I'm taking a break from my standard feel good inspirational quotes posting to bring you this incredibly important, urgent and ultimately hilarious yet humbling post celebrating my somewhat ridiculous post count here on Steemit.com. Today I celebrate an epic milestone.

If you'd asked me 5 years ago if I'd be interested in blogging it would have been extremely likely I'd have scoffed at you, inferred that you were a sheep shagging half-wit and more likely than not judo chopped you in the gonads for even suggesting such an activity.. yet here I stand before you today, having now accumulated over TEN THOUSAND ( > 10,000 ) posts to the blocks within our STEEM blockchain. I'm ranked #92 on the entire STEEM blockchain for post count... Yes, I'm literally in the top 100 of all time post count. How did this happen?! Well, a TON of hours and hard work! STEEM crept into my life and became its focus.

If I had to summarize the past 10,000 posts it would be something along the lines of:

This is What I Was Born For!

Admitedly since starting up on Steemit.com 22 months ago my entire life has changed. No bullshit. Over the course of the nearly 2 years on this glorious network of ours my whole friggin' life has been completely altered to the point that even I struggle to understand the creature I was before stumbling onto STEEM.

Everything from my demeanor, sense of self, views on the world, acceptance of people, ambition to succeed, belief in my abilities and my sense of community and feeling accepted on this at times god forsaken planet have been irreversibly altered by this amazing invention we all sit around submitting our posts to. I don't know where I would be today if not for STEEM coming along and saving me from a life of poverty, scarcity and laziness... But I know I wouldn't be nearly as proud of myself nor as well off as I am now.

Entered as a Troll, Became a Celebrity

When I first started right out the gate I was nothing short of a menace. I still remember like yesterday being tipped off by a long time internet friend that a new social media platform based off of blockchain technology was freshly launched. Being the asshat I am I'd made my way to the original Steemit slack channel and began to put my feelers out to see what the community was like. It was around this time that Steemit.com had actually been comprimised by hackers using cross site scripting attacks giving them access to users passwords, chaos ensued of course and me being the absolute gem (shithead) I was at the time began spreading yet even more chaos with troll statements flying left and right from me.. I was being a shit disturber for lack of a better term..

Then, this seemingly collected and cool user on the Steemit slack named @ned engaged me, and asked if I could instead of trolling be of assistance and try to help with the somewhat uneasy crowd that feared for their account safety. Little did I know that this @ned character was actually the CEO of Steemit Inc, the company responsible for creating the STEEM blockchain and Steemit.com application which runs on top of it.

The way @ned diverted my energy from being downright malicious to siding as an ally helping the cause was nothing short of magic, I honestly had no idea who's attention I'd brought onto myself nor did I realize that this seemingly asinine entrance into the STEEM community would end up being something I could look back on later with awe and disbelief.. To be directly converted from level 9000 troll to helping with damage control was something that would have been unheard of up until that day. I'll never forget it. I'd like to take this moment to convey a personal and heart felt thank you to @ned our CEO, had you banned me from the original Steemit slack like you probably should have given my delinquent start my entire life could be completely different now. Your ability to look through my immature beginnings ultimately help sculpt the man I've become today.

Steemit Wasn't Always How it is Now!

Nearly 2 years ago now when Steemit was just launching the community was quite tiny, many things that are commonly posted like pornography or foul language were often met with flags in an attempt to keep the blockchain from becoming a smutty degenerate den full of dinkloafs.. Of course the high standard of posting and content was slowly eroded over time to what it is now, and while I've no exact evidence of being a person somewhat responsible for this I do feel that I helped loosen everyone's collars a bit and "lower the bar" allowing myself and other foul mouthed, over opinionated perverts to post freely as they wished without fear of ridicule or flagging.

While it may seem like I know what I'm doing on here the truth of the matter is when I was fresh on the scene my claim to fame was my somewhat archaic or crude MS-paint art. Prior to Steemit I'd made a small fortune drawing portraits of users in a very popular gambling site called Just-Dice.com, which was my home online before migrating here. People would pay me decent amounts of Bitcoin to have a portrait done... With nearly all of them rocking massive, veiny erect phallus.. Well, ok.. All of them had MS-paint dicks, that is just what I did, and you know what? It made others happy and thus made me happy to.

