My path to finding Steemit and what I plan on posting

My first article on Steemit will go through the strange path I took to find Steemit and my idea for what I will share.

My path started with some spare time that I had while waiting for my son to get done with his night class. My son is only 15 so I have to drive him to his class. I wait outside of the class for 2 hours until his class is done and during this time I have to keep myself busy so I usually end up browsing the internet. I am trying to get out of browsing things that do not advance my life, so I tend to look up business ideas or stocks or things to learn online. I decided to check out Udemy, because I wanted to find something new to learn.

I decided to see what was most popular. I found a drop-shipping course which had about 10,000 (I think) students. But that didn't make sense!? This was a fairly new course, maybe a year old, and I remember a lot of drop-shipping courses from years ago on Udemy that had more students than that. So why was this one on top? And what happened to the others?
I couldn't find the other courses, which REALLY baffled me and I began my journey down the "rabbit hole".
During my search to find answers, I came across a video on Youtube about someone who got banned from Udemy ...

I am sure everyone on Steemit knows Jerry Banfield. I might have seen some of his videos before but I must have brushed him off as another person making videos to make money. So, I watched the video ... and then another and so on. What I concluded was that Jerry was truly genuine. Disclaimer: I have never contacted or written about Jerry before this. I feel that he posts his earnings in an open manner and has not tried to hide anything. I cannot say this for most of the other Udemy and Youtubers who seem to only post their successes and frequently leave out failed ventures. For now, I think Jerry is honest. He has passed my psycho-analysis. I watched Jerry's progression from being banned by Udemy to trying Twitch to trying other platforms and finally he mentioned Steemit.

So why did Steemit interest a middle-aged husband and father of 3 boys (ages 8, 10, 15)? I guess it is with everything I choose in life ... it needs to be more than a "one trick pony". Youtube is for posting videos, Twitter for saying something quick, Twitch for live gaming.

Steemit it included many things that I like:

1. I always wanted to post ideas or blog about something.
2. It was new and I wouldn't feel like a tiny fish in a giant pond of more experience swimmers.
3. It involved cryptocurrencies, which I am interested in getting into.

Rewind to about a month ago: My 15-year-old son came to me and asked me if I knew anything about cryptocurrencies. You see, my son loves computers and programming, and at about 13 years old I gave in and admitted that he was probably already smarter than I was. He likes to build his own computers and is always looking to upgrade his "rig". About a month ago there was an extreme shortage of graphics cards needed for gaming computers due to cryptocurrency miners building mining rigs. That is how he found out about mining.

I had heard about mining years ago, but it sounded too complicated. But since it now peaked my son's interest (and I am always looking for things that I can do together with my children) I decided to look into it again.

For the next 2 weeks, I tried to figure out EXACTLY what mining was and how to do it. I got a few headaches and stayed up way too late trying to figure out what a "256 hash" was. I studied what made one crypto better than another and where do they come from. After doing all of this research I noticed that the popularity of mining was starting to make its impact on the difficulty and profitability of mining. making a mining rig would cost over $1000 and too many hours - neither of which I could afford.

Fast forward to yesterday: My son saw me watching one of Jerry Banfield's videos and said he recognized Jerry from a cryptocurrency video he had seen. Well, sure enough, a few more videos into my search and I found Jerry's cryptocurrency videos. I knew from his history that he wasn't an expert, so I wanted to see if he proclaimed to be one. But, if you know Jerry, he didn't. In fact, he proclaims he is NOT an expert, which really made me start to trust him.

So, at this point I decided to look into other Steemit videos and see if I could find a kink in its armor. The only thing that gets me worried is how some people link a bunch of other accounts they have through their posts. I am not sure if this is wrong yet, but I am thinking that this leaves an opportunity for people to do very little and get hits on all of their different accounts (if that makes sense). After watching a few of Christian Lains' videos, I think it is clear that this Steemit community is meant to watch over itself. And I guess that is what voting is for, so I will have to get used to voting.

The last step that got me to sign up for Steemit was that I needed something to write about. Not just random thoughts here and there, I wanted something good. I have plenty of things that I have learned in my life that I will write about in depth later, but I realized that I had something that others might be interested in ... my diary.

When I was a kid, my father wasn't around very much. He preferred to be at the bar and would always argue with my mom. He also worked 2nd shift, which meant he was not up in the morning when I went to school, was gone when I got home and got home after I was in bed. So, I did not have the father figure to tell me how to act and how NOT to act (although I am not sure he would have given me good guidance even if he was around). I feel like I didn't mature as fast as the other kids and so I am sure I was somewhat annoying or obnoxious to other kids.

My parents divorced when I was in 5th grade and I was confused and a bit relieved. My mom couldn't handle my brother and I (we fought too much), so my brother moved in with my dad. My mom also had to start a full-time job and so I was getting up in the morning by myself. I had to get dressed, eat and get to school (the only one of those I was good at was getting to school since it was only a couple blocks away). I dressed terrible (I was used to my mom laying out my matching Granimals every morning), never combed my hair and (if we ran out of cereal) I had no clue what to eat. So long story short, I did not have many friends and (even worse) I had no clue why.

Have you seen the first "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" movie? I was the Greg character trying to move up the popularity list at school. Everything I tried failed. So, I was kind of happy when my mom said we were moving and I would be going to a new school. It wasn't that far away, but at least it was a new school.

It was 9th grade and I started with the same struggles as my previous school, but there was one HUGE difference. The kids here were more understanding! They didn't put me down or shun me from their groups and so I began to feel more and more comfortable. By the end of 9th grade I had new friends and was having a great time. It was 1986 and that is when I started my diary.

I am not sure why I started, but I had a small notepad and I wrote the date on top and all the things I did during the day. Simple stuff, not really in depth, deep thoughts or anything.

I think what is cool about it is that it shows how someone with very little friends or confidence eventually grew into a happy, fun-loving teenager thanks to classmates who were very understanding. I thank those classmates every chance I get on Facebook and let them know that (even though they didn't realize it) they made a huge effect on me.

I am going to start posting actual pages of my diary. I have to black out last names to protect my classmates who may be in positions that require respect (ie. professor, CEO, doctor, etc). I might black out other words out of embarrassment, but you should be able to figure it out.