I landed on Hive on 6th June 2021 so I missed the hard fork that created Hive. The subject does rear its head from time to time, and I understand that it was a painful but beautiful birth. But three years on, the Blockchain is growing up beautifully, and the community that lives and breathes here is growing with it 🤗💗😎

My goal in joining the blockchain was to fulfill a commitment to myself to write more regularly, improve my writing, and find a community of like-minded individuals with which to engage. Hive has not disappointed on any one of these counts. In fact, it has exemplified all that is good in social networking while amplifying value-add through financial reward.

I write on average three posts per week. I have found juggling family life and a job hectic enough. But just recently I challenged myself to try to write every day - to prioritise the art, and consign the excuses (no matter how valid!) to file 13. 😂

Yesterday I received my first-ever weekly badge! Don't laugh - I am super proud of it! And today... my streak is as follows: nine days in, nine posts written (including this one!) and so far I am managing.

What this newfound commitment is doing for me is pushing me to write in different communities during the week. And that is a fantastic thing as it exposes me to new people, new ideas, and new content. It helps to raise the bar, pushes me to work harder at improving my writing, and ultimately results in greater engagement and rewards.

My rewards are earned in 50/50 ratio so 50% is earned as HP and remains powered up! The HBD portion is split between HBD savings, liquid Hive savings, staking more to HP (especially on HPUD days), and buying layer 2 community tokens on Hive-engine or Tribaldex to support the communities and diversify my investment.

I love powering up as it allows me to delegate out more HP to community curation accounts and to newcomers to Hive to enable them to grow. It also increases the value of my vote. Mine may not be very big at the moment but what I do have, I try to spread around in support of others.

This month, outside of my post rewards that are already powered up by default, I have powered up an additional 10HP on 1st March for HPUD and 150 LEO on 15th March for LPUD.

To celebrate Hive's 3rd birthday, which is - let's face it - our 3rd birthday as without the individuals, without the communities, there would be no Hive, I have powered up another 10 Hive to increase my HP to 2075.092 before delegations out.

Despite the financial bits above, I still maintain that for me my goal on Hive will always be...

social capital before financial capital

I love meeting new people and connecting with beautiful hearts, and I have been incredibly blessed to meet some of the most wonderful souls on this blockchain. I have also had the good fortune to be able to spend time with some of them off-chain.

Hive has brought home for me that it really is "a small world after all..."

It's a world of laughter, a world of tears
It's a world of hopes and a world of fears
There's so much that we share that it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all
_{Lyrics © Walt Disney Music Company}

💗💗💗Happy 3rd Birthday Hive💗💗💗

This post has been published to celebrate's Hive's 3rd birthday, and to take part in the additional Hive power up day initiative for 20th March. If you'd like to join in, check out this post by Hive account@theycallmedan, power up at least 10 HP today 20 March 2023, and write a Happy Birthday Post for Hive using the tag #hivepowerbday.