With crudely drawn male genitalia basically acting as my bread and butter before hand but the STEEM community not exactly ready for the "full monty" that is KLYE ART I'd modified the way I drew things.. Leaving out the engorged details and opting to censor my art a bit for better acceptance. An example of this can be seen in the art below from my early post entitled "How to Milk a STEEM Whale":

_{( The "letmeshowyouhowtowhackoffwhales" tag is still to this day one of the funniest things I've thought up... )}

Given the modifications to my once male nudity driven artwork and having learned to not only read what the community would accept while slowly pushing the limit it became apparent to me that I'd found a place that not only accepted my off kilter brand of humour.. but rewarded it! It wasn't long before people started noticing my artworks and asking for commissioned KLYE ART, which going from a deviant dick doodler to a sought after illustrator in the course of a month or so completely changed my life. It was around this time I'd luckily had my long time high school friend @scrototbaggins allow me to come live with him and his girlfriend, because I was for lack of a better term a smelly degenerate hobo that struggled to find any reason to do much than sit online and muck about as one does.

Eventually him and his girlfriend split and he allowed me to move with him to a friggin' 7 house village 30 minutes south of where we had been living called Elgin. That place was a lonely, depressing and downright isolated shithole for lack of any better term, it did however give me a chance to start hunkering down and making something of myself. Luckily for me at the time a house or 2 had no Wifi security which allowed me to camp in peoples yards at night and gain access to the internet, which was the only communication I had to the outside world.. I spent countless nights hidden in peoples bushes, stealing wifi so I could post to Steemit and catch up on my day to day. Ever been feasted on by mosquitos at 3AM while drawing whale balls on MS-paint to add to your blog? I have.

Eventually I was contracted by another long time internet friend and programming mentor @bazza to help him with a project. He's an Aussie lad who essentially took me under his wing and introduced me to Javascript, giving me work on a project of his and ultimately helping me work my way out of poverty. After 4 months or so of camping yards at night for Wifi I finally had secured enough income to get my own internet into the house we lived in. Given the isolation out in Elgin I had nothing but time to develop skills both in blogging and programming, then later moving into Linux sysadmin work and running STEEM servers. Within the first 6 months or so of joining Steemit.com I realized that this was the oppurtunity of a life time to get my name out there, learn more about computer programming and essentially incubate myself into something more than stoned ass street trash.

The STEEM Community Believed in Me...
Which Allowed Me to Believe Too!

I'll never be able to properly convey exactly how grateful I am to have not only been accepted but celebrated on our wonderful network. Went from being an ambition lacking, do nothing hobo to a well known and revered member of a global community. STEEM and Steemit.com along side it's users have essentially lifted me up from an existance I had no want to be in to a place where I not only can take care of myself and believe I'm capable of being something greater, but also be able to help incubate others learning and financial freedom as well.

Steemit is truly a life altering given you've got the talents to stand out from the crowd!

KLYE Wants YOU to be Successful!

People often ask me what the trick was to becoming one of the elite STEEM dolphins.. I've not a f*ckin' clue to be honest..! If I had to speculate and try to teach another though I'd be inclined to say that being unique, honest and creating original content wrapped in sheer persistance as well as want to succeed was part of how I ended up where I am today.

The Steemit community has been my support in so many different aspects of my life I feel I owe it to you all to become the best person, programmer, artist, storyteller and STEEM advocate I can be in order to give back at the very least a fraction of what this wonderful collection of people from around the globe has given to me.

You've helped me through my hard times and depression, celebrated with me my victories and accomplishments.. The STEEM community is far closer to my heart than the city I live in, and always will be. For without STEEM I'd probably still just be some broke weirdo drawing MS-paint dicks and throwing my life to the wind.

Thank You, to EVERYONE Who Has Supported Me <3

Mentally, financially, emotionally and far more.. This community has scraped me from the gutter more then a few times now and set me back on my feet. You've been there for me on my glorious successes and given me love when I had none available "in real life".. I fucking love you guys! All my friends, followers, fans and fanatics on here is the reason I can hold my head up high today and proudly proclaim that this once derelict street rat who had no hope for the future now sits in a position few will ever dare to view the world from.

Steemit made me into something greater than I was, and while I've been struggling the past few months against depression the old KLYE you've grown to love is slowly crawling back out of his sadness, ready to once again dedicate his life to helping develop the blockchain and community that made him believe in himself.

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