My turn for a love letter to the MSP/P.A.L. Network Community [Following the lead of @aggroed, and the example of @crimsonclad & others who have done similar posts lately.]

Hey Again, Steemitizens!

In the past month or so, some of my peers and the leaders of the Peace, Abundance & Liberty Network; also known as the "Minnow Support Project", have published posts declared as open but personal "love letters" to the wonderful community of nearly 5000 young steemit users known as minnows, schooled together in what we lovingly call "the pond" wherein we swim towards growth together as a globally distributed but locally united family.

I am inspired by these friends, peers, leaders, mentors and loved ones to pen my own such letter and I will not even begin to express the depth of my passion and the positive emotions I feel for this group, but what the hell, let's give it my best shot. That's all we can do right? Give our best? That is the first lesson I learned here, so let's just see how it goes...

On June 19th, some link, on some post, somewhere, lead me into the PAL discord chat rooms for the very first time. I had just joined steemit itself only 7 days prior on June 12th. I actually began trying to join steemit on June 8th after seeing the site mentioned on some cryptocurrency oriented site, but registration delays at the time almost deterred me from coming in at all.

Curious enough about this "free money machine" I opened a support ticket to inquire why my email confirmation had come but my registration had not been completed. A day later, I received the welcome message, but never DID get a resolution on that fateful support request. I imagine some of you readers experienced similar, but managed to persevere and here we all are.

Upon arriving in the PAL discord in those days, it was quite different than today. The PAL discord was established on June 1st. I was 7 days old on steemit and completely lost like any newbie on steemit is when I stumbled into this "support community" on June 19th and found maybe at best 100 or so members milling around getting to know each other. I have been unable to track down the exact number of members on the date I arrived, but it wasn't very many in this merely 19 day old group.

What I do know is that searching chat logs from those days shows most of the usual suspects that I usually still see in the rooms every single day even now, and the bonds we have all formed with one another have reached epic proportions in this past 73 days. Today I celebrate my own 80th day on steemit and 73 days in the 85 day old PAL/MSP community with this open love letter to the people of PAL/MSP, whom I love with all my heart and most affectionately call my family now.

When I first jumped into this pond, I wanted to make a splash.

When I first jumped into this pond I wanted to make a splash. It was not my first experience in the chat rooms of the internet but I quickly learned that this place was different. My first leap was more like an ill advised cliff dive that resulted in a painful belly flop. I came in and full of "experience" quickly gained a reputation for bullying newer arrivals who came after me, exposing to others and ultimately myself an unsustainable level of arrogance and idiocy that remains unrivalled by the rest of the group to this day.

Put bluntly, I was (and to some degree still am) pretty much an asshole. I have a sharp, sarcastic sense of humor and quick wit, usually poorly applied and at all the wrong times. As the "Bare Naked Ladies" band's song lyric goes, "I'm the kind of girl that laughs at a funeral, can't understand? Well, you soon will." (For the record, I'm not a girl. I'm a dude, but whatever...) I was quickly trying to prove myself to everyone else in the room as a badass genius, and ended up looking like a sadsack jerk.

We dubbed me "Rant Jemima" and this meme occurred as a result for those moments when the nice side of my personality shown to contributors and active participants faded and the light was shone on my ugliest skill set. That of a low tolerance for takers and abusers of the group, usually unsuspecting new arrivals with mistaken expectations, taken to very volatile extremes. Instead of educating or de-escalating these irritating new "minnows" into our fishy school, I attacked, tearing them into chum like a shark, not a benevolent star fish. Oh I "educated" them alright. In all the wrong ways.

But the core leadership of the time was patient. The community was patient. They began to educate and de-escalate ME, on each of these occasions and while I still make mistakes now and then, even as recently as last night, I have learned a lot about tolerance and tempering myself to become an ever improving, iteratively developing contributor and better citizen of the growing minnow family. Now those days are mostly (mostly) remembered in jest with steemes (my word for steemit memes) like this one.

Speaking of "steemes", those kind of became my trademark in the group and I turned from mocking others in hasty angst to teasing my new and ever strengthening friendships with lightening fast creations of steemes made up of funny remarks made in chat or photos they posted of themselves or both, and soon we were all able to spend more time laughing together than we did talking me down out of my sniper's nest.

