I'd like to say hello to everyone in the Steemit community. Investing in cryptocurrencies is something new to me, but I decided to give Steemit a try after watching the video course by Jerry Banfield.
I'm a South African, and have been an English teacher, or something similar, for many years. For the last few years I've been working in Saudi Arabia. I started doing this because I was heavily in debt and couldn't find decent employment in South Africa, certainly nothing that would enable me to service my debts. Fortunately, everything is now paid off, and I've managed to save a little, so I've started thinking about where to invest. I'm not a believer in coincidences, but there's an interesting story behind how I discovered Steemit.
Last week I was in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. I had just finished a contract and was in the capital to finalise matters with my employer. I was at the mall and it was time for the Muslim prayers. Everything shuts down during prayer time in Saudi Arabia, usually for about half an hour, so I was sitting on a bench waiting for the shops to open back up. I was bored and playing around on my phone. Normally I read the news on the BBC app or a book on the Kindle app, but I wasn't in the mood for either, so I turned to Wikipedia. I had been thinking vaguely of investing in Bitcoin, the only cryptocurrency I had heard of, and decided to read the article on it. There was good general information on Bitcoin, explaining what a blockchain is and so on, but the article just mentioned that some people invested in Bitcoin, without going into any detail. I was slightly disappointed, but soon forgot about it once prayer time was over.
That evening in my hotel I went onto one of my regular websites, Cracked.com, and immediately saw that one of that day's articles was a short piece advertising the Jerry Banfield course (in the Cracked store) on investing in cryptocurrencies. It was 90% off, so I bought it immediately. A day or two later I started watching the course, which basically plugs Steemit and tells you all about the site and the investment process, and here I am.
Right now I'm back in South Africa, waiting to start the visa process for a new contract, which can take a while, so I have to be careful with money. I've accordingly made a small investment in Steem of about $300, just as a start, and to test that everything works, which it does. Unfortunately, none of the Bitcoin exchanges that Jerry mentions on his course take South African currency, but I found a site, Luno.com, which does. It has a nice smartphone app that lets you scan QR codes off your computer screen, so I find it works well to have Luno on my phone and Steemit on my laptop.
Once my financial situation is back on track I intend to invest regularly and fairly heavily in Steem Power, and I'm looking forward to building up a good investment for my eventual retirement. Here's hoping!
Apart from my investments and my English teaching, I'm also an aspiring fantasy author. So far I've self-published two novellas on Kindle, one of which, Jabberwocky: A Novella, has won two awards for indie books. The awards are yet to translate into sales, but they've encouraged me to work on a full-length novel and to get that published in the traditional way. With my new job, I get a two-month annual vacation, which would be the perfect time to work on my writing.
Other personal info: I'm divorced, with no children. I'm a general knowledge junkie, which means I have many interests. These include art (especially the Pre-Raphaelites) and history (especially military history). I also like board games, although I'm not that good at them, and have never had as much chance to play them as I would have liked. My biggest interest is old school and retro fantasy and science fiction literature, especially fantasy written before The Lord of the Rings. That being said, I do enjoy movies and shows based on contemporary books, like Game of Thrones.
I'd appreciate feedback from community members on this article, since it's my first post on the site, and I'm hoping to find lots of interesting writers to follow!