The Steemian Spotlight is a series of posts that will feature interviews with Steemians who are making a difference across the platform. Read Volume 1 here!

Today, I'd like to talk about a Steemian who has really been there from the very beginning of my activity on the platform. If you peruse my blog, or even look at the bottom of this post, you'll see mentions of a group called The Unmentionables. I don't actually remember how I first encountered the group, but they were the first Discord community I joined after becoming active on my Steemit account.

@HopeHuggs was already one of the Moderators of that community, so I immediately became aware of her presence. She always had a mentoring attitude towards budding Steemians, especially when it came to fiction writing. Over time, I found out more about her, and I was able to witness many generous acts on her part not only for the group, but for many other people across Steemit.

Today, I want to shed light on her efforts across Steemit, as well as delve into her motivations and background.

I asked @HopeHuggs how she first learned of Steemit. She said:

I found out about Steemit through an internet marketing ebook. It showed a way that people could earn a lot of money in one day. The people who wrote it didn't do Steemit very long themselves if at all, but here I am over a year later. (Or maybe they did do Steemit, but not under names they do their internet marketing business with)

She's been on the platform for a little over a year. I think it's quite impressive that she outlasted the very people who enticed her to Steemit in the first place.

HopeHuggs has definitely made the most of her time on the platform. In just a little over a year, she's achieved a reputation of 65 after sharing 357 blogs, with an average payout of $5.34 (stats via SteemTracked). Along the way, she's shown an affinity for creative writing. When asked about her favorite posts to curate, she had this to say:

I like to go through poetry and find some great pieces to read and share. I do this through @poeticdreams, but not been too great at keeping up with it in the last month, but it is something certainly I'd like to pick up again shortly.

She also has been known to host her own poetry contests in the past to help promote aspiring Steem poets.

I was impressed with the creative writing posts she shared shortly after I joined The Unmentionables, and I know she helped a few budding writers edit their posts and push them out for all to see.

If you'd like to check out some of her fictional work, here are just a few recent efforts:

• A Fictional Alien Tale: Euphoria Part 1 and Part 2
• I'm Toxic (a poem)
• A Giant Peace - A Children's Fictional Tale

And of course there are many more, so just take a scroll back through her past blogs, and you'll find many other great works of fiction.

Life, Offline

I've learned a little about HopeHuggs's every day life while interacting with her on Discord, but I thought it interesting to ask her about her life, to which she wittily responded,

What's a life outside Steemit?

Joking. My 4 and 6 year old keep me busy and I'm trying to earn a living online so that I don't have to go back into the big bad world of work in a few months.

HopeHuggs often blogs about things related to her daughters. Just recently, she even blogged about a children's movie that she enjoyed watching with them. However, as her username implies, she often blogs about topics dealing with positivity and hope. Often thought provoking, she's shared her thoughts on topics like materialism, life experiences, the power of a good hug, and the joys of giving.

This is especially poignant, when you consider that HopeHuggs has gone through some turbulent circumstances over the past year. It is incredibly encouraging to see her using the time with her daughters to reflect on the things she truly has to be thankful for. Therefore, I highly recommend following her account if you enjoy having your views on life challenged often, especially if you're going through rough times. Her words might give you just what you need.

Aside from watching children's movies, HopeHuggs said she enjoys the television show Gotham, which I can appreciate having seen the first few seasons of the show myself. She also prefers to use a PC when Steeming. Again, it's always interesting to see what operating system Steemians prefer.

Thoughts on Steemit

Given her positive outlook on life, it's no surprise that when I asked her to describe Steemit in one word or phrase, she responded:

The best bunch of people you will ever meet

It's always my hope for new Steemians that they find a community or communities to get plugged into and meet great people. I know my time here on the platform would not be nearly as great without people like HopeHuggs. At the end of the day, I'm apt to agree with her that you really can find some of the best humans here on Steemit. It may take a bit of searching, but you don't have to look far.

HopeHuggs is not only a Moderator for The Unmentionables, but she's also part of several other groups that she mentioned in the interview.

• She's a Blood Shaman over at @valorforfreedom's Berserkers Discord Group
• She's an active member of the @air-clinic
• She frequents the @ecotrain group on Slack
• And most recently, she's begun her own initiative, @hopebank (more on this later).

When asked about what she would change about Steemit, she suggested something very interesting that I'm sure many of us would appreciate:

[I would change] that you could earn on Steemit posts forever, not just 7 days, that would be awesome as every post could be like a mini income stream and you could promote old posts with Youtube videos and other external traffic sources.

It would be so awesome.

Indeed it would. I suppose the rewards system is something that would need to be addressed in future hard forks, so I'm not sure if we'll see a change to the current model any time soon, but such a model would definitely be helpful in my opinion.

My last question about the platform simply asked about witness promotion, and @HopeHuggs expressed her support for @sircork as a witness because his charity effort shares the word "hope" with her own efforts(spoiler alert, you'll learn more about the YouAreHOPE project in a later volume of the Steemian Spotlight). If you'd like to support @sircork as a witness, you can check out his blog or his witness efforts here.

The HopeBank Project

Recently, HopeHuggs has decided to focus the rewards for some of her posts on a new, exciting project.

Two weeks ago, HopeHuggs launched HopeBank, a project with the mission statement:

The Hope Bank Project (@hopebank) is a Steemit account set up where all SBD earned, donated etc, will be fed into and used to power up SP and never taken from the account, so that hope and assistance can be given in the form of decent upvotes to help other Steemit users with financial assistance in times of need.

I encourage you to read the full introduction post on the account, as it outlines her specific goals for the account in the future, one of which is to raise enough SBD to purchase a sizeable delegation so she can begin her charity efforts right away.

I think @hopebank is a fantastic project with a great potential for success. I want to encourage you to head over to the account's blog and support her efforts to grow the account. In addition to providing votes to @hopebank's posts, @HopeHuggs also uses the payouts from some of her own posts to grow the account, so by providing upvotes to her content, you can support her charity efforts across Steemit!

In fact, I will donate all of the liquid SBD rewards from this post to @hopebank to support her efforts, so I invite you upvote and resteem this post to raise awareness about her cause!

Final Thoughts

My last interview question is always open-ended, and simply asks each interviewee if there is anything else they would like to share. @HopeHuggs took this opportunity to share about @hopebank, so I caught up with her on Discord to see if she had a parting message for everyone reading this post. This is what she had to say:

Have your cake and eat it, as Steemit is a great way to earn some extra cash and meet the best people you will ever meet. There is no where else like it.

I think we'll all be looking forward to what @HopeHuggs's blog has to offer in the near future.

Check out the other Volumes of The Steemian Spotlight!

• Volume 1: Inertia
• Volume 2: HopeHuggs
• Volume 3: topkpop
• Volume 4: ShadowsPub
• Volume 5: carlgnash