MY STEEM STORY - By @nikolina

Everyone has a story – and all our stories have something in common… we all started from nothing and knew nothing. People want to hear stories. They want to hear OUR stories — they want to know who we are, where we are from, what we are doing, who and what we love, what we have learnt and where we are going. People also want us to hear their story! Being a part of the Steem network is an individual journey for every single one of us and through this initiative we will share our stories not only with all who are already here – hopefully inspiring, guiding and informing them… but doing the same for everyone else in the world too. Through our stories we will prick the curiosity of those who have not yet arrived and illuminate and widen the already open doors to our one in a million blockchain.

We invite and encourage each and every one of you to participate and share your stories too! You can find the "how to" details at the end of this post.

My Steem journey began in February 2017 so it has been three years since I got involved. I heard about Steemit as a platform where "you can write posts and get rewarded in cryptocurrency". My initial thought was that it's too good to be true but my curiosity was strong so I decided to check it out. At that time there was no waiting for your account to be approved so I signed up. I believe in synchronicities and as I was already thinking about starting a blog but never really knew how or where to start, I took the opportunity of Steemit platform as a sign from the Universe, lol. Joining the platform was free and I liked the idea of following people and having followers since starting a "regular" blog doesn't give you that option. I still remember sitting in front of my laptop and writing my introduction post. I thought that no one will even see it or be interested in reading it but I was wrong...

When I published my first post, I got many welcoming comments and I was over the moon! Then one post led to another, I kept meeting so many amazing people all over the world and I finally found a place I felt comfortable expressing myself. Last year I barely even posted, my inspiration was completely gone, I guess it was a product of a complete burn out. Somehow, something has changed and with this new year I came back to sharing few posts in January and trying to catch up on some things I have missed. Since then I am finding myself checking in and posting daily.

There's a few things to cover here. The biggest challenge for me was definitely the lack of knowledge about blockchain and cryptocurrencies. At that time I knew about Bitcoin and the existance of the crypto world but it took me a while to understand STEEM, SBD and Steem Power. Since my reason for joining in was to share content, my thoughts and experiences and maybe earn some doing what I enjoy I wasn't really interested on exploring the technicalities. I wish I did though, I don't think it would extremely change my path on the platform but maybe I would have make better decisions in some situations and knowledge is always a plus, right?

When I started sharing posts, I knew nothing about markdown and proper sourcing of the images and meterials used in posts. At that time, Discord groups did not exist and I kind of learned everything on the go, mostly by searching posts that explain markdown and posts about advice for newbies. Later on, when Discord became a thing, it was a lot easier to get access to even more knowledge.

Another challenge I am still facing from time to time is the topics I post about. I would say my posts are lifestyle based, personal experience, random thoughts, a mishmash of many different topics. Every now and then I think about narrowing down the topics of posts I share but somehow I always end up on the random side. :D Last thing I want to mention here is the language I'm writing in. Even though English is not my first language, I never thought writing in English was really a challenge but it definitely was an obstacle when it comes to me joining many Discord chats or creating vlogs that I never had the courage to make. So I would say that speaking English is a challenge that I still haven't overcame. Of course, I do make many mistakes in writing but that doesn't really bother me that much. :)

As a "content creator" (for some reason I still don't like to call myself that), I always thought that all the technical stuff and how the blockchain runs is not my concern. Wrong! As a member of the community and since I'm already using this same blockchain, it should have been my concern since the beginning. I am realizing this too late (maybe) and I wish I explored this more since the beginning of my journey with Steem. Up until recently, I didn't even cast all 30 votes for witnesses because I didn't knew who to vote for and there was some drama between some witnesses I didn't wanted to know about. Another mistake! I don't regret staying away from the drama but I wish I did my part on time. With that being said, vote for our witnesses if you haven't already! ;) I will probably never know how this entire blockchain works, the details and all that good stuff, I am a technical dummy in general but, after all this experience, I would say it's necessary to at least keep with the news and updates by following some accounts that provide those information.

Well, let's just start by saying that up until few days ago I was still using Steemit for all my posting and interaction until I finally made a decision to switch to another platform. I asked some questions in my posts and on Twitter about platform recommendations and I also tried to figure out which platform some of the people I follow and trust are using. Most of them are using or recommended SteemPeak so here I am, on SteemPeak, writing this post. The biggest change for me is the post creation itself, it is a completely different experience. Other than that, I posted a few videos on DTube over these few years but it's been a long time since I did that. I see that some people are using threespeak which I guess was developed at the time I was away from Steem. As I mentioned above, I still haven't overcame that discomfort of me speaking in English, especially in front of the camera even though I had many ideas for potential vlogs. But who knows, maybe I'll give it a go in the future. Other than that, I'm not into gaming so I never tried any of the platforms related to that.

Content wise there is a lot of topics I am interested in. I like to read a lot about personal experiences, thoughts and advice related to self-development, improvement and spirituality, nature and animals related posts and photography, homesteading, gardening and eco related topics, minimalism and off-grid lifestyle, travel experiences and photography...

I feel like there could be quite a few points here so I hope I won't forget anything important but here we go:

Grateful vibes: founded by Hive account@paradise-found who I consider my first Steem friend. Grateful vibes Discord group was the first and for the long time, the only group on Discord I was part of. That's where I met Hive account@sunnylife, Hive account@hazem91 and many other wonderful people who I will always appreciate. Through Grateful vibes I also met Hive account@joalvarez - another amazing person who was also the winner of my Zumba challenge which was so highly supported by my Grateful vibes friends.

I also have to mention the Alliance, another group of people that accepted me as a member where I also got to know some really cool people. I feel like I could do a better job at contributing to the Alliance more which is something to work on.

When it comes to other individuals, I won't mention any names but one thing I was to say is that, even after my Steem break, I still was able to discover and connect with so many amazing people who were here for a while but our paths never crossed! And I'm looking forward to meeting even more Steem friends! :)