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My SteemIt Ultimate Challenge

How my life has been changed since I came across SteemIt November of 2016! This is not going to be easy, as there are several ways in which SteemIt Ultimately changed my life for the best. I will do my best to explain how each of those changes came about! SteemIt gave me a way to pay for food, a way to live with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the confidence to return to work, and the ability to make friends at a time I had none.

My initial thoughts of how SteemIt had changed my life went to the friendships I have made. For me most of my experiences with cryptocurrencies has all come from taking the time to learn it all on my own, up until I found SteemIt, I never actually had any friends who understood anything about cryptocurrencies. All the people I knew prior to SteemIt seemed to think, like most people, Bitcoin was never going to last. Fortunately unlike anyone I knew, the minute I learned about Bitcoin, I realized its potential, and although at the time I could not explain Bitcoin to people I knew, I still started pursuing it.

One day while I was reading the Poloniex troll box someone had mentioned Steem, and at the time talking about how it was moving up, I asked a couple questions, and they told me about SteemIt. I spent the next couple days looking around on SteemIt, at that moment the whole concept of social media was new to me, as I was not an avid user of anything such as Facebook, Twitter, or any other site. Since I heard about SteemIt, I was currently out of work, living with family, and feeling helpless, I was having a horrible time struggling with PTSD.

Initially I had no idea what I was getting myself into by creating an account on SteemIt. All I knew is it was a cryptocurrency, and you got paid in it for creating content. I took a look around and after a couple days, I took a chance to create a post, at the time, and even now, I was not a great writer, I also did not feel like I had much to contribute. I was surprised in no time I had received a couple upvotes, and saw the payout go up just a little.

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With the new found interest, I started working on creating a post from time to time, as well as making comments on others blogs. Along my journey I ran into @barrydutton, @papa-pepper, @whatageek, @runridefly, and others, through various conversations I began to make friends, and finally found a group of people who understood cryptocurrencies. It took me a little bit of time to get into writing, and January of 2017 I took on a post a day challenge for 30 days, during that time I saw my writing was improving. I will admit I did skip 2 or 3 days during that month. Shortly after doing the post a day challenge, life changed, and I ended up in a place where I could not work on creating post on SteemIt.

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Those 3 months did wonders for me while I was working through PTSD, it gave me hope, something to look forward to each new day, I also felt productive, even though at the time my payouts had usually been small, I still felt like I was contributing something. When I started on SteemIt, I was in no mental condition to go to work, prior to finding SteemIt, I walked out of work from stress, although I needed a job to survive I was forced to move in with family. My family keep pushing me to find some form of work, when ever I considered looking for a small job I could do, even something like a car wash, the stress returned to the point I was unable to do anything. Yet making even a simple post on SteemIt made my day, and taking the time to interact with others helps, as I found I was not the only one struggling with PTSD.

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In 2017 before I was able to get a job, I needed some money to buy groceries, so I used some of the Steem I had made to buy a gift card to Walmart on Gyft. I sent my Steem to blocktrades.us and the Bitcoin over to Gyft, this saved my day. I was waiting on some money to come in, and it was over a week out. Having mainly Steem and no food at the time, I was still able to get food to eat. Recently, I did finally apply for a BitPay debit card, and have had to power down a couple weeks to pay a bill I was behind on, of which I used Steem.

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Around June of 2017 I did finally manage to get a job, and was working hard on getting caught up being I had not had an income for a while, it took me time to get caught up. If it was not for SteemIt, I'm not sure I would have ever found a way to get back to work, I was having a hard time dealing with my stress, and feeling hopeless, as well as non productive, SteemIt gave me just what I was needing at the time I needed it. I was able to start feeling productive, as well as a way to both make friends, and helped me live with the stress I had. Around the time I got the job, family needed me to move out, so I ended up buying a motor home. Took time to get to where I'm at now, but I'm in a better position, I'm getting ready to work on making some improvements on the motor home, as you can see I've been living under a tarp as the roof has a few leaks. I'm going to write a post for each of the improvements I make along the way. I'm hoping to be able to make those improvements with Steem, so that I can show a complete turn around of my life creating the ultimate changes in my life both since I found SteemIt, and also with the Steem I have made.

On Friday, March 2nd, 2018, I received a power down of 106 Steem. I'm going to be using the Steem this week to buy a motor to go on a bicycle, this will provide me with transportation around town, over the last year I have been mainly using the bus. Getting the motor for the bicycle will be a step at getting around town through Steem, and my first step to getting ready to live off cryptocurrencies. The freedom of traveling around town that I will be gaining is entirely from my activities here on SteemIt. I have some other projects, that I'm going to be starting soon as I can get the Steem to get them going!

Thank you for reading, I hope your SteemIt Ultimate Challenge is also been helpful for you as well!

Also want to thank the sponsors for competition: @dobartim , @flysky , @aidasfg7 .

Interested in creating your on post and joining in the challenge? You can find the details here, you can even add a link to your post in the comments here, I'd be interested in hearing how SteemIt has changed your life as well! Good luck to all who participate.

https://steemit.com/steemitultimatechallenge/@dobartim/6hcmmh-steemit-ultimate-challenge-8-weeks-prize-fund-2000-sbd-week-5-registration-is-in-progress

You can always follow me here on SteemIt!

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