Misterakpan's Curie Story - A Community Project My Dreams Rode On

in #mycurie6 years ago (edited)

Why Share My Curie Story?

I am morally obligated to tell #mycuriestory. I have a responsibility to administer gratitude to the hands that have fed me. Since I myself would appreciate such gratitude, and in Africa we say, "As you do for your ancestors, your children will do for you," this post is very in-line.

Early Days

My Steemit journey started in July of 2017. As everyone else, I was elated. I had all the dreams, fluffy and soon to be quelled. I read the posts that were making a lot of money. Maybe I could make reasonable money already just publishing writings I had in my Google Drive. Maybe I could become rich if I sat my butts down and wrote new stuff. It was a no-brainer, I went ahead with both.

Some context: I was fresh from running a very unsuccessful foodstuff business in the city of Lagos. My quest to become an Entrepreneur, that had driven me to give my college education the middle finger when I got really convinced pursuing it wasn't serving me any purpose, was beginning to take a bad toll. I was living with my brother, broke and browsing Small Business Opportunities. I was turning 28 in a few days that July.

So I came on Steemit with all the motivation one could muster. I learnt markdown faster than I did any of my Botany courses. I was posting and posting and posting. And the pending payout was having a good laugh at my rewards. I was going to quit. But thanks for the great guys I met here, starting from @sircork, I got motivated to stay. I just put my Steemit expectations in check, and pursued my new business that was in the horizons. The finances didn't improve much, but my writing did, and some of my posts were making $15-ish rewards. That was enough to keep me going then.

Meeting Curie

One day I was talking with @thatdamiguy -- another Nigerian and excellent community guy -- and he mentioned he was becoming a curie curator. The only faint recollection I had with that word "curie" was my posts that had any sanity of reward had @curie among its top voters. Once I had used steem.supply to check the social stats on my account, and @curie was the second largest contributor after @abigail-dantes. Like the evil spirit I was like, Abigail, I know; who the heaven are you, Curie? I jumped on their blog and caught up with the update posts. And lo, I learnt about the manual curation, and that most anyone who was as engaged as I was on Steem could become a part of all that was going on. The finder fee was attractive, I must concede, so I couldn't help but have another saliva-inducing Steem dream.

Long story short, I applied to become a curator through @geekgirl. I was accepted after rigorous mentoring. It's six months and counting, and I have established myself as a significant contributor to the most amazing Steem project. Refer to @carlgnash's "MyCurieStory" to see stats about curie's contribution to retention on this platform.

Finding Satisfaction

With a renewed fervour I got continued with my blogging. I must concede being a curator has taken a toll on my posting. God knows how many drafts I have to work on right now. Since then, with the help of earnings from curie, I have had enough money to move to my home city where my spirit is more at peace, and I got a fancy apartment that doubles as my work space from home. I have a venture that is thriving because it is under less pressure to feed its father at infancy. More importantly, I am more exposed to amazing creators from around the world, because I log on here 90% of the time looking for them. And, I have been able to power up above 1,000 STEEM when STEEM sold at an average price I definitely couldn't afford so much. All thanks to Curie.

Is Steem Ready to do Away with Curie?

Times are changing. And sadly so. Curie is being forced to shrink its operations because it has been running at a deficit for a while now. Finder fee has shrunk by 75% since I joined and curie upvotes is no more enough to push authors to trending pages in their respective major tags. That last point, on its own, wouldn't be a problem if this influence shifted to other meritocratic channels of reward distribution. Matter of factly, that was the goal of Curie. But we all know the story of bidbots (which @liberosist reviewed extensively here) and the Circle-jerkers of Steem; but this post is NOT about either.

Curie has had to ration support for amazing authors just because it has a slim voting budget. I recall reading @adamsays's "How does it feel to be in an orchestra" and I could see the passion and excitement shine through in the young musician's heart and he was visibly elated that that post got rewarded, thanks to Curie. @legendarryll's amazing documentary-travel post on the "Sulfur Miners of Kawah Ijen, Indonesia" deservedly sat on the trending page thanks to Curie's support. Personally, one of my best feelings yet was when my short story, "The Graduation Day Speech" got me my first real reward as a Steemian and I didn't pay a dime to get it there. Its sheer quality earned me that. It saddens my heart that creators like @jadegreene who wrote "Tessa" flash fiction, that's arguably one of the best fiction writings on the internet, seems to have left Steem too because Curie doesn't have the budget to reward more of her posts and no one else will.

I could go on and on. It'll be a long list, but then this post was about the impact of curie on my life, which I hope I achieved in the first act of this piece. To sum it, I am a Steemian (a better one) today because I got tangled with Curie when I did. Thank you to everyone who makes this work. Special shout out to those authors whose brilliant posts give us curators the joy of finding an oasis in a desert. Not that I know what the hell that feels like as I've never been to a desert. Metaphor! To wrap this up I would drop a few links below to help you understand in detail how curie operates, and also provide an opportunity for you to support curie serve the community we all hold dearly.

