Hello everyone. This is in response to the invitation by 
For this contest I will be sharing why I joined Hive (or the other platform then since I joined in December of 2017) and the adjustments that I had to go through which have carried over here in the Hive platform.
Where to start?
How Hive Became Part of the Family
The first time I heard about Hive (it wasn't called that back then but for simplicity sake I will refer to both platforms as Hive 😊) was about September of 2017 when my daughter, Jacinta, said she joined it. She said it was just like Facebook but unlike Facebook, people who post articles, pictures or drawings get paid for it. I was skeptical about the whole thing. I'm an old man and I like to do things the old fashion way.
You see there's this generation gap between myself and millenials that has everything to do with their music, language, clothes, hairstyles, and their inexplicable attachment to their cell phones. You ever saw a whole family eating at Pizza Hut, all seated in one table, with everyone looking at their cell phones until their orders are served? No one talking to another. Sometimes, even the mom and dad are in on it as well. I go nuts looking at this and I would say to myself, "What a waste of togetherness."
This irritating bond between yuppie and cell phone is like the corona virus. It's everywhere! Including my home! My kids spend more time surfing the internet than helping out in the household chores (my wife and I long ago resolved that with 2 daughters in the house, we do not need any maids). It was, and still is, a struggle to get them off their phones so they can help with the laundry or with the dishes or with fixing their rooms. Any of this sound familiar?
My daughters, as bonded as they are for life it seems to their mobile phones, also had another avocation. If they weren't glued to their phones while grudgingly doing the dishes or mopping the floor, they were always drawing. They would draw, sketch, color, paint while somehow managing to type messages at the same time on their phones. Wow. Talk of multi-tasking. I have to say, though, that their drawings were really special and artistic. At least for me they were. I am the father of these 2 girls and of course, I will always say their drawings are very good. Family and bias are closely related.
And so, my daughter joined Hive
Jacinta would periodically report to me that people in Hive liked her drawings and that she was getting paid for the likes she was getting. Oooh. Sounded good. But will she get the money? I felt so sorry for her already because I had this sneaky suspicion she was not gonna get the money at all. I kept on asking her, "Jacinta, when are you going to get your money?" And she would say, she still hadn't figured it out yet but a friend is willing to help her. Now this did not only sound fishy. It smelled fishy! I felt even sorrier for her. I did not want her to be let down. But she had the faith of a child, believing in the platform like a child trusting her parents. She began to draw even more, multi-tasking beyond what I thought was possible. She would invite friends to join Hive, extolling the positive features of the platform even if she had not cashed out a single cent. Then one day, she asked me for my bank account because she said she was going to deposit some of her earnings there. When I saw what she deposited, I suddenly became a believer. And the rest is history.
My other daughter, my son and finally myself all joined Hive.
I joined Hive and began posting articles of any topic under the sun. I was determined to make it work just like the way it worked out for my daughter. I was constantly thinking Hive - what to post, where to get ideas and topics to post. I kept watching the number of likes and, more importantly, the dollar values of my posts which to my dismay then were in the cents or none at all category. I was discouraged but my daughter convinced me to just keep at it and soon it will be better. So I kept at it. And at it. And at it. UNTIL, I evolved into someone I did not realize myself turning into. To my surprise, I have now developed a certain attachment to my mobile phone (WHAT?). I am perpetually logged into Hive and I find it really very hard to resist the urge to open the site and check on my blogs, what my daughter was posting and what other Hive members were blogging. My wife and myself have suddenly realized that this is just what my daughter needed. A platform where she can express her creativities and have her peer judge her for her worth and weight in gold, or Hive for that matter. Now, I begin to see that being old fashioned and sticking to the old ways of doing things may not be entirely good for the well being of those around me. Now I begin to understand why my daughters find it difficult to just drop what they are doing when they are asked to. It's called continuity and train of thought which if disturbed can lead to mediocrity what would otherwise be brilliance.
