Settling in on Steemit
Six months ago I couldn't have become involved here on Steemit ... because I'd never heard of it. But also, six months ago I just wasn't well enough to.
I first learnt of Steemit after talented journo Caitlin Johnstone, @caitlinjohnstone, began sharing posts to Medium about how FB was throttling her account in the name of silencing dissenting voices being awesome corporate citizens and cleaning up fake news on FB for our own benefit. Caitlin was therefore going to start posting here too, and so over here I digitally trotted.
To be honest, I was a little underwhelmed at first. There were a lot of shitty posts and stuff about crypto that may as well have been written in Cyrillic. I'm a writer, not an understander of blockchain. But I delved further. And I'm glad I did. I joined up and started coming across some interesting people. I began learning how to get around, and about the political and systemic issues going on here. Most tantalisingly, I started to get a bit of a whiff of the communities that help each other. And I started getting a bit psyched, not least because I felt well enough to commit to writing here regularly or semi. Big deal for me!
A few weeks earlier, I'd began taking a drug which has helped some people suffering like me from myalgic encephalomyelitis. It's no cure, but I was hoping it would help me too. To be brief about my life over the past six months, I've been unable to work very much, if at all. Too much brainfog and too much payback from the most basic of tasks, like cooking dinner. Headaches, an active infection, bone-draining exhaustion. I've had this disease for 18 years all up, have had periods of being much better. But I've been pretty much housebound or semi-housebound for the past six years and even worse since September. And it's been fucking hard and depressing.
Especially when you have a creative mind that's learned, in the times when health has allowed, to become addicted to the beautiful life that flows when I play with clay, draw and play (super badly) with paint. When you rediscover the depths of that space in yourself as an adult - well, when you have to lay it all down again for months because you're too sick, along with writing ... well, that creativity congeals, like a fatty piece of meat sitting on a countertop in the depths of summer and becomes rancid. Made me feel kinda like this:
Poured Out: an unfired clay piece by me!
So you can imagine my excitement to find this drug has given me a little more energy and a little less brainfog.
It's like living in a mansion where the doors have been locked to all but a few rooms, and then suddenly you regain access to the awesome room with the bay window and the conservatory. Life is still really hard and I am still homebound at the moment but to be able to be creative is just a gift.
It's been a fascinating experience coming on board here. I know very little about crypto and the blockchain. The thing that attracted me most was that here was a thriving blogging community, the space I was so sad to lose around 2010ish when everyone suddenly went to Facebook. And here one was, hidden away, with a friendly un-shitty-Facebook vibe, full of creative people - and with the potential to make some money, no less!
WTF?
There are so many opportunities to be creative on here that it's overwhelming. So many contests. So many people banding their talents together and combining their art with someone else's words. Much open miking. It's berwilliant.
It's gonna take some time in this rich environment to come up with new ways to creatively contribute if and when increased energy allows me to. In the meantime, I'll just post away and breathe it all in :)
I'm really happy to have joined #teamaustralia. I'm so grateful for the support and upvoting I've got from this talented community. I'm also glad to have found #freewrite. I love what ridiculousness can come from my mind with five to ten minutes and a writing prompt. And it's great to be able to check out and upvote other people's posts from both of these spaces.
There's one group of people on here that I confess I feel a little jealous towards. That's the peeps posting lovely content about their travels. I want that too! I want to post stuff showing me living an exciting life travelling around on this big blue ball! I feel a bit paranoid about how little of that I have to offer, to be honest, stuck here inside :( I mean, sheesh, I'm a tree slut, right?
Luckily I have these dudes on my back decking then, I guess, right? I may not be able to go to Costa Rica but I can go to my decking:
And I may not be able to travel out into the world, but I can travel here inside my mind :)
I happened to notice you from the minnow Monday feature by @amariespeaks , she has a very good talent at picking winners and I think she has hit on one with featuring you. The door knob led me over to here and so I figured I'd at least let you know I'm snooping around. Where do you hide your silverware?
Well, thank ya very much, sir!
I have had the silverware powder coated with plastic so they're hiding in plain sight with no fear of thievery :)
Thanks for the tidbit of information regarding the silver ware, I will keep that in mind next time I drop by. You are also most welcome.
Thank you for sharing your steemit experience and a small glimpse into your life! :)
I'm glad that you've found a drug that can help you, even a teeny bit, to help break down those barricades and allow your creativity to fly free, and I hope that you find more relief soon. <3
(I am also jealous of the view over your balcony.)
Thanks very much, @kaelci
It's great to hear you are doing a little better. My partner also suspects she has chronic fatigue issues and is also a writer and is also about to jump in steemit.
I'll be pointing her your way, she could probably use some direction to some writing comps and challenges and what not, if you can help.
