Got a fun little notice on my account thanks to 
Crazy.
Every year when I get these notices, I always do some reflection on my time on the blockchain.
Now it's no secret I've been pretty upset with $HIVE overall this past year. There are some major issues that are holding this chain back and it's all in house. But at the end of the day, it's still my 'digital' home and I'm grateful for another 365 days on the blockchain.
And instead of whining about what I think can be better, I thought I'd go over what makes this place a potential life changing experience, and I'm speaking only of personal examples.
First, this chain came into my life at the perfect time. Back in 2017, I had already spent quite a few years in crypto and lost a whole bunch of $BTC in the process. I was bitter towards it all, and felt like giving up on the crypto dream. Combined with my online business literally crumbling at the hands of PayPal...Things were bleak.
Along came the chain and I felt this sense of duty to my customers and community members to bring them to this new way of building businesses online. It started with the old 'tokenize the web' marketing strategy that the old chain was promoting and I was hooked. Imagine having my own token for my business....The ideas started to flow.
Slowly but surely, I was hooked! The more I built on chain, the more excited I was for the future of online businesses, being able to find a home here on the blockchain. It was true #web3 before that was even a thing.
Obviously it wasn't until Hive-Engine launched their second layer that allowed us to create our own tokens to finally see the dream realized, but wow. What a rush that was!
Just before that, I was attending every blockchain event I could attend. I spoke at a Steem/Hive event in Toronto back in 2018 and met some of the most amazing people in this community face to face. Then travelling to Steemfest 3 in Poland later that year, it was clear to me...I would dedicate my life to this blockchain.
Man, what a rush!
Building, building and more building...That's all I did throughout these 7 years. And even though my ultimate dream of making a living off my efforts here has fallen short....It's provided my family and I so much!
I'm sitting in my brand new home, that I recently used a big power down to fund my down payment. And if you would have seen the state of my life 7 years ago, this is nothing short of a miracle that I am still standing. And add to the fact I'm in my brand new home too...That's directly because of this blockchain.
So year...Things could be a lot better here. I wish there would be things that could change on how it's run. But alas, I'm forever grateful for it because of what it's already provided to my family and I. This place is, for better or worse, a fantastic blockchain to build on....
And then you can find communities that align with your passions and get behind them...You just can't do that on any other tech out there.
So I enter year number 8 of being on Hive, I just wanted to take a second to thank absolutely every single person that can joined me on this journey. Every comment, every upvote, ever Thread, every hand shake...You guys truly are the cream of the crop in #web3
Thank you for adding to Jongo's journey :)