Misterakpan's Curie Story - A Community Project My Dreams Rode On

Why Share My Curie Story?

I am morally obligated to tell #mycuriestory. I have a responsibility to administer gratitude to the hands that have fed me. Since I myself would appreciate such gratitude, and in Africa we say, "As you do for your ancestors, your children will do for you," this post is very in-line.

Early Days

My Steemit journey started in July of 2017. As everyone else, I was elated. I had all the dreams, fluffy and soon to be quelled. I read the posts that were making a lot of money. Maybe I could make reasonable money already just publishing writings I had in my Google Drive. Maybe I could become rich if I sat my butts down and wrote new stuff. It was a no-brainer, I went ahead with both.

Some context: I was fresh from running a very unsuccessful foodstuff business in the city of Lagos. My quest to become an Entrepreneur, that had driven me to give my college education the middle finger when I got really convinced pursuing it wasn't serving me any purpose, was beginning to take a bad toll. I was living with my brother, broke and browsing Small Business Opportunities. I was turning 28 in a few days that July.

So I came on Steemit with all the motivation one could muster. I learnt markdown faster than I did any of my Botany courses. I was posting and posting and posting. And the pending payout was having a good laugh at my rewards. I was going to quit. But thanks for the great guys I met here, starting from @sircork, I got motivated to stay. I just put my Steemit expectations in check, and pursued my new business that was in the horizons. The finances didn't improve much, but my writing did, and some of my posts were making $15-ish rewards. That was enough to keep me going then.

Meeting Curie

One day I was talking with @thatdamiguy -- another Nigerian and excellent community guy -- and he mentioned he was becoming a curie curator. The only faint recollection I had with that word "curie" was my posts that had any sanity of reward had @curie among its top voters. Once I had used steem.supply to check the social stats on my account, and @curie was the second largest contributor after @abigail-dantes. Like the evil spirit I was like, Abigail, I know; who the heaven are you, Curie? I jumped on their blog and caught up with the update posts. And lo, I learnt about the manual curation, and that most anyone who was as engaged as I was on Steem could become a part of all that was going on. The finder fee was attractive, I must concede, so I couldn't help but have another saliva-inducing Steem dream.

Long story short, I applied to become a curator through @geekgirl. I was accepted after rigorous mentoring. It's six months and counting, and I have established myself as a significant contributor to the most amazing Steem project. Refer to @carlgnash's "MyCurieStory" to see stats about curie's contribution to retention on this platform.

Finding Satisfaction

With a renewed fervour I got continued with my blogging. I must concede being a curator has taken a toll on my posting. God knows how many drafts I have to work on right now. Since then, with the help of earnings from curie, I have had enough money to move to my home city where my spirit is more at peace, and I got a fancy apartment that doubles as my work space from home. I have a venture that is thriving because it is under less pressure to feed its father at infancy. More importantly, I am more exposed to amazing creators from around the world, because I log on here 90% of the time looking for them. And, I have been able to power up above 1,000 STEEM when STEEM sold at an average price I definitely couldn't afford so much. All thanks to Curie.

Is Steem Ready to do Away with Curie?

Times are changing. And sadly so. Curie is being forced to shrink its operations because it has been running at a deficit for a while now. Finder fee has shrunk by 75% since I joined and curie upvotes is no more enough to push authors to trending pages in their respective major tags. That last point, on its own, wouldn't be a problem if this influence shifted to other meritocratic channels of reward distribution. Matter of factly, that was the goal of Curie. But we all know the story of bidbots (which @liberosist reviewed extensively here) and the Circle-jerkers of Steem; but this post is NOT about either.

Curie has had to ration support for amazing authors just because it has a slim voting budget. I recall reading @adamsays's "How does it feel to be in an orchestra" and I could see the passion and excitement shine through in the young musician's heart and he was visibly elated that that post got rewarded, thanks to Curie. @legendarryll's amazing documentary-travel post on the "Sulfur Miners of Kawah Ijen, Indonesia" deservedly sat on the trending page thanks to Curie's support. Personally, one of my best feelings yet was when my short story, "The Graduation Day Speech" got me my first real reward as a Steemian and I didn't pay a dime to get it there. Its sheer quality earned me that. It saddens my heart that creators like @jadegreene who wrote "Tessa" flash fiction, that's arguably one of the best fiction writings on the internet, seems to have left Steem too because Curie doesn't have the budget to reward more of her posts and no one else will.

I could go on and on. It'll be a long list, but then this post was about the impact of curie on my life, which I hope I achieved in the first act of this piece. To sum it, I am a Steemian (a better one) today because I got tangled with Curie when I did. Thank you to everyone who makes this work. Special shout out to those authors whose brilliant posts give us curators the joy of finding an oasis in a desert. Not that I know what the hell that feels like as I've never been to a desert. Metaphor! To wrap this up I would drop a few links below to help you understand in detail how curie operates, and also provide an opportunity for you to support curie serve the community we all hold dearly.

Are you a Steemian who has a curie experience you want to share? Feel free to share yours using the tag, #mycuriestory.

Learn more about Curie

• Read the Curie Whitepaper at curiesteem.com
• Join Curie on Discord chat and check the pinned notes (pushpin icon, upper right) for FAQ and most recent Curie guidelines
• Watch a vlog Carl recorded explaining Curie operations.

Ways you can support Curie

• Follow the @curie blog and upvote and resteem Curie posting
• Follow the @curie trail and vote for curated authors. If you are a SteemAuto user, @curie is an available trail to follow.
• Vote for the @curie witness (all witness payouts are used to fund Curie operations).
• If you would like to delegate to Curie you can do so by clicking on the following links:
  50 SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
  Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.