Two Years on Steem and 1k Followers -Time To Recap

Today is my two-year steemversary! I wasn't exactly sure about the date, though I knew it was sometime early June, until I received the notification from various bots. At the same time, it was just today that I crossed the threshold of the 1000 followers. Of course both of these benchmarks mean only as much as you interpret into it: After all, what does a year mean anyway? And how many of those thousand people are actually following me, not to mention are still active on Steem? (Maybe a quarter?) Still, it's a reason to celebrate, or at least take a look at what I consider most important: My Journey on Steem So Far.

image source

Before Anything Else: Thank You Everyone!

However, I don't want to miss giving a big Shout Out to all my active followers!!! Those of you who have been reading my posts since the start, as well as those who have just decided to follow me, moving the tally to the four digits. So if you're reading this, it most likely includes you too. Thank you for making me stay on this platform all this time, especially during the long bear market. Without your upvotes, and especially comments, I probably would have jumped ship a long time ago, just like so many fellow steemians.

Getting into Cryptos

It was sometime in May 2017 that I was first introduced to cryptocurrencies. A brother of a friend in Hungary asked me for some classes, and discussing the payment, including expensive and tedious bank transfers, Bitcoin came up as one of the options. Being generally open to new things we gave it a try, and sure enough, the money appeared almost instantly in my wallet. Great! What I was even happier about, was how during the weeks I was teaching my classes to him the value of this payment kept increasing rapidly. It was just a matter of days before I started "crypto trading", basically following suggestions of various youtubers. It didn't matter if they didn't actually what they were doing, and more than me, at least, because that was the time all cryptos kept going up, up, up steadily to the moon.

Screenshot_20190606 David Koblos SteemPeak.png

Becoming a Professional Blogger

When I heard about Steemit, where you could actually earn cryptos for posting interesting content, I was sold. I'd started blogging not long before, so I thought I'd give it a try on this platform. At that time one Steem had just made it to 2 USD, and my post were getting payoffs between a few cents and a whooping HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS! WOW!!! That's right, some of them were noticed by Hive account@curie, which was enough to get me hooked. Back then I pumped out an article (almost) every day, on just about anything I could think of.

Early Blog Topics

Since I'm a Permaculture enthusiast, I first started to write theoretical pieces, discussing the various Principles of Permaculture. To mix it up, I also wrote posts about techniques and practices I'd experimented with, which somehow tie back to Permaculture (as most things potentially do). These things ranged from probiotic drinks to Earthships, and from composting toilets to the producers' market I was involved with. Other than that I wrote about whatever came to my mind. Food recipes, street art in my area, interesting encounters with animals, or my misadventures in trading cryptos.

Interaction With Fellow Steemians

Having understood that success on Steem relies on the connection with others, I sought out like-minded people, and was soon part of a network of homesteaders, which later on evolved into the Hive account@ghscollective. There we came up with various ways to interact with each other, namely games and contests. These included my tree guessing game, and an inconclusive attempt to organize a steem-around-the-world-challenge with a number of other interested folks, of sending gifts to each other, ultimately circling the globe. It didn't happen ultimately, but it was a cool idea to play around with. Today, as we all know, there is the Hive account@homesteaderscoop, where barter and gifting is just as possible as selling goods for Steem, SBD, and UDS.

Writing Posts in Series

With time I kept going back to the same topics. Many of them just offered themselves to become series. Murals I encountered in the streets were such an example, because I'd always find new ones. These became my Mexican Murals series and during my time in Canada last year I also made a similar Murals of Canada series. Another topic I wrote a bunch of posts about have to do with food. Especially the ones introducing the basics of Mexican dishes turned into a huge series. One of my earliest posts that became highly successful thanks to Hive account@curie was a book review, so eventually I continued writing about books I have enjoyed in my series titled Bibliophilia. Finally, in my manual curation series Look What I Found I tried to share content by other steemians, I thought deserved a few extra upvotes.

Documenting a Busy Year

As it turns out, last year I was barely at home, instead I participated in two eco-construction projects. The first one of these was on the coast of Oaxaca where some friends of mine are going to build a theater. Though the project last year was building a retaining wall, which I documented in my Mazunte series. The second build took place on the property of another two friends, who are building their earthship on Vancouver Island. You can read all about it in my Doighouse series. In between I spent some time volunteering in a bike shop in Victoria, where I built a bicycle that would take me down the West Coast, (almost) all the way to Mexico. This last project was probably my favorite out of all. The series of blog entries called Cascadia to Aztlán consists of 33 entries, and is still just a teaser compared to the more extensive report I started writing. Next to it, my Ride With Me series about shorter bike trips on Vancouver Island seems rather puny... even though it's full of fun adventures.

Most Recent Blogging

Since I'm back in Mexico City I have been a bit less enthusiastic... about many things. Fortunately, I there are a few beautiful steem projects that help me give myself the nudge I need to keep blogging. These would be Hive account@ecotrain with their regular Question of the Week, and Hive account@tribesteemup's bi-weekly question. These prompts are always enough to plant a seed in my mind, and within a day (or sometimes just a couple of hours) it matures into a post, so all I need to do is type it up.