Contest Entry - Will Crypto Change My Life? I Hope So!

This is my entry for @coruscate's contest entitled How Has Crytpo Created More Freedom In Your Life? The first thing that you'll notice is that the title of my entry isn't in keeping with a retrospective account of past successes. I can't really tell you all a wonderful story about how crypto has helped me in the past, because I haven't been involved long enough in the world of crypto to have earned anything at all yet that I could spend on even a coffee at my local barista. I have never converted a single cryptocurrency amount into fiat currency. In fact, I don't even have an account on an exchange yet to do so. I see people talking about Bittrex and Binance, but I haven't even started down that track yet. I've begun looking at local exchanges here in New Zealand, such as BitPrime and CryptopiaNZ, but I haven't committed to one yet.

🙚 𝑰𝒕'𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒃𝒆𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝒘𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒖𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒃𝒚 𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒓𝒖𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒑𝒂𝒄𝒆. 🙘
_{^{- Lea (Coruscate).}}

Lea's comment here about "shaping the future" really resonates with me. From my own perspective, crypto is more about the future than being about the past or present. My involvement in crypto right now is a start towards something I hope to achieve in the future. But to understand why I'm even considering a future involving crypto, you'd need to understand a bit more about my own past and present. Here's a little more about my own story, then.

I was diagnosed with Aspergers at around 40 years old. That is very late in life to finally come to understand why my own view of the world around me was so different to most other people's. By the time I was finally diagnosed, I had lost many jobs, been ostracised by many social gatherings, and basically become a social outcast without ever understanding what I had done wrong so many times, to so many different people. This, it turns out, is quite a common life experience for people like me on the Autism Spectrum. Many people like to deny such a diagnosis, with talk of "not putting me in a box" and such, but I relish my diagnosis: it gives me some clarity in hindsight, and provides opportunities for support that weren't available to me as a youngster.

For myself, the promise of crypto, and of sites like the Steem blogging platform, is in the potential for being able to earn a living without all that messy face-to-face interaction with people, which so often leads to failure, from my experience. While I have had a few negative experiences online, most of my previous "Aspie issues" of the past have involved face-to-face interactions. Many neurotypical people find technology, and particularly text-based technologies such as blogs, to be impersonal and lacking in the expressiveness that is inherent of face-to-face communication. However, consider us Aspies, who often find interpreting expressions and visual cues difficult. For us, interaction through the Internet is often easier. Perhaps this is why Silicon Valley is populated by so many Aspies! So, if I can earn a living through interacting online, there is hope for me yet!

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