It's easier to state what I'm not on here to do rather than attempt to articulate why am I here, though I'll attempt to do the latter as well. I'm not going to write about cryptocurrency. I have no aspiration to be an influencer. I have nothing to sell. Given that this is a community where the implicit aim of members is to offer something, I can only hope that my spontaneity and stream-of-consciousness eventually reveals something of value. I'm really just here to write, though.
I suppose I can reveal basic demographic information about myself. It could come back to haunt me someday. This is somewhat an exercise in how authentic while remaining anonymous. When I was 13 years old, a psychiatrist suggested I start writing a journal, and I did that practically daily for years until one day, maybe in the early 2000s, I discovered LiveJournal and began journalling there, where I literally knew one real-life friend and collected dozens of followers who, for whatever reason, found my ramblings about pop culture and relationships and depression to be amusing. (Dozens? Wow, I'm already discovered how easy it is to embellish when I'm hiding behind anonymity. Maybe twenty people. That's not dozens). Anyway, journalling was always therapeutic, and it helped to be able to vent to a community of virtual strangers rather than a void of a private journal.
If you're under a certain age, say 30, you've got to realize this was before the era of social media. Perhaps one percent of the online population actually posted "content". Back then, I worried incessantly, even as someone hiding behind a pseudonym, if my ramblings were worthy of sharing with anyone. A few years later when Facebook and all the rest came along, it surprised just how many people were itching to share anything and everything. Really, I thought it was novel that I was doing it. Before Facebook, I had moved from LiveJournal to Wordpress and continued to blog behind a pseudonym until 2015. Then I was emboldened to start blogging behind my name, finally. And, then, I realized that I was self-censoring all the time. The quality of my writing went to shit. (I have no illusions that the caliber of writing is beyond shit. I'm just saying the relative caliber declined). The frequency of my writing nosedived. And that site is inhabited by crickets now.
At this point, if you're actually reading this, you've deduced I'm well over 30. I turned 42 recently. I'm a 42-year-old white, bisexual, liberal, shy, depressed man who lives with a dog and three cats. There are probably only about 12 of us in the United States, so you could probably figure out who I am if you cared to.
As I write this, I realize that the anonymity makes me seem more pathetic than I actual feel, and I do feel pretty pathetic. I'm not going to post photos of myself or my pets or the lovely city I live in, and so it's far more difficult to create an endearing persona. I could if I wanted to bullshit. I'm sure plenty of people, for various reasons, are completely bullshitting. But I just want a platform I can write on, where my thoughts aren't going into a complete void.
I don't care if anybody reads what I write. (I call bullshit). Ok, I don't care if I get a lot of people to read anything I write. In fact, I fear having too many people read it. That just increases the likelihood of insensitive comments. I've never encountered any online community I trusted not to...well, I'll just leave it at that. I'm thin-skinned. I'm hurt merely by what I imagine others are thinking.
It's 4:37AM local time, and this is, I'm guessing, not following the recommended guidelines for writing an introduceyourself post. I listened to a guy go on about how to be successful on steemit. That guy and I have zero in common. I'm not trying to build a brand. I'm not trying to influence anyone. I think I said that already. I'll confess...I'll be thrilled to get some STEEM tokens. I'm screwed myself financially in the last year. If I make 20 cents from this post... Really, I know this absolutely not the kind of drivel is going to earn any rewards.
And I'm a rambler. No one has time to read ramblings. We'll see. I did follow the recommendation to write an introduceyourself post. So that's out of the way.