Steemit Ultimate Challenge 8 Weeks - Week #7

Steemit Ultimate Challenge 8 Weeks - Week #7 - My Entry

As I’m writing this, I’m still encouraging myself to have the guts to post this. I ran across this contest in my feed, as I’m following @dobartim, and told myself that it’s an excellent opportunity for me to share what the impact of Steemit on my life has been, and at the same time thank the people who’ve been part of my journey here.

My nickname is Tin-tin, I'm currently a music education student (a surprising choice for me, since I didn't intend to be one, but that's another story) from the Philippines. While I didn't expect to end up studying music, I do love it, and one of my goals is to be able to create a youth music literacy program for the underprivileged, to be able to provide an alternative activity to keep young minds productive and give them a skill that they can use to earn in the future (through giving music lessons themselves when they're good enough). ＾ω＾ Enough about my dreams and on to the post!

---

Um, not really sure how to start this, so I’ll just start from the very beginning, the reason why I joined Steemit.

By nature, I’m a very shy and not-so expressive person. I’m not a writer either. But last December 2017, @isaganispeaks told my brother about Steemit. They talked about it, and my brother was convinced that it was an excellent platform to join, after all, who wouldn’t want to earn while posting about stuff you have the passion for?

So while my brother and @isaganispeaks were talking, I was just listening to them without any intention of joining.

Though, when they saw that I was paying attention, they started telling me about Steemit, what it is, how it works, etc. Now, when both of them encouraged me to join, I just laughed and told them that my writing skills were bad, that I had no experience outside of writing for school stuff.

Despite me being negative, they still continued until brother told me that if I don’t take the opportunity, then that means that I would be limiting myself, my skills and capabilities.

I thought for a long time about what my brother said. And I did some self-evaluation and realized that he was right. Not only was I putting a limit on what I can do, I was also using my shyness and awkwardness, my bad social skills, to put a cap on what I could possibly achieve.

My dream to be a musicologist, to be a person who could help the community through music literacy for the underprivileged, to be an individual who could be a support to others, all of these were impossible if I did not take a step out of my comfort zone, to learn to connect with others. Because it’s my weakness you see, talking and making connections with new people scares me, this was due to a childhood trauma where I was passively bullied by a group of girls I had considered friends. Until now, as a college student, I struggle with communication.

(Teaching for free with my fellow music students at a public elementary and high school near our college)

But my brother made me realize that I couldn’t stay in my shell if I wanted to pursue my goals.

So before I could talk myself out of it, I signed up for Steemit, anxious and at the same time excited.

When I told at @isaganispeaks about my decision, he became my Steemit mentor. Even though he had only been on the platform for a month, he gave me guidance to avoid the pitfalls for newbies, introduced me to Discord and the groups to join for minnows, and even gave me the SBD to register for some. And while he helped me, I also read up on the do’s and don’ts since I didn’t want to be a leech off my friend’s kindness and generosity.

I wrote my first post, a post about how music reflects society. It only had a few views, but later it was curied! (not a major one, but still!) I was shocked and amazed, as well as happy.

But of course, life isn't without its trials.

Still having a positive mindset, I wrote a few more, and my introduction post too. That one was curated by another group, and of course, it made me glad.

I ended up in the Discord of The Isle of Write (another invite by my friend @isaganispeaks), which is full of awesome writers whose writing skills made me feel intimidated but who were pretty kind when you interacted with them. Just dropping by the channel to read what they’re talking about there cheers me up, they have hilarious and deep discussions, from glitters to literature, really, they talk about a wide variety of stuff.

Did I mention the freewriters? I haven’t been active in freewriting lately, but @mariannewest’s 5-minute freewrite was helpful to me, especially when I had a hard time writing. The other freewriters were also kind and sweet, dropping by and leaving constructive comments.

Still, though I made new friends, I was wondering about what to do. The things I wrote about, music-related posts, they didn’t seem to have generated much interest. But then I met @bengy, who started a Discord server for classical musicians. He read one of my posts and invited me to join the group.

I accepted, and was, I think, the second person on the channel.

I’m really thankful for @bengy, he came just as I was contemplating to stop writing about music. He became a sort-of cheerleader, who always checks the #classical-music tag to upvote and drop comments on other people’s posts. He’s very consistent too, almost a one-man army.

