well as partner with @FollowBTCNews on a rapidly growing witness project. I spend, on any given day, at least 12 hours on the discord server helping new and old members alike. I help keep things clean and fun; I patrol channels for abuse and spam; every bit of SP I make is delegated back into the community bots; I give advice, mediate, and motivate on an individual and group level; I send Steem to new members and help with registrations; counsel posting improvements one-on-one; I'm beginning to work with MSP-Waves as a DJ; I quietly curate a growing group of minnows I see who are community minded (some of them may not even know that I vote on their posts, until now, when they go back looking) and I have started sending out bounties for random acts of kindness that I see happen in chat on a daily basis.

I put my heart and soul into MSP —

as a minnow myself, I put as much as I can into helping @aggroed and @ausbitbank and the rest of our witnesses build the type of community that I know could change lives.

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Where I'm going with this is simply to show that in a lot of ways, I feel like I need to put myself into MSP. Since I'm not a big fish yet, it's the only real gift I can give. I never really thought much about what I take from the pond. So circling back around to Monday and the post that failed to launch, I thought I'd tell you that I experienced the taking first hand. The day was hard. It was long. Someone came after MSP again, there were a number of meltdowns that I spent the day in DMs working to calm, I had a number of projects I needed to finish up. And then, while I was a little more drained and a little more vulnerable than normal, a thing happened in my day to day life that reopened a fresh wound. It's the kind that isn't healed yet — the ones that you celebrate just getting to the point of allowing to scab over without picking at, the ones that itch and prickle to remind you that they're just waiting to tear and bleed your emotions out uncontrollably. I caught this tender, susceptible cut to my spirit on something: a minor mishap, a small bump that I could normally weather. Instead, it tore and every bit of me came trickling out, from a drip that escalated with the beating of my heart into a torrent that I just couldn't stop. I mean, I ended up standing in the middle of a mosh-pit at a show I'd been waiting months for, with tears streaming down my face, standing still in a sea of chaos.

This is kind of not the sort of thing I'd normally be up to share. But I'm not writing it here to drum up sympathy; instead, I just want to say that when I needed to, I took from MSP. I drank deeply from the pond, and fuck me, it helped.

This is the true value of the Minnow Support Project on PALnet.
Trail your fingers in the water. Cool your fevered brow.

 
Yes, we have voting bots, and amazing services, and workshops, and a radio station... but we also have an entire school of people who actually — actually — give a shit about making Steemit better. And when I came on Monday, all I did was mention in passing that I had a bit of a bad day, and that swirling maelstrom of fins and love came churning wildly and enveloped me. Private messages full of support and handwritten poems and caring sentiments about why I'm appreciated. Tags in every channel from people just to say hi, to shoot me a kind word, to make me laugh, and to take my mind off it. Posts and artwork and music all gently pushed into my hands to keep them occupied.

There is nothing that you can pay that will buy you that kind of joy and acceptance... and we have so much of it in MSP, we're just giving it away.

If you were one of the people who reached out to me in the last two days, know fully that I love and appreciate you. You are the people who keep me active, keep me honest, keep me working, and yes... to some degree, keep me paid. You are the ones who create steemes of my god damn face every single day. You are the inspirations and the motivations, the bright, the varied, the brilliant, and the real. Thank you for taking a chance on this community, and by making it better with your presence, your god awful jokes, your beautiful talents, and the occasional late night gravy clown orgy.

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Are you still here?

Thanks. Truly. I'll make it up to you with pictures of New Zealand. But in the meantime, if you want a few upvotes, a few friends, and a few laughs, come and find me on Discord. Especially if you're having a bad day.

All of these photos are my own, taken on my travels all over this pretty blue marble of ours. I hope you like them. 🌶️
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MSP is love. Love is all around us.

Concentric rings form and ripple outward to edges, filled with love, laughs, song and chatter, and minnows.

Sooooo many minnows.

And all those minnows adore you.

And all those minnows love you.

And the rings that start in the middle with our core, spread outward, ever onward.

Little waves.

Little waves of love and music and peace and abundance and liberty.

Thank you, @CrimsonClad. On behalf of all us misguided, confused fish in the pond, whom you feed daily with your grace, patience and understanding.

We are all grateful for you and what you do.

Now get on the radio and KILL THEM ALL WITH YOUR KINDNESS!

Oh and since you mentioned it...

somedays, you just don't know what to do with a bomb <3

I can figure it out.
Gimme a minute.

Sometimes I wonder if we spend our whole lives waiting to find a group of people like MSP:)

and then we find them and finally have a kubby in our lives! xox

The world is made right with a Crimsonclad in our lives!

THESE ARE NOT TEARS...it's just raining in California for the first time in 25 years and I just happen to be outside. That's all...

Oh look, some onion cutting Ninjas just flew by too.

What's that? Sand attack from a pokemon?

STILL NOT TEARS.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 @crimsonclad

it's okay, it's been a week for ugly criesIMEAN dagerous pocket sand

Awww crimson you do so much for the community, I am so glad to be a part of it :) I hope whatever was bothering you is fading fast hugs

I'm gonna cheers you with a mimosa for this. Water off a duck's back...

That gravy has too much sauce.

people will think we are not compassionate or sensitive by our rapport, but they'd be wrong.

I'm terrified by how arousing this is...

shhh.... just let it happen.

Those that mind don't matter and those that matter don't mind. 😁

Beautifully put, Crimmy. I'm sorry to hear about you having a rough patch, but I'm glad you found the silver lining.

it comes and it goes. You've been awesome...thank you. <3

Infinite Lovewaves.

I'll share a quote with you that was shared on PAL...

"Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want"

This project really is filled with love and I'm glad all the lil minnows with their big hearts were able to lift you up :)

Never stop cracking that whip :D

you're the third one to send me that quote. Ripples in the pond like lovewaves < < < <<<3

I wanna be the first to say "You're awesome babe" discord has always been great fun but you and others have really made a difference in the last month or so.
Thank you so much for all your hard work. It'll definately be rewarded.
You're a top bird!

tweet tweet, motherfucker <3

joking aside, thanks perc. It's been a grand adventure already...

We love you crimson. <3

we're a good team sammerz <3

Wow! I feel a little bad now for teasing you that you need to post more. (Although I love your photos/content). You've been carrying so much weight on your shoulders unselfishly.

Looking forward to the New Zealand photos... and thank you for all you're doing!

tease me all you want, it's what friends do. Besides, sometimes I need a whip cracking, myself.

I'm a nudger, not a cracker :D

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