It Has Been a Long Ride: Today is my 5th Anniversary of Joining Steemit

Taking a momentary sidetrack from my usual blogging fare to mark the fact that today represents the 5th Anniversary of when I first discovered this place!

January 29th 2017. Wow...

As I have probably mentioned before I found Steemit completely by accident.

A friend of mine on Facebook had sent me a link to an article because we were both reading up on various private initiatives relating to Universal Basic Income. So he sent me a link to "some article" with the question "what do you think of this?"

I didn't actually think very much of it, but to make a long story short... it turned out that that particular article had been published by somebody here on Steemit. And what really hooked me — and remains testament to the importance of engagement — was the fact that at the end of the article there was some very intelligent and respectful discussion in the comments section.

I thought to myself "wow, these people are actually having an intelligent discussion, they're not just flaming each other with opposing viewpoints!" And I learned that you could click on a user's name and end up on a page that showed what they had published, both in terms of content and comments... and I did precisely that with a couple of the people who left more relevant and eloquent comments.

At that point I still had absolutely no idea what this "Steemit" thing was, but I was a little surprised that I'd never heard of it because I considered myself pretty plugged into lot of blogging venues and places where people would post their creative content.

I ended up creating an account primarily because I wanted to leave comments on several very intelligent posts I had read. And that was pretty much the first moment at which I became aware that this was a blockchain based platform and it was centered around rewarding content creators with cryptocurrency.

To be honest, I was a little miffed that account creation was not "instantaneous;" my account had to be manually approved. Or something like that...

It didn't put me off too much, though... as a fairly prolific writer, I was quite familiar with venues that literally "checked your references" before granting people an account.

I like to tell the preceding story because it illustrates (A) that there really is no marketing that could possibly have reached me and (B) the importance of sharing our content externally as a way to help the user base of Steemit grow.

So now it has been five years, and there have been lots of changes in the course of those five years.

I've seen seven cent Steem and I've seen eight dollar Steem. Most of the time, I must confess, I have really been more interested in the content creation part of the equation than in the earning rewards and cryptocurrency part of the equation. Perhaps that sets me somewhat apart from the majority of users here but I think it's mostly a reflection of my lifelong love of writing.

But I have definitely been rewarded for being here and so the whole "Better Life as a result of Steemit" could definitely be applied to me as well, in so far as the only times I have actually powered down was once to buy a new set of tires for our truck — which was utterly amazing — and a second time powering down to pay our property taxes so we wouldn't lose our house... which was also utterly amazing so thank you for that!

Those five years have been rather turbulent haven't they?

A lot of people have come and gone, very few of the people who were around when I started here are still around today, sadly.

We have had everything from botched hard forks to rewards pool rape to trolling spammers to downvote wars to the fork that actually split the community in two… and yet there seems to be a remarkable resilience in this community that I have not generally seen on other blogging platforms.

I have no idea what the next five years will hold. But I hope it's something good!

I have no idea whether this will even be a content creation venue in five years from now. But as long as it is, I plan to continue writing and publishing my thoughts here on a regular basis.

Thanks to everybody who has followed me and engaged with my content over the years! I appreciate the connections and the support and the encouragement and even your friendship. Here's to another five years!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your weekend!

How about YOU? How long have you been part of this community? Is this your first blogging experience, or are you an "old pro" at this? Do leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20220129 15:32 PST
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