Social media hater's story of Steemit power...

vm2904 (64)in #steemit • 7 years ago

Now, I blog & create art too (Geometric Lion) !
Introducing my evolved personality...

"I was the shyest human ever invented, but I had a lion inside me that wouldn't shut up!" - Ingrid Bergman

A year or so ago, if someone had told me that I would be blogging regularly, publishing photographs and even creating digital art, I would have laughed wildly! "I don't even have time to scratch my own a$$" I would have said. Not having time would only have been an excuse.

The real crux of the matter was - despite having been a leader in many walks of my career, I was not really a very social person. My 'sociable' personality was mostly a mask - a recipe, created with a few ounces of joviality, a dash of ability to resist yawning at inane attempts at conversation by fellow humans and an endless sprinkling of anecdotes based on my travel experience.

To top it off, two things made me severely shun the social media in the past:

The multinational company for which I worked for over 15 years, really looked askance at the usage of Social media. I do not blame them. The boundaries between personal life and work life become blurred often enough. It becomes hard to keep professional secrets. Anyway - being a leader, I could hardly binge out on social media and expect my team to be social media outcasts! I had to lead by example. So - I did not even have a Facebook account!
My brush with the social media left me feeling as if I was surrounded by idiots!! All kinds of idiots -

Idiots posting selfies, every 3 minutes, with ridiculous pouts - as if I or the universe cared how 'Cute' they looked
Idiots telling me that my 'Frandship' was important to them (as if I did not understand this fancy attempt at brown nosing! At least learn to spell, people!)
Idiots sending cryptic messages like 'wz gr8 2 c u' . Shakespeare and Shaw are turning in their graves! I broke the cipher, with the aid of my younger colleagues and found that this was supposed to mean "was great to see you" (rolls eyes)

Idiots, Idiots, Idiots....

Sorry for the rant. I am usually not this direct in calling someone an idiot. I prefer the gentlemanly way of telling people very gently "perhaps our intellectual levels do not match". However, this Social media thing did get me riled up...

I discovered Steemit quite accidentally while browsing around - trying to learn about Crypto currency. Came across an article or two which were full of knowledge and NOT A SELFIE in sight !! Do people on social media actually write articles like this, I wondered.

Perhaps I have been a Rip Van Winkle, sleeping metaphorically by getting too involved in my career and the world had passed me by. Perhaps social media had become the new medium of friendship instead of a warm cozy evening spent with friends! Perhaps social media was not all about being a selfie taking primate!

I was intrigued - to put it in a nutshell. I signed up. I sat back for an hour or two, trying to figure out what would I do next?

I saw people, many people, writing passionately about whatever floated their boat. Then it struck me - here was a place where I could just talk about my own passion and either be ignored in blissful silence, be critiqued constructively or be welcomed with open arms! I decided to take the plunge.

After some tentative and shaky attempts at producing blogs, I produced some blogs that I am proud of - irrespective of whether they were well received or not! Here are a few examples ...

How to Chill 🐵 Monkey style...

Bathing Beauties: Save Water💧, Elephant 🐘 Style...

🅴🅽🅳🅰🅽🅶🅴🆁🅴🅳: Ground Hornbill - Please spread the message

Steemit: Survival tool for Africa? Original Analysis and thoughts

Having been fortunate enough to live in Africa, Asia and India, places where nature is at it's most vibrant form, I had already developed a passion for photography and nature. My photographs were for the sake of my own pleasure. I had never thought about presenting them. Steemians encouraged me to share them and write about them. As my confidence grew, I experimented and learnt more and more. In a period of 3 months, fueled by my passion about Wildlife, photography and Steemit, I picked up the following great skills, which I had NO KNOWLEDGE OF BEFORE:

Creating lasting relationships and gaining confidence of followers (1000+ and counting)
Markdown and HTML
Graphic editing - Gif making, photo editing etc.
Macro photography
Writing - sometimes even satirical writing or writing in a funny vein (My friends and family believe I am a very serious person otherwise)
SQL query language for SteemSQL data analysis
and now,
Digital Art - Tadaaa...

Following steps show how I created the Lion, which, I believe, is the expression of the Lion that Steemit awakened within me!

Step 1: Basic idea for a lion face

Deciding on a simple base for creating a lion face. This source has a great method of drawing a simple lion face as shown below.

Step 2: Creating the basic structure digitally with geometric form

Step 3: Forming basic face outline

Step 4: Adding Lion hair details with simple triangular/ rectangular forms

Step 5: Adding triangles to facilitate shading

Step 6: Final form by adding color shading

I think I have found a comfortable social media home in Steemit. I also believe that I have found my niche. I intend to develop an avatar and branding for my blogs that will be recognizable for my passion - 'wildlife awareness' and 'Steemit as a medium for social causes'.

The lion is now awake - I am no longer the shy, introvert, reticent person that I was on social media. Instead, I am: