Who am I?

Do we ever ask ourselves this question?

Seemingly a simple question, yet when we think deeper, it may not be the case. Let me try to answer this question. First of all, I may identify myself as an enthusiastic adult in his 20s, wanting to achieve something in his life.

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Methods to understand ourselves better:

1-Happy moments and achievements

Reviewing our happiest moments and achievements from time to time helps to boost our resilience and patience, as this helps us in identifying what brings us happiness. This is also a method to distract ourselves from over-focusing on our past failures.

2-Gratitude

List out what and who you should be thankful for, as this will help us to identify what matters to us. Like in my career, my mentors had helped me a lot in solving all sort of technical issues; while in Steemit, I had learned a lot from individuals like @tumutanzi, @bitrocker2020, @justyy and more. I was also lucky to be included in different awesome communities like #teammalaysia, #cn, and #steemitbloggers. Although I am not that engaging, the knowledge attained just by reading through the chat are helpful.

3-Looking forward

Always have a list of stuff that we look forward to. We can make it around 3-5 items and then focus to achieve it. Setting these targets is to create a sense of purpose for us to hustle and grind. Without that, we will be just loitering around and waste our precious time. So, 5000 SP may seem impossible for my current condition, who cares. Let’s set that as a target and work for it.

4-A conversation with the future self

Try to write a letter to our present self by being the future self (like the end of 2018 or maybe 2020). Guide our present self on how to achieve what the future-self had already achieved. This will be fun to do and perhaps can become a writing contest as well! This will make something impossible into something feasible as we try to link the future and present into a logical timeline.

5-Involve in community

Finally, community involvement is important for us especially in this era that everyone is so connected. Try to be part of something or contribute something for the community, let yourself transcend individualism. That will bring in more surprise than we can imagine to our life. Currently, I am recommending myself to be involved in several bodies that focus on sustainable development for the future cities. This is the piece I am interested in and I can also contribute to my career practice as well.

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Who am I in Steem community?

A lifelong learner

Staying in the comfort zone is a big no-no for me. However, it is not easy to pull me out of that comfort zone, as it is easy to just do what we are good at. As a lifelong learner, I had pushed myself to attend different courses and workshops. This will be the same for 2018. For this new year, I will set a new personal tag for my post which is lifelong learning with @kimzwarch which I will make some notes on what I had gained from the courses or workshops. For these notes, it will be in short sentences to highlight the gain. This will be a new challenge for me to up my output capability’s level.

A visualizer

As a graduate architect, I had always been a visualizer and love graphics. Nonetheless, graphical skill is always something that cannot be fully mastered as art is always evolving with technology as well. I am lucky to pick up some graphical skills from my academic pursuit. Coincidentally, the graphic is the sort of service that can earn me some extra income too! As of now, I am keen to boost my revenue stream and diversify it into a different investment. As a visualizer, this adds another alternative for me to pursue the financial freedom dream.

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How did I get here?

Starting as a blank paper (plankton), I just try everything I can to gain attention. From then on, I had spent a lot of time to experiment and engage with different people. Along the way, I picked up few survival skills that could be a great use for the starters too! I understand that in the starting stage, we are lacking attention, followers, upvotes and whatever resources you can think of. Moreover, we did not have a clue on how Steem works. This makes the process of development even slower.

I just read the recent post by @zord189: Where do I start?! An AWESOME guide to get you started. He experienced the same thing like me as well and now he is well established in the community, even more engaging!

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Here are some guides that I would like to share to the starters, it may be the same as @zord189’s but important stuff are worth to be repeated :P

1. Be sincere in what you are writing or producing.
2. Trust your writing and product.
3. Engage through commenting others’ post with sincerity.
4. Reply every comment that is directed to you.
5. Search and join different communities, try to explore first and see whether it suits you.
6. Improve your post by adding a footer, tags, and title that can become your personal identity.
7. Upvote others to show gratitude (for starters, may not need to worry about voting power as the vote value is very minimal).
8. Find your niche by doing what you are good at and keep on doing and perfecting it! (Like me, I am still searching for the niche too even up until now, so far graphic and educational writing may be my niche).
9. And lastly, read the FAQ for Steemit. READ it. READ.

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Hope my write up can help you to understand yourself better and find your PURPOSE. In life, we tend to lose ourselves from time to time. Hence, it is important to obtain the compass that will always lead us back on track.

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So this is my 2 cents on how Steem works and a continuous learning process for open source projects. Join me to discuss more.

My previous post:
My Steem Adventure #1: Embarking into The Unknown Sea of Open Source
My Steem Adventure #2: Why is Steem giving out free money?

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A steemitblogger - Banner designed by @zord189

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Find me at @kimzwarch