We all started to get along and I became more and more a part of the growing solution instead of part of the problem as time went on. Soon, we were growing in fishy scale and had quickly grown from those first few friends to thousands of minnows, achieving 2000 minnows right around the 4th of july and now today boasting nearly 5000 finny minnow friends swimming together in the PAL pond.

About one month in, the founder of PAL came to me with an idea. "Hey Cork, do you think we could start a radio station for the steemit community?" Well, I did FM radio and mobile disc jockey work in my younger days and I'm from the internet industry by career history, so we quickly decided to throw ourselves into the creation of a streaming radio station and I was handed the chance to lead the project based on my professional background in radio and the internet and start up "businesses".

The MSP Waves Radio Network was born!

That was just about 5 weeks ago now and when given that open door I literally ran through it and took off. Today we have just such a station, and we boast more than 20 show hosts and almost 20 scheduled two hour live, interactive audience driven talk, entertainment, and music shows running the station 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's been an amazing and exciting and sleepless and frustrating and thrilling and fulfilling experience to be put in charge of this MSP initiative and I began to enlist talent and crew members to make this thing come to life.

Nowadays, I am able to spend nearly 20 hours a day in the channels and on the air on MSP Waves and spend all my time guiding, teaching, coaching, encouraging, giving and conversely also learning, growing, improving and loving all of the people who comprise this diverse community. I am here all day every day and most of the time all night long. I can't imagine anywhere else I'd rather be. I don't have a "normal" life off line and a constant string of losses in my past, ranging from divorce, estrangement from my now 25 year old daughter, the death of my parents and many of my extended family members, a relocation to a remote location in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains of western North Carolina, have led me to a place where I needed a family to hold me and uplift me and I found it here. In the PAL/MSP discord.

YOU ARE MY WORLD, MSP!

The whole point of this story, which is getting a tad too long, is to let my new family know how much I love you. I love you all like the truest of brothers and sisters. No matter how new you are to the community or if you are one of the first ones to welcome me and all my foibles and strengths you matter more than anything else in my world to me.

I could go on to write an entire novel length book about all the events, incidents, excitement, happiness, sadness, comedies and tragedies I've witnessed and participated in with this family of ours. The wins and losses. The love and the madness. The sharing, giving and hope that happens here. Every. Single. Day. but you don't have time and I can't do the breadth of the experience justice in mere words and images. You simply have to come experience it for yourself and I hope you choose to do so. We will welcome you with open fins and greet you warmly in this place we call our home. The minnow pond. The school of fishy life that is, the Minnow Support Project and Peace, Abundance and Liberty Network.

We are founded on these goals, Peace, Abundance and Liberty, and we achieve these through the application of kindness, generosity, gratitude, patience and perseverance. Come join us. It won't just change your life, it might become your world. It's become mine and I cannot imagine living anywhere else.

I love you, my friends. You give me life, and I've dedicated mine to you. See you in the pond!

Love,
SirCork

I am always happy to answer questions or lend a hand to anyone whenever I can. Just let me know how I can be of service, and if it's within my power and time constraints to do so, I will certainly be happy to respond accordingly!

Just like that, this post is over.

Full steem ahead, steemitizens!

@sircork

Tune into my show: Monday Night Minnow School on The MSP Waves Radio Network
Get more info about this and other great steemit MSP talk-radio shows at:
http://mspwaves.com

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Believe in me and my values and principles also? Well, I'm a witness who believes in steem, steemit and YOU!

Vote for me, @SirCork, as witness to show your support.

Witnesses I support:

@aggroed, @teamsteem, @gtg, @timcliff, @clayop, @ausbitbank, @dragosroua, @roelandp, @jesta, @personzzz ( @personz ), @someguy123, @thecryptodrive, @netuoso, @rycharde, @good-karma, @lukestokes.mhth, @drakos, @theprophet0, @swelker101, @steemed, @anarcho-andrei
and co-witnesses @followbtcnews & @crimsonclad

Think you deserve to be on this list too?

Earn my vote. Tell me why!

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All Steemitzens should be choosing their preferred representatives to make reliable, positive, growth oriented steemit.com and steem network decisions for us!

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The Peace, Abundance, Liberty Network (PALNET) Minnow Support Project (MSP) is the home base for any minnow's best new friends!

Find us on Chat with the PAL/Minnow Support Project peeps at: https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw

See you on the air at MSP WAVES RADIO!