Are you a Steemian who has a curie experience you want to share? Feel free to share yours using the tag, #mycuriestory.

curie small.png

Learn more about Curie

Ways you can support Curie

  • Follow the @curie blog and upvote and resteem Curie posting
  • Follow the @curie trail and vote for curated authors. If you are a SteemAuto user, @curie is an available trail to follow.
  • Vote for the @curie witness (all witness payouts are used to fund Curie operations).
  • If you would like to delegate to Curie you can do so by clicking on the following links:
    50 SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
    Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
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I appreciate you sharing your curie story and I was in MSP when someone from Steem INC kept talking about how SMT would be such a great feature of Steem and he kept sidestepping why they were not supporting curation guilds like curie and OCD. I understand the need for diversity but to see memes be rewarded more than original, exceptional articles found by curie is just wrong for me anyway mini-rant over.

Curie has been life changing indeed and I remember my first one and how it forever changed how I continue to get inspired when I see an exceptional post get the vote.

It is an important part of this community that shows with effort and quality your voice does matter.

Curie has my witness vote and I am sad that it lost its place in the top 20 and I hope some of those big SP holders will vote curie back to the top 20 and I tell everyone I know to vote for curie.

I also have liberosist as one of my other witness. I believe in what Curie is set to do and you have a supporter in me.

This young man's mentorship is awesome. He has patience and believes in everyone. He knows the principle of equal rights. You just need one encounter with him to know his worth!

That's humbling, Dave. I must pass the credit though to @curie, its structure and leadership, that has imbibed these qualities and it just has to shine through anyone who buys the philosophy she sells. The watchword of curie is "meritocracy." That encompasses "equal rights" in its entirety. I must confess, outside of Steemit, I crave for more and more curies in every sector of our lives. Yeah, I am a dreamer, but that's fine :)

The day I saw @misterakpan at the very top end of Curie's curator list, brought me renewed hope that no matter how discouraging Steemit can be, good things can still find their way to the top.

The first submission I read from your desk was @warpedpoetic's "Experimental Tragedy", got blown away a Nigerian could write like that and admitted I needed massive improvement.

Thanks to you and Curie I believe my accepted post so far stands as proof.

Congrats on your Steemit/Curie journey

And oh... I can't say this enough: your anthologies are solely missed!

Lol... That was the best day of my steemit experience, bro @holybranches. I have since had other curies but that day changed my philosophy on steemit.


Thank you @misterakpan for being a mentor, a friend and the first curator to find me. I hope curie gets more support because it is communities like curie that give hope to the minnows and redfishes in this platform as well as encourage quality content. It is sad that people do not read what they upvote.

@warpedpoetic I would LOVE to read your Curie story!

Oh you will @carlgnash. After three curies and an almost curie, I think it's a tale worth telling.

Please do man. Need to hear what muse string up those fusions!

Lol.. Need to hide my story then.

It is sad that people do not read what they upvote.

Only writers will understand what this feels like!

Great post, its nice to see how many of us came to Steemit with dreams and a lot of expectations, and we discover a lot of people trying to do it better every day.

I must say your own "mycuriestory" drew a lot of similarities with mine and it gave me a good feeling reading it. I considered including the story of my GoPro camera I got totally from my earning from curie, and how that has reactivated a zeal in me to go into documentary film-making. Right now I am chasing a story of a very significant cultural fixture of a native people who live close to me. I hope to get a few more sound recording gears and an "interview camera" and some lighting equipment, and a workstation when the price of Steem moons again. I hope that will be soon :)

its so good to know this about you! Curie changes lives and makes steem a better place. Thats real.

Thank you for such a good insight into curie. If I had more SPs I would not hesitate to delegate to the project.

Your post was very inspiring to me.

It always brightens my day when I see your name in the upvote list for my posts. Not because I might get an upvote, but because I know a fellow writer has read my work. @Curie is one of the best ways for a minnow get the exposure so desperately needed, and we're all grateful that there are so many hard-working curators like yourself.
Thanks for sharing your story, and showing how to help @Curie even if you don't have 1000SP lying around to delegate. :)

Beautifully said brother! And thank you again for recommending me in as a curator!

When I got to the part about @jadegreene and got to read about her fiction work Tessa, I felt a lump in my throat.

Such writer gets off steemit because no enough attention is given to her work?
I was forced to ask, 'What does the future hold for steemit?'

Anyway, you were the first person that made me realize that there are eyes that are searching for quality content on steemit.
You at a point, caused my ink to keep flowing...with hope.

You persevered. You illuminated the fact that, steemit through curie has changed lives.

Everybody wants to get a story like this someday.
Everybody wants to believe that good things can still sprout from 'almost-damaged' things.

You painted that picture here.

*applauds

Curie is being forced to shrink its operations because it has been running at a deficit for a while now.

Oh please no. I think curie is the best thing on steemit. Love what it stands for.
Also preparing mycuriestory

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