Introducing myself: Your local drunk Irish writer

Hi Streemit, how’s the craic?

So I thought I’d do an introduction post to give you an idea of who I am and also to lay out what I’m aiming for in writing this blog.

(way too flattering a pic, )

I’m a Northern Irish writer and journalist now living and drinking in London. I consider my complex nationality quite closely linked to my identity and will hopefully at some stage get round to doing a full post about what it really means to me.

I shipped off to the big smoke for university to study ancient history. “Someone had to do it” is the normal response at the raised eyebrows that degree brings.

Somehow after graduating I ended up as a tech and then FinTech journalist where I first came across cryptocurrency and the blockchain. I’ve never been a crypto investor, which is a shame because I remember when bitcoin was worth less than a dollar. But not being a gambler I probably would have cashed out at $100 thinking it could never go higher.

Writing is one of my long standing passions as well as travel and history. I believe really great travel writing (or indeed much of the fiction I enjoy) is found at the intersection of those. My first post on a hungover trip to and Greek temple is an example of what I’m aiming for.

(Check it out here: https://steemit.com/travel/@benjyhg/an-ancient-greek-historian-and-a-hangover-made-me-go-to-a-deserted-island)

(Yeah! History!)

When it comes to sport I’m a rugby man and passionately cheering on Ireland with a Guinness in my favourite Irish pub is one of my great joys. Even if it does occasionally bring me close to a heart attack.

One of the things I love about London is quite how much the arts world here has to offer. My calendar is always packed with exhibitions, plays and gigs but I always manage to find time to get drunk with the friends I love at least once a week.

Hopefully this gives you a sense of what I’m all about but I now want to state, to myself as much as the community, what I want to ‘achieve’ on Steemit:

The foremost purpose of this blog is to serve as a venue for me to practice my creative writing outside of my work and prompt me to challenge myself.

Therefore, expect slightly longer post with an emphasis on personal experience or accurate research.

In doing so I hope to help add high quality, writing-based content to Streemit. From my lurking I have concerns about what kind of content does well across the platform and find at the moment there’s a disappointing amount of posts with a single image, YouTube video or an article entirely stolen from some hard working journalist.

I hope that by sticking to my guns and pushing myself I can help change that.

I’m still very new here so please hit me up with your feedback!