Also your backyard looks amazing
Hey WCE. It's so exciting to be able to do a little more. It's quite scary to be so limited, as I'm sure your partner can attest to. I look forward to meeting her on here :)
Welcome to Steemit @sue-stevenson! So glad to have bumped into you and gotten to see your post. I love that clay figure of yourself. LOL don't we all feel that way sometimes! Although you're rep is slightly higher than what NRD usually services - I think you've written an awesome Steemit Success post and I think all our newbies can really benefit from reading your positive post :) Great job & Keep Steemin'!
~ ABC's of Curation member @amariespeaks
Jump into our discord channel to meet new friends, find great content and contests as well as ask for help: https://discord.gg/FjjfbNR
We invite you to use our tag to connect with more of our members. To learn more: Come Join Us!!! (Newbie Resteem Initiative)
Oh, thank you so much! This is really encouraging.
I felt the same way as you when I first came on here and saw all of the stuff that comes up when you search by "new," and saw how heavily skewed toward crypto it is. I'm glad I stuck it out and looked a little deeper and found how much potential this platform has, because I also really don't like Facebook and feel like it took away many of the early creative micro-communities that exited online before the age of social media came in in full. I have a casual interest in cryptocurrency but it doesn't factor almost at all into what I actually read and do on here. It's been such a breath of fresh air having the inspiration to write and share my creativity again. Even though I don't know you, I'm so glad to hear that the medication is helping you feel better and create again.
Thank you so much.
Being able to be creative just rolls out into the rest of your life, doesn't it? And having a receptive community here is just sooooo motivating and encouraging, isn't it! It really reinforces when I go on FB now what a creepy vibe it is there compared to here.
It's been amazing feeling appreciated in finding like minded communities that enjoy reading the things I write, and being able to appreciate others as well. I've always despised Facebook. I used to be really into Livejournal and I lamented when there was a big cultural shift to Twitter. To me it was such a clear symptom of the times that we had to switch to a platform for reading thoughts that requires basically zero attention span.
Ever since the Cambridge Analytica stuff came out, it seems like there's been a bit of a cultural awakening to just how toxic social media has become, and now people are realizing that they've been the product to sell all along. You may actually be interested in learning more about the underlying philosophy of blockchain now that you've found a community with so many enthusiasts, because that's a big part of it--re-decentralizing the internet. So much of it is about pushing back against the big conglomerates and corporations that have started to monopolize information and will really only get worse over time. The idea is that blockchain is a kind of insurance against that.
Yeah, I can certainly feel the difference in vibe that a non-corporatised space has on the people who are operating within it. It's like the underlying intent is like an invisible smell or a virus that infects people on a subconscious level. And sure, while it's in people's interests to be decent to other people on here in a way that's not true on places like FB or Twitter, it feels like it's not just simply that people are kinder and more generous here because of the money. It's the difference between being, as you said, the divided-and-conquered product in those spaces, and so we become more competitive and aggressive. Whereas here we are all working towards the same thing, which we are all a part of, and so it's like the human propensity to collaborate with each other, which I broadly believe to be our natural state if we don't have greedy powerful groups dividing and conquering, comes out and we have trust. And there's nothing better than trust to open up that creative space.
(Of course it's deffo not all utopia here; there are greedy destabilising people here too, who are untouchable. But still, it's different).
I think I have a vague notion now of how the blockchain works, and how everything is recorded and transparent there. So yeah, I guess I'll dip my toe into the nitty gritty of it as I go along. I just find it very technical for my ole brain :)
Well, on a philosophical level, it's probably impossible to create a utopia among humans. Plus, you know, all there are all of the external factors that throw wrenches in our plans. We need a few bad apples (or as you said, destabilizing people) to keep our moral compasses calibrated, I think. One very cool thing about Steemit is that it breaks down the notion that in the ecosystem of the internet, you're either a host or a content creator, and hosts have carte blanche to take the monetary rewards by whatever means they see fit. The few content creators who are compensated aren't compensated very well.
Conceptually, blockchain is pretty simple and not very technical at all! I don't think either of us are going to become crypto miners or witnesses anytime soon, so a layman's understanding is probably sufficient. I recently explained blockchain to a small crowd of octogenarians (something I intend to write a blog about soon) and it actually went over pretty well.
I definitely look forward to reading thst post!
hey there! You have been featured in this week's #MinnowMondays post from the team at @NewbieResteemDay.
Feel free to drop by and check out the post!
https://steemit.com/steemstem/@crystannson/the-blockchain-platform-is-making-advancements
Love the 'Poured Out' clay piece! :-)
I saw you mentioned on a Minnow Mondays post by @amariespeaks
You've been here about the same amount of time as me. Looks like you're doing good! Keep on Steemin'!
I found your post through @amariespeaks' Minnow Mondays. I agree that there's a lot of shitty posts here but it's far better than FB. And there are more awesome posts but it will just take time to browse and find them. :)