The Importance Of Writing / Writing Contest # 6

The how and why I am here on steemit.com dates way back to the days before steemit.com was even a thought in the developers’ minds. I pretty sure that block chain and crypto-currencies hadn’t been conceived yet either. The exact date that would lead me here would be 11/09/2001, or more commonly referred to as 911. I had no idea that day would ultimately be responsible for something that would take place sixteen years later in my life but that is exactly what happened.

In the United States the official story of the “911 Attacks” was terrorist hijackers commandeered some commercial aircraft and end up flying them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and some other locations in the United States including the Pentagon building in Washington, DC. I remember that Tuesday like it was yesterday, and at the time it was taking place I had no reason to doubt what was being reported. Like any other good red blooded American it was disturbing to think that we were so vulnerable to such an act of “terrorism”.

Over the years since that event I have come to realize the stories that were reported that day and in the days following had a lot of conflicts that were hard to resolve in my mind. So I kept digging and researching for the truth. The more I dug the more I found, and what I was finding was making me sick. There were so many things that could not be explained away when the official government report came out from the federal investigation into the 911 attacks.

I started talking with my wife and family about the things I had uncovered in my research and very quickly I was labeled a “conspiracy theorist” by my family. My close friends who I was discussing it with were also starting to have less to do with me. What I was saying was directly challenging everything in the family and friends belief systems.

In 2015 I got off all social media; I wasn’t into arguing with people about what I believed any longer. I did keep my Facebook page for the sole purpose of making one post a year, on 9/11. The post was very simple, “Wake Up”, and after I posted that I never went back to the page until the next 9/11.

So, on September 11, 2017 I made my normal “Wake Up” post and then later in the day I got to thinking about my life. Here is where we will get into the meat and potatoes of how and why I came to steemit.com.

That afternoon I got to thinking about what the future might hold in store for me. What prompted me to think about it are my own children. I got married later in life, I was near forty at the time, my wife is much younger than me, and we are raising four children. My children never got to know their grandparents from my side of the family, my father had died long before I ever married and my mother passed away when our oldest child was four. The oldest has vague memories of her but the other three weren’t even born before she left this earth. My wife’s mother passed away thirteen years ago, our oldest girl was exactly one week old to the day, and the youngest of our children still had not been born yet. So out of two sets of grandparents our children have only known their grandfather from my wife’s side of the family.

It was on that day I realized that if my children wait very long after they become adults to get married and raise children that I may not be around when my grandchildren will be growing up. I didn’t want to leave their kids in the situation I had left them, no grandparents and relying on me to tell the stories of their grandparents. So I started looking around the internet on how or where I could write down my thoughts and stories in my own words that would withstand the test of time.

I had thought about just a regular old diary, but that could easily be lost or damaged, plus only one of my kids would end up with it so that wouldn’t work for me. Then I thought about a blog; but what blog, and what if the site goes out of business? Would my story I would tell just vanish in thin air? It was while I was looking at blogs I discovered steemit.com and the technology behind it known as block chain.

Block chain offered everything I was looking for; permanent record, saved on multiple servers and the cost was even better than I could imagine, $0.00, that was all I needed to know. So I signed up, and while it said it might take days to get approved, I guess I was real lucky because the next day I had an account and got started, 12/09/17 or for the folks in the USA 09/12/17.

Honestly, I had no idea what crypto-currency was at that point, I had heard the term “BitCoin” but didn’t understand it nor did I really care to know about crypto-currencies. Being the curios old man that I am though, I thought it would be best to start learning about the world of crypto and especially steem. When I came here I had never written anything that had ever been posted to the internet except some things on Facebook. I knew nothing about blogging but I was willing to learn. To be totally honest I didn’t care if a single person was coming by my blog and reading it, the audience I was writing for had not even been born yet.

