My #SteemStory (so far)!!!

    Six days ago (I’m running out of time) @whatsup wrote a post with the hope of collecting interesting Steem Stories, a way of promoting Steemit in the only way its promoted anyways, word of mouth. To be completely honest, I already have written about my story on steemit before (not a long time ago because I’m here since april 2018), but too below in the feed and the “all content” categories to be found by casual readers. So, in order to participate in this initiative I’m going to retell my ongoing story here as an amalgamation of different things I have posted.


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    On March 2018 I attended to a conference by coincidence or divine will at the university where I used to work. It was a coincidence to me because I didn't work there anymore. One day I entered on Facebook at the right moment to see an ad shared by a colleague about that conference among a sea of publications. It was an informative talk by an organization that promotes entrepreneurship to make themselves known to the student community and promote an event they were organizing. We were told about their monthly meetings and were invited to the next one, the theme of the night would be something called Steemit, some kind of social network to “earn some dollars online”.


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    For readers outside Venezuela "some dollars" may not seem like much, but due to the constant devaluation of our currency and inflation some dollars can be very useful to survive here, so that possibility was very attractive. Days before the meeting I opened my account and did a little research on the platform. At the meeting I received valuable information about how it operates: upvotes, rewards, 7 days of waiting, curators, communities in Discord, how to cash out the earnings in local currency through exchanges. Steemit was sold to me as a social network where it is possible to generate income, some kind of Facebook where you can earn money.

     The first thing that appeared in front of my eyes when I entered the platform was the trending section, where I saw publications with profits beyond my imagination. I thought those posts should be very good and started to imagine how great it would be to earn amounts like that. Of course, after a few days I learned that most of those posts at the beginning of the trending section aren’t a big deal, I learned that those exorbitant gains aren’t organic but achieved with strategies that aren’t necessarily related to the quality of the content, I also learned that all the votes don’t worth the same because they depend on the Steem Power we have and that most people are chasing whales’ votes because those are very valuable.



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     The reality is that steemit is not a Facebook where we get paid, it’s not as easy as we had thought. Eventually we wake up from the idyllic world we were told through misleading word of mouth advertising. After that we have two options: abandon or continue. Even the ones who continue can follow different paths, some more ethical than others, and some more smart and long-term than others. I mean, many users are determined to write the best and most attractive content possible (well, not all of them hahaha), do everything in their possibility to attract the attention of the elusive whales and use other strategies to earn some money and then extract it to pay their bills and cover their needs. Everything seems under control for them, they are finally making some money with this. Meanwhile, there are others that think in the future and invest their earnings in the platform, so they can gain influence and not depend on those whales’ votes forever. Steemit is populated with diverse mindsets.


     Personally, I believe in this platform and the idea of one day being able to live completely from my work here is something that motivates me. For a long time I have felt that I don’t fit in the traditional jobs, I have never felt attracted to the "system". In my country there is no dream job for me and the remaining options have been a source of frustration for years. I don’t want to emigrate so if I don’t find what I'm looking for I must create it, I’m the only one that can create my dream job. Steemit represents an opportunity to exploit my creativity and talents, earn money doing something I enjoy, work from the comfort of my home, be free of the centralized labor system, be part of the cryptocurrency market, etc.

     If a platform is capable of giving me all these possibilities, should I not intentionally strive to improve every day to succeed? Someone could argue that this is not as easy as it seems. Of course it isn’t, nobody said it would be easy. Nothing worthwhile is easy, especially at the beginning. What are you going to do about it? Will you complain or give an excuse to not give your best effort? I will continue to exercise, improving and learning every day, disciplining myself through challenges like this or others, doing the necessary work besides content development. What will you do?



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This post is a compilation of fragments and ideas from previous publications of my authorship, you can read the originals and others thematically related here:

-STEEMCEPTION
-STEEMCEPTION (Part II)
-Chronicles of a Struggling Beginning
-Discipline! Back to Action!
-The Pursuit of Happyness... on Steemit