I'm Stephen Chow, an art collector from Brookline, MA, and this is my first Steemit post!

Dear Steemit,

My name is Stephen Chow, a 30-year-old art collector from Brookline, Massachusetts.

My Descent into Hell and back again:

From the age of 4 until age 25, you could say that, outside of school, I embarked on a long journey through all different kinds of art that I loved but, unfortunately, at the deepest level rubbed me the wrong way. This included vast amounts of cartoons, sports, console and computer games, LEGO, miniature tabletop games, trading card games, flute, guitar, bass, joining a metal band, an art history degree, book collecting, typography, atelier training in oil painting and drawing, and digital concept art.

By the end of this I was totally dissatisfied, and clearly depressed, if not a touch suicidal. I was dying from a lack of meaning. At the depths of despair I was 30 lbs overweight, unemployed, I lay bed-ridden in tears reading the Imitation of Christ, and I did something I had never done before or since: I prayed God help me.

I got a job at a restaurant and became an autodidact in my free time. I made use of two skills that I was fortunate to cultivate a.) How to do library research from working two semesters as a book-shelver, and b.) How to do Internet research by collecting 1,500 images for /r/privatestudyrooms.

I remember researching mostly mystical theology, higher modes of being, and what constituted a well-rounded, liberal arts education. Then, in late 2012 I visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum by myself, and had the following reaction: "I'm feeling very refreshed by the Gardner, but I think I can do better."

Something in me said that the Gardner Museum was not a destination to admire, but a jumping-off point to learn from. Not knowing where to begin, I figured I could learn a thing or two by buying original art on eBay. Taking a cue from Thomas Hoving, I copied his budget limit of $1,000 and took him one further: I would force myself to buy one object per month, no matter what. I wanted to be better than Isabella Stewart Gardner, Bernard Berenson, and the whole rest of her team put together. And I wanted to document everything online, so anyone could watch my progress and process as a collector. This is what my account on Instagram became, also @chowcollection.

Year after year, I kept spending more and more on objects by cutting my own spending habits, moving away from eBay to auction houses and galleries, until I finally burnt out. I was spending thousands of dollars on fakes, and the search for antiques was getting hopeless. I had no idea how, but it was time to become a patron of living artists, something that Isabella Stewart Gardner had done in great quantities and with great success. In 2016-2017, with some luck and lateral thinking, I managed to find Anthony Gunin indirectly on Facebook, Yury Yarin indirectly on Instagram, and by reading my articles online about art collecting, @johndykstra found me.

Enter Bitcoin. My optimism for Bitcoin has melded with the 50-year window I'm giving myself to build the next Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, by exponentially increasing the scope of patronage from 100 living artists to 1,000 living artists, and commissioning works from each of them for life. I can't guarantee that Bitcoin will do what I think it's going to do, but if it does get there over 50 years, I want to be ready for it. And that means assembling a team in advance that can rival the Renaissance. I want to inspire a culture of patronage for things that make life worth living.