So my blog which I named, Daily Dose of Sultnpapper, made its first appearance on Steemit.com on 12/09/17 in the USA it would be 9/12/17. I wish the USA would just get with the rest of the world on how to write the day of the year. They talk about the “New World Order’ and can’t agree on how to write the day of the year? Not much order in that scenario.

Not knowing a person on this site when I got here, I decided to start exploring. I investigated tags that interested me and started doing a bunch of reading posts. I learned what voting was about and studied how things worked in general. Some of what I consider the best posts I have written got nary an up vote. It was a lonely existence, so many people but I knew very little at all and the only followers I had were bots. I wasn’t discouraged because my purpose was to get my thoughts and stories down in written form and preserved for the future.

After about a week on here I decided that I was going to take and park myself on the “introduceyourself” page and start greeting new comers to the site, I quickly found that several people coming here knew nobody, they had heard they could earn crypto and they were coming to “get rich” on the next BitCoin; steem. So, I started making friends and I kept writing my daily dose. I also learned REP and what that number represented and how to increase it. It has been a long road from 25 to 53 and I have met some great people along the way who have helped me raise that number.

One thing I will say is I don’t totally agree on how it works, I see people now who join and in a matter of hours can go from 25 to 50 or higher and have done nothing but put their picture and four or five sentence introduction. It’s just like if a magic wand is waved over their page as they rack up major steem and REP.

I came here basically just a selfish old man looking to take advantage of a technology I knew nothing about. I have always been a people person but expressing things with people I normally interact with is in person, not typed words in a chat room or on discord. So that has been I learning curve for me as well, I highly recommend getting involved in groups on here.

A fine young man named @ethandsmith ran across my daily dose blog one day and started up a conversation. He then disappeared for a while; I always make it a point to visit people’s blogs who stop by mine. Ethan is a “techy” kind of guy, he was back then reviewing software and apps and even though those aren’t my cup of tea, I learned it doesn’t hurt to take a few sips of it every now and then. Eventually over the course of a few months we had become friends and he was nice enough to invite me to join a writing group he was a member of.

That group that I became a member of kind of got a little out of shape and Ethan and a few others decided to break away and form a new group. They invited me to join them and I took them up on that offer as well. If you write original content and enjoy curating other people’s works then stop by @thesteemengine and check us out. There are several good groups on steemit, my suggestion is to find one or two that revolve around your area of interest and join in. This will help you in many different ways, eventually it will lead to more followers and more up votes on your blog.

Speaking of up votes, there are a bunch of bots that live here on steemit.com. In fact when I first joined here I thought the place was nothing but bots, all that I had up voting some of my posts were bots. I have never used any of the bots that you pay a fee too to get up votes. Some people use them and seem to think bots are paying for themselves by the amount of increase in their earnings. That might very well be true and if you are only here for the potential earnings have at it.

Since the financial gain was not my original intent I saw no use in them for me, if I was going to be here and earn value I wanted what I gained to be a true measurement of what the community felt I brought to the community.

In no way, shape, or form could a person consider me a writer or blogger when I arrived here, that probably still holds true to this day. Even still, the community has accepted me and allowed to grow and work on the skills it takes to achieve such status, for that I am grateful. There is no pressure to feel here; you participate to your own comfort level. I have challenged myself to actively participate to improve my writing skills so that the people who read my work can possibly be treated to more entertaining and interesting daily dose blog post. It may also help in future years that my grand children would think I was slightly more educated than I actually am.

My plan for the future here is a simple plan. Blog, write stories for contests, curate others work to learn how to improve and accept the rewards that the community bestows on me in the form of SBD & steem. Then continue to grow those rewards through holding and or trading as necessary, as my knowledge of steem and crypto currencies increases.

This plan is nothing more than an average plan at best, but I know it will work. I have six months prior history that has taken me from basically zero to where I am at now, which honestly is more than I could have ever imagined having known nothing about how this works when I signed up for steemit,com.

There you have it, the story of @sultnpapper. Thank you for reading and your comments would be greatly appreciated.