Testing.

...1...2.. Hello? Hi.

I'm Nils.

Here's a picture of chubby happy baby Nils. Those were the good old days when I still loved carpet. Warm bottles of milk appeared in my hands with nothing but a loud holler--

Wait. Wait, hold up.

This account has 650+ followers... have we really not done this?
Here we are, a year and half later: An introduction! What's the deal with not saying whats up? What could possibly hold me back from a simple hello?

Testing.

Steem, do you read me? Cause I've been reading you.

Reading. Listening. Watching. Voting. Testing.

Proceeding with caution I've been on and off the platform during this time. First entranced by idealism and the promise of new culture; a media distribution system owned by, created by'n'for "the" people. However I've gotten battered away again and again in the face of chaotic selfishness that continues to plague steem. Part of this platform's promise is money, therefore it's too good of a thing to share.

M o n e y.
Money is the root of steem's problems (and strengths) but that's not the only problem. In too many ways steem has disappointed and pushed me away... but I keep coming back. There is something true here, something of quality. As much as I imagine them, the perfect systems won't appear through yearning. Right now steem is the only place to start. When it comes to open invite, user owned creative/media networks there is nothing like it. It is worth working and fighting for, even with all it's pains and shortcomings, I'm on board.

Testing, Steem?

I wan't more though. Will you help me?

I've been thinking. A lot. Think is cheap though, I wanna talk. Let's talk steem!
I wanna build. All this yearning, thinking and waiting has made me realize it's not enough to take what we are given. That is what this is all about, isn't it, why we are here on steem? We're here to build, to take back the rights to our own information, our own creations...
Or were you here for the dollar $ign$? Through user owned networks, this "crypto" revolution, is a re-balancing, a rejection of being owned by banks, corporations, landlords. We can't forget this, if we only chase the dollar signs, things won't just go back to what they were before, they will be worse, far worse.

I'm here on steem for Art. To create and share art, and to support other artists in their own personal quests for truth.
Just look at my blog. I've been spending the last several months making no posts of my own and only curating on steem. Every day as much as I can and for what ever it's been worth, I have been supporting artists with up votes and resteems. Again, Testing. I want to see how I can support artists here. I want to know what is it that makes this a mutually beneficial relationship between us artists and the steem platform as a whole. I want to know how can we work together to make this a better world.

Artists build society with their dreams, creating a culture of shared memories, metaphors shaping the way we as a people move. As it is, our most effective visionaries are caught in the corporate whirlpool, enslaved to produce hypnotic desire. We must free our artists, and steem can be an awesome partner in this goal. Let's talk steem. Let's figure this out.

Yikes! OK, Enough Politics. This was an introduction wasn't it?

I'm Nils,

I work as a freelance filmmaker, and as an installation artist. I'm excited to start sharing my work with you all. I'd like to keep up this blog and develop it in a different way, so I've decided to share my work on a separate account: @solrasol - i'll do a separate introduction there, but thought i'd still share a quick sneak peak of a couple recent works in this post.

A few months ago I finished editing on a feature film: Fix it! Alexis. I worked as the Lead Editor and Executive Producer. We are in the process of sending it to festivals.

On the installation side of things, I recently took a trip to Ithaca, NY where I participated in the 9th annual Naked Noise put on by Ithaca Underground. Here I worked with a friend to put on a very large light installation using 12 projectors.

I'm really excited to share more about the fix it! Alexis and Naked Noise 9 with everyone on steem, i'll be posting to @solrasol. I intend to keep @solar as my curation account, where I continue to share other artists work, and as a voice to engage with the community here on steem. There is much to talk about, and even more to do. I've got a series of topics i'd like to address, i'm looking forward to our future discussions on how to build a better platform.

After all this testing I'm ready to commit to steem for a more in depth trial period. I'd like to work for steem, and I have a project that i've been working on for 6 months that I'd like to propose to the network. One thing at a time though, all that and more to come.

---

One question for you guys, I'm looking to create more discussion on the platform around particular topics. I was using chainBB until @jesta sadly shut down the project. I hope that someone else will pick it up, i felt it was an important tool for expanding the use of steem.

So with chainbb shutdown indefinitely, what are some of your favorite tools out there for engaging in the community?