WARPEDPOETIC AND CURIE: A ROMANCE OF WORDS AND REWARDS

YAAY!! CURIE CAME A'VISITING

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Four days ago, I had written a story after reading an interesting post on one of the blogs I follow. I had written it in the early hours of dawn and had posted it immediately. It had been an impromptu take on life and like all my spontaneous writings, it had been written on my phone. I had passed the post link to @monajam on her discord chat, for her to take a look at.

_{Photo by Ben White on Unsplash.}

It was a surprise for me to later see that indeed @curie had paid me a visit. This visit would make it the fifth time @curie had considered my post worthy of an upvote.

This curation comes at a time when @curie have had to reduce some of its operations. I have never spoken about curie on my blog besides some few times when I have thought it fit to announce my excitement over my curation. So this is a good time as any to share a bit of my @curie experience.

Luckily, I had read a post by @misterakpan about the #mycuriestory. @dorth also drew my attention to it, so I decided to be a part of the #mycuriestory tag and write on my affair with curie.

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BEFORE CURIE BECAME

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I joined steemit on December 31, exactly two months after I lost my job. The lack of a job got me worried and confused but i didn't let it show. I got back home to my parents in Warri, to sort my thoughts and there my younger brother and his friend convinced me to join steemit.

I joined steemit with just two skills; I could write poetry and I knew the importance of tags and coding in blogging. My previous job had been on a blog operated on the Word Press platform.

I thought that with these two skills I was ready to post. My first posts; poems, pictures, articles didn't make a sound in the sea of posts that filled the platform every day.

@curie sounded like winning a Nobel Prize in Literature to my newbie ears then. As far as I was concerned, it was unattainable. What do I know of writing? Is it my amateur poetry or my poorly taken pictures? I had no hope. I just prayed I caught the fancy of a whale or something. I wasn't even sure of what a whale's visit meant.

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THE FIRST VISIT

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Then one day, @curie came. This was my first experience of a curie visit. I had been hearing people talk about it with awe in the groups I was in.

Everyone prayed for a curie vote, I prayed for a curie vote but I also considered that I do not know their criteria so I might not even qualify for their attention. In fact, I thought curie was a female whale on an errand of mercy; I knew next to nothing about the curation project.

When that curie curation came to that post, though the smallest I have received so far, I felt joy. Even when I was told that the upvote had been of a low percentage, it did not dampen my excitement.

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Why, you may ask. Well, it gave me validation. You see the post had been on poetry and music. And at the time of making the post, I was thinking of giving up on poetry and look for a more robust niche to write on.

_{Photo by Nik Macmillan on Unsplash.}

It also made me want to do better because with recognition comes the responsibility of maintaining the pedigree of the award giving body. You have to show the world that they are right in their conclusions so they don't lose their name and in the process your recognition loses its value. I had to keep up and increase the quality of my posts.

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THE CURATION THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

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One evening, several days after that curation , I sat with a close friend of mine at a spot where we usually sit to watch the world pass by, and struggled with a post.

The post was a first time; I had never written anything like it before both off and on steemit. It was a fiction post, on a genre, which I had played with on my own but had never taken any interest in. I had mixed it with a poetic interlude. I have always loved to see those poems that start chapters in some of the fantasy novels I love to read but I had not attempted it before.

I had given a short story to @dorth, a curie curator, who became a friend. He had looked at it and had told me it wasn't good for posting. I had forgotten about it until a day when I just decided to do something different; a post that I had not seen on steemit before. In this manner, the short story, Experimental Tragedy was born.

All I wanted to do on that post, was bring some of the effects of a movie; the soundtrack, the Indian movie intermissions, or the elements of a piece of drama, sort of like the greek chorus if you may, so I edited it accordingly. Again I gave @curie no thought when I edited the short story. I just wanted to post something.

When I saw @misterakpan's comment under the post, I thought nothing of it. I was just thankful for the upvotes I had received. The next morning, on my way back from church, I recharged my phone and subscribe my data and the notifications started pouring in. It was the most amazing feeling I have ever had in my life. I kept saying God repeatedly, even as I ran to the house.

I called my brother from the door and gave him my phone. We got a book and a pen and started calculating the payout; It was huge, it was unbelievable. Suddenly, I started seeing the bigger picture. My thoughts towards steemit shifted and I knew then that I had found a home for my art, my thoughts, my time, and my work.

_{Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash.}

Until date, that curation remains the single largest reward I have earned on this platform. It changed me completely and I, who saw steemit as a place to while away my time until a better job came, suddenly became a convert. I was suddenly a prophet of the blockchain technology; preaching its gospel across nations and peoples. lol.

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EFFECT ON MY WRITING

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The way I post, write, edit, comment, chat on steemit is based on that curie visit. I wanted to maintain that. People now took me seriously and listened when I spoke; I wanted to keep that. My wallet looked good; oh yes, I wanted that, a whole lot. My family now gave me no headache about my late nights online; I could get behind that.

I had the sudden interest in experimenting with my writing. I tried Dsound and got another curation for a spoken word poetry. That was my second Dsound attempt since I joined steemit. I have done two more Dsound recordings since then. This was something I would not have dared before .

Though the financial reward was a big plus, my curie visits meant more than the money. They were doors that open on a flight of stairs to the top. They were a weighty nod to my talent; something I value as much as or even more than gold.

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In this my romance with @curie, I have met awesome folks like @raj808 and @carlgnash who have both curated my posts for @curie. @raj808 and @misterakpan have both mentored me. @monajam has given me tips time and time again and this has helped my writing along.

Growing on this platform, for me, is way more than sp, reputation, number of followers and all those other obvious markers. There have to be an equal growth in your knowledge and skill for you to say that you are actually growing.

Due to my curie curations, I have endeavoured to improve my writing every time, I put my fingertips to my laptop keyboard. This is a benefit both here on steemit and off the steem blockchain.

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THE VALUE

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The value of @curie to the steemit community cannot be overemphasized. In some cases, it is the only way a newbie quality content creator might find visibility. I know many of my followers followed me as a result of my curie curation.

Just recently, my curie'd post was featured on @curie Author Showcase and this boost my visibility and increased the followers to my blog.

It is a source of encouragement especially in the present downward trend in cryptocurrency price which has affected payout in no small measure.

_{Photo by jshoots.com on Unsplash.}

It is a means of identifying quality posts in the ocean of posts that fill up the feeds every second. For those who seek to read blogs whose authors are doing great things with their writing, @curie curated posts are a sure bet in such an endeavour.

Also considering that the trending page is broken and can no longer be relied upon to give posts that deserve it, a space on the trending page, it stands to reason that curation projects like @curie are the only alternatives, one has.

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CONCLUSION

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This morning as I made the edits to this post, a quick peek into my blog on steemnow.com, showed that my early morning post had received a tiny bump from @curie. Does that count as a curie? I don't know but it is sure as hell a beautiful sight to behold first thing in the morning, don't you think so?

If you have not been at the receiving end of a curie upvote, do not fret. Work on your writing and your editing, one morning you will wake up and find @curie at your gate with gifts.

This is #mycuriestory. I know it's not much. I hope it inspires you to believe in the prospects of the platform, to believe in the vision of the @curie curation project, to do better, to write better, to interact more and to have as much fun as you can on this platform.

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If you have had an experience with @curie, you can join this party by writing on your experience. Endeavour to use the tag #mycuriestory for visibility sake.

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END

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_{Hey folks, this is Oskilo's blog and he would love to read your suggestions on how to make this blog better serve you. He would like to know what you, his reader, think of the content so do not forget to leave a comment; you just might have something he needs.}

Peace,

©warpedpoetic.