I suppose this is where I tell you about myself? My name is Matt and I live in the U.S.

I'm surrounded by the richness of the desert landscape. It's a place where most people see only a desolate land of dead, dry bushes, sand, and rock. But it's a place where I see life and beauty. You need only sit long enough, still and quiet, for the life to come out and play.

I mostly stumbled across this community by chance: some off comment, on some other social media site that made mention of "steemit," and my intent to check out what that word meant whenever I had the chance to do so. And now that I have done so, I'm wondering what it is I've really found?

I hate Facebook. A bunch of thieves, if you ask me. I hate Twitter, full of the rants and whims of people who think they should be heard. I hate Instagram, where you thumb through the fake lives of people who take pictures showing only these great, staged moments. Don't get me wrong, there are gems everywhere, people and things worth reading/listening/viewing. But they are so hard to find.

I feel like my mind is skirting around the edges of what I'm sure most people come here for, the thing I don't want to bring up, but with a place like this, needs to be addressed. Money.
Blog and make money! Get paid to write! Make hundreds DAILY!
I really hope this community makes it past all of the people who think they can come here and easily make all the money they want. A place like this isn't just a money market. It's a place where your hard work, your ideas, and your interests can benefit you instead of some large corporation filled with ass-hats and money-mongerers. If you're going to engage yourself in something, anything, and take your own time to jot it down, create it, share it, wouldn't you want want that time spent to benefit you?

I think this is why I'm interested in this community. There's a chance to really create something great, and the ones who benefit from that greatness are the creators themselves. Time is precious. Your time is precious. Cliche, I know, but it's true. So with that in mind, I wanted to share a bit of something I wrote this morning, a preview to what will hopefully be my own blog.

Time Spent Sitting

Every morning when I wake up, I make my coffee and sit. Where I sit isn't just some random place to sit. It's my place to sit.

Where I sit is in the corner of my house, looking out at the homestead where the morning light pours in and awakens the household with its warmth. It's silent where I sit, with only my thoughts to entertain me. I'll bring my journal too, and jot down any ideas or feelings or dreams, always in blue ink. Sometimes I'll take the time to write a short story. Sometimes I just stare. And if I'm late or in a rush, I'll still sit, if only for a minute.

There's one thing about where I sit that sometimes, always, draws my mind. And it's the ticking of a clock. It rests on the wall right above me; ticking, ticking, always ticking. As I sit there, silent and ponderous, all still and unmoving, the ticking always continues. It reminds me, morning after morning, that time is always moving. No matter how stagnant I feel, how sluggish or unmotivated, time continues to tick, tick, tick in my ear.

I wonder to myself if one day it will just stop. Maybe the battery will die, or the gears that turn inside will rust and give up. I wonder if then I'll be free of it's prison, always pushing me forward even when I don't want to go forward. When I dread the day ahead, the people I must deal with, the feelings I must address: Will I still need to keep going when the ticking stops?

Simply put, yes. It isn't the ticking that drives me forward. The ticking only reminds me to move forward, just as I do, will do, and have always done. Through homelessness, poverty, alcohol, abuse, I've always moved forward, shedding what I was and becoming something greater, something I can respect, something I'm proud to be. Until I finally do become what I have always wanted to be, the goal of all my life coalescing into one ultimate moment: to be wholly and utterly still.