Time is CRAZY isn't it? I can't believe I have been sharing my thoughts on the world, interacting with amazing people and even experimenting with my creative side here for THREE BLOODY YEARS!
Where does the time go?
I wrote a post recently that was very well received about the fact that I was coming up to three years here, but tbh I was not even sure when that milestone would fall. Thanks to the amazing 
I was delighted to receive this notification. It meant I had not messed up enough to be kicked outta the Hive - Whoo Hoo! 😁 🐝
I commented earlier in the year on a @Hivebuzz notification, it said something along the lines of, if you would prefer to be opted out of these notifications, respond with blahblahblah (you probably know the message I'm referring to better than me lol). I thought to myself, why would anyone not want these fun, friendly proclamations of reaching mini milestones. I like to know where I am at and what I have achieved. Sometimes they give a little extra impetus to reach out for the next goal. I like a little extra gamification too, as long as it is done with a spirit of
I guess we can strike the last 12 months off that total, we all know that was the year of nothingness, the time that Covid reset the counter and held us all in stasis for a year. I'm sure if it had been part of the plotline for one of her novels, J.K. Rowling would've named it:
The year that must not be named!
Bloody rightly so!
My posts are often humongous, Dostoyevsky style affairs, flowing down the page for what feels like miles. I try and delve deeply (possibly too deeply) in to serious topics often with a view to provoke thought in others regarding how humanity can be better or how we can strive for personal betterment in the life of ourselves and also those we love. This prompted me to start The SELF IMPROVEMENT COMMUNITY It would be fair to say I have not actively promoted it too much as I thought I would allow people to discover it organically and choose to create content there if it fit in with their interests. I have many plans for the future of the community, including but not limited to interactive group events and real life rewards as it evolves moving forward.
THIS post however is simply to enjoy a few of my highlights in my time here as I have met some truly amazing people and had a LOT of fun.
Hive is the cathartic outlet I never knew I needed yet could not live without. I have had a few breaks in the past three years due to health problems, bereavements, work and home issues but am finding more of a way to maintain things here even when things get heavy in the 'so called' real world.
Although I always loved the community here, I didn't always understand how things worked and just blundered about for the longest time, stumbling ever onwards without any real expectations or goals. Just eight months ago, this was my where my wallet was at after 28 months, I found this snapshot on an old #hivepud post:
Not exactly breakneck speed, right?
That never mattered to me though. I was so thrilled at having a place to have a voice and the chance to speak my mind, air my views and get things off my chest.
Having the chance to meet people like me was great. What was far more amazing though was the chance to meet people NOT LIKE ME! People from every corner of the planet, people from such vastly different cultures with lifestyles I could not have even contemplated before chatting to them and learning about them through their posts.
We are such a hugely diverse bunch of people but somehow, when we all come together it just works, right?
It's like taking a massively varied crop of ingredients that simply should not work together, throwing them all in the pot and realising you just made the casserole to end all casseroles, sometimes when you find such a wonderful balance (I did not say perfect...) you must fight for it and demand that it NEVER be allowed to be taken for granted or allowed to go to rack and ruin.
Most of us have seen how that plays out before!
It ain't pretty...
Of course we had a different iteration of this community, long before it was named Hive. To be honest, I never quite fit in in that other steemy place. At the time I joined there was politics raging at every turn 'flag wars', huge controversy over what I can only describe as a huge proliferation of bidbots, it felt very hard to get engagement on posts, yet I was massively enjoying the adventure of the space.
BUT as is the experience of many here, we found our crowd gradually and although most of us had little to offer each other in terms of upvotes, the friendships I made, the people I got to know here and on Discord were amazing.
I learned something about myself early on and it is close to the top of my list of rules that I would offer(and have), to new users here.
Do not try and latch on to the whales here and follow them around looking for scraps. Plot your own course and journey forward with integrity and allow yourself to blossom in the way that is right for you.
DO NOT THINK ABOUT THE FINANCIAL REWARDS!
If you are only here for the money, you will end up sorely disillusioned unless you are an investor too.
Hive is like any other space in the world, any rewards come from offering value, this is not likely to happen in your first week although it has been known. The benefit of being brand new here and unknown is that you can experiment with your blog and mess it up BIG TIME and hardly anyone will ever know it happened. Anonymity has many perks associated to it.
Do not remain anonymous indefinitely, you are not a secret agent, you're not a spy.
Once I had started to learn something of what the community was about and read a few blogs I hit the comment sections. This is precisely how I began to slowly find a small following. I had many posts however which had zero comments beneath them and zero cents beneath them too. This was a little disappointing after I spent hours and hours writing them. I was however enjoying the process and I found I loved engagement on the posts of others too.
Then a funny thing happened. The people whose posts I had commented on began seeking out my posts and began engaging too. My comments were too in-depth most of the time and indeed often still are. A friend of mine from day 1 (both of our day 1) told me that I would never make any real money talking too much and too long and I should get myself around the platform and leave 100 comments a day.
That simply wasn't the Steven I know. I would far rather have real personal interactions, rewards or not.
My friend left after a few months, I am here three years on...
I can't imagine anyone here saying my slow and steady success has transpired from any kind of manipulation, hanging about wealthy friends or hinting for votes, support or delegations.
Here's the secret I have only ever mentioned once or twice in my time here. I spotted ways to do this very early on, indeed I saw others doing just that. I know many users who started to achieve stellar growth from hanging around one user and shilling whatever that guy was in to, that guy disappeared (very wealthy, I always thought) and his minions literally had no 'social network' here.