Slowly, more people joined the Discord community and I met more people with the same interests, who came from different places, had different backgrounds, some spoke other languages, but were brought together through Steemit.
It surprised me how supportive the guys could be when I got my first major curie. When @bengy found out, he was one of the first to comment, and then the other guys followed. I don’t know how it happened or why, but @bengy rallied people together and they upvoted the post to keep it about the 100 SBD mark.

These guys, really, I don’t know them in person, face-to-face, but connecting with them, it’s heartwarming. Their comments can also make me laugh and smile after a long, tiring day.

Besides the classical music community on Discord and Isle of Write, I joined several others such as PAL, SteemPh, Steemit Local Music Society, The Steemit Book Project (which is for a good cause), TeamGirlPowa (which always has interesting and informative discussions on-going), and more.

Being on Steemit has opened up a whole new world for me. Slowly but surely, I’m learning how to connect with others, to learn about others and about the world beyond what I could see. It’s not easy, especially for someone like me who’s shy even on the internet where you can remain anonymous, but there’s a saying that’s always reminding me as I continue interacting with others on Steemit, “No man is an island”. And connecting with others on Steemit is also helping me outside of it, outside of the internet. I’m gaining the courage to face others in social situations and am slowly learning how to interact with them.

With shyness usually comes low self-esteem, which I’m afflicted with. The first time I joined a contest on here on Steemit, I called myself stupid for even daring to participate. I was like ‘why even join?’. But I wanted to challenge myself, get over things that I was afraid of, so I joined a few more. I learned to enjoy myself, to stop being so negative and learn to accept what I can and live life to the fullest.

Putting up posts is also helping me with my writing skills, teaching me how to write in a way that could convey what I want to share to those who read. Still struggling a lot in this area, but I’ve also taken the time to follow and read the blogs of people who share their expertise in the area of blog writing, people like jrswab, arbitrarykitten, tinypaleokitchen, and more. They’re individuals who share what they know to help the community, and their posts are really helpful for newbie writers.

I learn a lot from reading posts, from education to crypto, to art, writing, there are people who do their best to write quality content that can be helpful and informative for the readers, and I really admire their dedication to do so.

And, I know that each person who comes to Steemit have their own reasons for joining, some to find a community, others for money, to blog, each with their own initiatives. But I also see people who do their best to help the community and not only themselves, I won’t write about each one because that would take a long time to list them all. But really, spending time, effort, and their own funds just to help out others is very inspiring and gives me a sense of pride, in a way, that there are people in the community I’m part of who cares about others.

There’s also the financial aspect of being part of Steemit. As a college student, money isn’t free to use. There are tuitions to pay, living expenses, projects to do, not to mention that as a music student there’s also music lessons to attend. Earning through posts also lightens the monetary burdens of my dad, who works all the time just to be able to provide for his kids, and I know it isn’t easy for him. Being able to earn through Steemit, no matter how small, can help in student expenses. If possible, I want to help my dad as much as I can. My school is far from my hometown, seeing my dad once in a year is already a lot, and each time I see him, he has more white hair than before… Each time I call him, I hear how tired he is from his voice but he still tells me to not worry about school fees because he’ll work hard enough to pay them…

As I continue to be part of the Steemit community, I’m learning a lot, about myself and about others. I’m being taught to look beyond the world around me, to step into the unknown and make a way for myself, to connect with people beyond my tiny social sphere.

For me, I see Steemit as a platform with a lot of potential as a community, as well as for myself. I’m sure it’ll challenge me, maybe sometimes to the point that I would want to quit, but of course, that’s life, it’s much richer with the ups and downs.

There are lots of plans that I have for the future on what I can do on it Steemit, including a music literacy project, helping with the growth of the classical music community, connecting with other music educators to learn from them here in the community and such, but those are all plans for now. Hopefully, someday I could make them into a reality.

I’m learning and growing as an individual here in Steemit. I don’t regret joining, come what may, I’m glad to have made friends, to have learned a ton of things, and to have seen and participated in a world that was beyond what I could see before.

---

Thanks for @dobartim for this contest, I feel better to have written these things, I expressed some things that I couldn’t or wouldn’t before, and thanked publicly those people who've helped me here（＾∀＾）

For those interested in joining ‘The Ultimate Steemit Challenge’, check this link. It's a great opportunity, don't miss out!

Thanks for reading!(=^_^=)