How I ended up on Steemit

Hello fellow Steemians

I am so pleased to be writing my first couple of posts on Steemit. I had a friend @thearcanebear start posting about a year ago and sharing his links on facebook. I was so busy with life that I didn't take the time to check it out. I wish I had.

I'm 37, single, no kids. An electrician of 18 years. I was an avid rock climber but a bad fall three years ago has forced me to focus on recovery. I have survived a number of serious accidents and spend a lot of my time dealing with pain and doing my best to recover. I have worked in many different fields within the electrical sector; Renewable energy, industrial, commercial, residential, institutional, and have even done the power systems for a few music festivals. I recently quit my government job and went out on my own.

I couldn't stand working for a bunch of moron and dealing with all the political bullshit, stuck in a little office at a computer most of the time. I'm a hands on kind of guy that can fix/build just about anything. I understand how things work. I'm excited for the diversity and freedoms of being an entrepreneur. I started with nothing and have worked extremely hard for all the money I have. Realizing how hard it is to save money working for a living I'm constantly looking for other ways to grow and protect my wealth. When you see some of the opportunities that are out there it is very exciting. One right decision can set you up for life. That's what has lead me to precious metals and crypto currencies.

A little over a month ago I started seeing all the hype about bitcoin. It rekindled my interest in cryptos. I initially heard about Bitcoin in its early stages. I was actually one click away from investing $1000 CND when it was at $7 but my fear kicked in and I chickened out. There is a lot to it. All the steps it took to purchase and store it scared me. It was so new and there was definitely a lot of uncertainty. Now that $1000 would be worth over half a million CND. I have been watching it go up all these years and telling myself "I can't buy in at this price, I could have bought it at $7". Now look at it. It recently hit an all time high of just under $4000 CND. I'm not one to dwell on the past so I've recently decided to suck it up and throw some money in. Yes, it's painful. But it hasn't gone away and its only gotten stronger. There is so much I love about Bitcoin and cryptos in general.

Anyone who knows me knows to not get me stated on finance. I'm quite passionate about it and get fired up pretty easily. I started researching financial systems when I was 23. I had recently bought a house and the value was climbing fast. An old German fellow I worked with started telling me how money had no real value except for the value people placed in it. He explained how gold was a good way to store your wealth as you actually have a tangible asset apposed to some paper that was really only good for wiping your ass with. I quickly realized I actually knew nothing about money. I didn't know where it came from, what gave it value, etc. Like everyone I just kind of accepted it as is. I became fascinated by money and started reading as much as I could. In 3 years my house had tripled in value. I decided I would sell my house and put all the profit ($300 000) into gold. Gold at the time was $500 CND. (Keep in mind I was only 24 at the time) I started looking into how I would go about this. I called my step dad to explain my plan. He said "that is way too risky. You're only 24. You don't understand that much about finance yet. Don't do it. If you want to invest in gold put $10 000 in or something like that." So that's what I did. At that age you still think your parents know best. Over the years to come the value of my home dropped and gold surged higher and higher. If I would have trusted my instincts and bought in to gold and sold at the top I would have had over $1 000 000 CND by the time I was 30. Instead house prices continued to fall. I eventually decided to sell and lost a lot of the profit I could have had. Lesson learned. The more you learn about our current financial system the more your disgust will grow. I didn't want to have my profits sitting in the bank where they were at the mercy of the governments and their money printing. I put most of the profits I did make into precious metals but my timing was horrible. It was at the peak.

About a month ago I had a really good conversation with an interesting fellow @greenman I had recently met while attending Burning Man 2017. I knew he was into bitcoin and we instantly got into talking finance. We shared the same hatred for the crooked bankers and he was telling me how he pulled everything out of the FIAT system and got into cryptos, land, and a decked out Westfalia to travel around in. Needles to say we had a lot in common. He invited me over and very kindly took the time to share some of his knowledge on cryptos. He said one of his favorites was Steem and he told me a little bit about the Steemit platform. What a fantastic idea I though. A crypto combined with a social media platform that pays you to create content. The timing was perfect. I was so sick of facebook and instagram. All these people putting so much time an effort in to create content for someone else to profit from. What a rip off. Then I recalled how my friend @thearcanebear had been sharing Steemit posts for the last year. Sometimes we are so busy that we miss a lot of opportunities. But here I'm here now. A little later than I would have liked, but I'm here.

I'm so excited about this platform and its concept. I'm eager to start sharing with this community and contributing information that I find relevant and fascinating. Some of the things I will be talking about are; Crypto currencies, precious metals, energy, electricity, sustainable building, DIY, health/healing, yoga/strengthening, Anarchism, and generally thinking outside the box. The system is broken and together we will find new ways to build something that works.

I hope you enjoy what I have to share. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Look forward to connecting with all of you on this new and exciting platform.

Please follow me to stay connected.

Cheers!