I have never followed a friend in a partisan fight here simply because he was a friend. My morals, ethical beliefs and principles are not for sale and have nothing to do with friendship at all. Sometimes I have aired unpopular views BUT they are my views and I believe in them deeply. I even got a few flags early on because of a guy whose posts I commented on here as I liked his radical societal ideas... 'I didn't stop interacting with the guy who later became someone I had a lot of respect for' Thankfully the flags moved on.
I never ever received a delegation to my account except when I won a contest very early here for a couple of weeks but I have offered a few out to new users. sometimes as small as 5 Hive to help them be able to write a few posts and start their account off. Sometimes as high as 50 - 60 Hive to someone who was trying hard with few results.
Again, I know, I could have gotten a delegation from a huge user or two over the last couple of years but decided that I did not want to tie myself to any single user for the benefits it would afford me later on, not my style.
Here is a snapshot of my growth over the last 8 months:
8 months ago:
Today. The effect of building a stronger network of diverse people here and the compounding effects of a higher stake can clearly be seen.
The last 8 months have been kinder to me than the first 28 months, my blogging has vastly improved, yet still has a long way to go.
Many will see my 3 year journey as slow and steady, I am delighted with it. Those relationships I mentioned have become much stronger, I have never withdrawn any Hive to fiat as that was never my intention, I want to grow my stake, influence and reputation and build something of note. When I mention building something, I am referring to my blog (journal), this community, the blockchain and I want to become a vocal and efficient advocate for community and to play my part in helping crypto and Hive in to the mainstream.
People were acting excited a couple of weeks back when the Hive price was touching the 40 cents mark. #smallfry
What we have here, what is being developed here and the general zeitgeist of this community right now will make that 40 cents look pitiful and small one day soon.
I am learning to be a much more effective communicator when explaining the Hive proposition on Twitter, can you imagine me with such a restrictive character count? Spreading our message to the masses in a drip drip drip kind of way via other traditional, centralised, social media models is essential in my opinion.
Firstly we have visibility to those actively using social media and sharing their thoughts on varied topics, concerns and world events. Secondly we have the opportunity to get across to these same users the enormous benefits of this new, decentralised far more egalitarian model. This has the added long term benefit of normalising cryptocurrency for the masses.
Over the span of the last 3 years I have tried my hand at many things some that I would never really have contemplated before. I have been a curator for a curation initiative which gave me my first taste of structure and the sense of how a cooperative group project works.
I have had a weekly show on Discord where I was given a pot of rewards to hand out to those who created great content, I would also speak to them live to delve a little deeper in to the subjects that were important to them, the show was interspersed with music, announcements and monologues from myself about the vision for the future. I may revive this idea as I move forward in my Hive journey.
I spent a year or so as a witness on another blockchain to learn more about that side of things so that if at some future point I wanted to do the same here, I would be more informed. My witness primarily focussed on the purpose of cultivating a strong sense of community and mutual empowerment.
I learned to use the engagement league created by Asher 
One other initiative I stumbled across when chatting with 
I believe communities were an amazing addition to the wider Hive community, it is great to be able to dip in and out of the content that you actively want to engage with, they generally come with specific tags that help you find the posts that speak to you most. I don't personally recommend spending all your time within one community from my perspective as in my opinion this is just a highly targeted niche aspect of content creation and curation and every community should compliment the wider Hive community most of all.
Could I ever imagine leaving this community that I have come to LOVE so much...
The greatest part of the entire journey for me was my first ever meetup with some of the most prominent members of the TeamUK community. I was lucky enough to meet some fabulous people when 
Despite being in a brief respite from covid restrictions that only lasted a few weeks, it still caused havoc with many of the people set to attend. However it was a truly wonderful experience to have the opportunity to meet and chat with 
Hive 2020 UK meetup in Halifax. A great time was had by all and some amazing discussions were born out of the day.
I'm not sure what my strange posture and maniacal expression were about. I am not plotting anything sinister behind everyone else's back... Honestly!
Those watching the livestream of the day on Discord memed us all to within an inch of our lives.
UK meetup 2021 is rumoured to be taking place in July or August obviously dependant on covid restriction relaxation. I am sure it will be bigger and better and I for one cannot wait!
Over the last 3 years I have discovered, learned about and donated to several worthy causes from personal stories of community members who share this space with us right through to actual real world helping charities like 
I don't believe I will ever scratch the surface of just what is available to us here on Hive from contests, curation initiatives, crypto advice, political discourse, a chance to learn about the cultures of others from immensely different places of the Earth. There's multiple front-ends each with their own particular features and functionalities and sometimes loyalty rewards.
We have talented musicians, vloggers, photographers, writers, teachers, poets, investors, devs, dapps and so, so much more. all of this backed up by a censorship free platform where we are free to be who we are, speak how we wish all within a culture of cooperation, engagement and mutual betterment, sure we have a few trolls but consider the rest of the mighty www.
Notice I didn't even mention the potential to monetise our own content? There is so much more available to us than just that.
BUT it is a great benefit, right? To turn the old social media model on it's head, who could ever go back to being data harvested and monetised without knowledge or even our permission, surely that should be considered a sovereign right, right?
Who knows the potential we have at our fingertips? Who knows just how far we can take this experiment that has now evolved in to something so much more? Who knows how we as the pioneers of a brave new world of technological enhancement can transform the very world in which we live?
I only know I cannot wait for the next 3 years yo unfold as I believe we will be in a far more tangible position to disrupt EVERYTHING!
Thank YOU for taking the time to read my post and if you're one of those amazing people who like to hit the comments section... Then I doubly thank YOU!
Either way I want you to know that you are appreciated!