I have been out and about the last few days, trying to gather all the required documents for the upliftment of one of our stocks from the Philippines Stocks Exchange. From what our broker told us, Upliftment is the process of converting our electronic/scripless shares into physical stock certificates under our name.They will facilitate the transfer but will need 4 documents from us. This task is made more burdensome because of what it means. The company we trusted, where we put our hard-earned money to, was delisted from the PSE (Philippine Stock Exchange) because of anomalous behavior from the part of the owner himself (this is the son of the founder, I think). Our stake on the company does not comprise the majority of our portfolio but is still substantial. There are times when I want to shed tears for what happened but I come to terms with that frustration when I look at what we have because we got into trading and investing.

If you've read my blogs before, you'll already know that we stumbled upon Steemit a few months after dipping into the world of investing. We had some experience with real estate when we decided to learn about other investment opportunities. We have spent months on research when we finally concluded that it was time to start and make use of the new knowledge we gained. We then dabbled with the stock market, then crowd-funding, and cryptocurrency. That's how we found Steemit.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Steemit has changed my life.There I was, a house wife busy with cleaning pots and pans and the laundry while coping with the loss of my son. I was quite dissatisfied with how I made myself useful but couldn't find any other way to spend my time. I longed to do something that my daughters could look back to and proudly say, "that's my momma". I always imagined how I would be when I'm old and gray. The thought frightened me.

Then came along Steemit. Like many, I was doubtful at first. "Earn online" sounded very much like the rampant easy money scams to me. I quickly learned it wasn't easy at all. You have to create content, you need to engage, you need to INVEST!

And invest I did! I invested money, time and emotion. The Returns? Absolutely. Amazing.

Friends

They say that a friendship is real when you don't see each other for a long time and yet the connection stays whenever you communicate. How about feeling that connection even without seeing each other ever?

Just last Christmas, I received a magical gift from a friend who I met here in Steemit. It's magical because it came from a place that I've always wanted to visit since I read Coelho's The Alchemist. This gift came from the village girl, sunnylife, who is one of those people who are just full of life and positive energy; not because she does't encounter any struggles, but because she chooses to be positive in spite of it. I've always been drawn to people like her. Our friendship grew over Discord chats and I consider it as one of the best things I got from Steemit.

Friendships nourish, motivate, and inspire. This year, I promise to be more curious about my own country. This was inspired by someone who I befriended here in Steemit too. She's tangmo from Thailand and she made me realize that I have much to discover about my own culture in the Philippines. I don't have to go overseas to post an interesting travel blog; there's so much to learn and share and I might actually find them from where I stand if only I was interested to unearth them.Her blogs about her beautiful country is something I look forward to. I've learned a great deal about Thailand and its culture behind those breath-taking beaches. The way she interacts with the people who leave comments on her posts also showed me how to engage with the community through replies.

Family

Photo from @jon24jon24

I have grown used to being physically away from my family. My mom's house is in Davao; some of my siblings are there while some are abroad. With the help of technology, I get to chat with them everyday. The same goes with my SteemPH family. I don't always get see them (I met some of them once and the others I have yet to meet) but we talk about important matters almost everyday and even get to enjoy each other's company through our Filipino Channel in Discord. We have Karaoke Nights, we play Pinoy Henyo and comfort each other when the price of steem or sbd is down. lol.

Purpose

I couldn't have been more excited for 2018 to start. We've planned the biggest, most exciting things for this year. One of those would be our trip to Samal to visit a school there. I've learned about this school and its students through my brother who's a teacher there. He told me about the distressing state of the classroom where he teaches, about shortage in books to learn from, and his students who have salt for lunch. We're going there in the hopes of imparting basic homesteading techniques that the children can use to grow their own food. I've made a proposal to @steemph and I couldn't thank them enough for taking the project under their wing. There are more projects that are coming up too and I couldn't wait to see how lives are going to be touched by Steem through these.

And last, but not the least,

SteemPower

Five months ago, when my account was 34 days old, I published a post about powering up. I'm so glad I captured the state of my account that time in the screenshot below.

52 SP was so frustrating. I was just starting to discover all the wonderful authors in this platform, I got lost in their stories, gushed at their art, and reveled in their songs; and all I could give them was an upvote worth $0.001. So when I got my first payouts, I spent it on Steem and I'm so glad I did! At that time, Steem was at $1!!! After realizing how dangerous it was for a fat finger like me to make the transaction of buying steem through blocktrades, I decided to put all my post payouts to 100% power up. It's not the most practical thing to do now but at that time, Steem and sbd were both at $1. Red and I decided to buy Steem too. We were regretting that we didn't get on the platform earlier when Steem was still at $0.07 but hey, the next best time to plant trees is now, right? So we bought Steem and here's my account now.

It's not much. But if I consider the value of Steem now, I can only marvel at the return of my investment. More importantly, it's pure joy seeing the value of my upvote. Of course, I only compare this to my previous upvotes that were less than one cent. It's obviously insignificant compared to upvotes from curie or blocktrades or surpassiggogle. But looking at it makes me ecstatic. I guess it comes from knowing the potential of these upvotes no matter how small they may seem. If these upvotes turn into Steem Power because the person I upvoted used it to buy Steem and powered up, my upvotes will then be shared to whoever is upvoted by the person I upvoted...and then compound it indefinitely. See?

I see it. I did five months ago when in that post, I said that I believe in the platform. I can only wonder in excitement where the next five months, five years will take us. See you at the moon?

PS: the sbds in my wallet are for a project to get more people to Steem so I haven't used them to power up. I'll tell you more about it in another post. =D