Hey! This is my usual Monday post in which I just end up free-writing whatever the heck is on my mind. This time I will write a little bit about what I have done so far on HIVE during my merely 2 months journey. I will go over what I achieved, as well as my plans for the upcoming months. To be completely honest, this post came to my mind solely because of the fact that I got offered a great sidegig on the blockchain! You will see what I'm talking about inside the post though.

My Beginnings

I joined HIVE because of Splinterlands. Simple as that. I haven't ever heard about the blockchain before and honestly, even for a few days after I started to play. I just wanted to try this whole play to earn thing and I did not expect to find a community and a platform such as HIVE with it.

My beginnings were quite difficult, as it was not so easy to learn to get around - which tags do I use, what frontend do I post from, what do I even write about? Will anyone want to read what I produce? Well, it quickly turned out it is not that difficult.. You just need some research and you'll know what tags are relevant for which post and if you like writing.. You can do absolutely anything and it'll fit one of the communities on HIVE!

I got lucky on my second post, as I got an upvote from monster-curator, which really got me even more motivation - it showed me that I was capable of producing curation-worthy content and I could also get some gratification for this fun hobby. From then on, the first days might not have always been very profitable, but they were certainly fun!

First breakthrough

I have talked about this in my HIVE highlight, but as this is about my whole journey.. I'll do so again. One of my best moments so far was finding out about Dreemport - the great community on HIVE focusing on written content. It let me do my first curations of content for a small amount of the DREEM token, as well as gave me a little more visibility thanks to their PYPT (Pimp Your Post Thursday).

The absolute highlight of this was meeting @dreemsteem, however, as she encouraged me heavily to keep writing, praising my content and ensuring that I keep going! Even more than this mental push, she also delegated a fairly large amount of HIVE Power to me, which allowed me to have the Resource Credits to both post and comment to my heart's content.

This delegation also means that I am able to upvote other people's posts with at least a little bit of HIVE value - meaning both curation rewards for me, to build up even more HP, as well as giving the authors a tiny reward for their good work. I finally felt like a fully-fledged member of the HIVE community - even if I wasn't really a big fish or anything.

Daily Posting and Diversification

Posting was lots of fun, but it also came with the worry that I might simply get bored or run out of subjects to write about. In order to prevent this in the future, I have decided to set some goals.

First one was simple - I want to post daily. This gives me a clear aim for each day, as well as in general a larger chance that one of my posts gets seen by a bigger community, letting me grab more rewards. The main reason for this goal was another one though - I got hooked and love doing this!

Secondly, I figured I'll need to diversify. I created a schedule for myself, in which I assigned a subject to each of the days of the week. Every week, I aim to post according to that schedule, for as long as I have something to write about regarding those subjects. Should that pond dry up, I will simply adjust this and move on to another - hopefully as interesting - topic. Here is the schedule:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Personal/Catarsis	Travel	Splinterlands	Travel	AE/Gaming	Travel	Splinterlands

My favourite thing to write about is my travels - but I'm also aware it might not be the most exciting to read about for most of the HIVE users - as they are gamers! That said, I write mainly for myself, so it still has the most slots for as long as I have travels to describe.

Gaming and Splinterlands are both likely to be the most popular, I enjoy writing about them as well and I am sure I will like it even more once I get better at the game and feel confident creating guides and other helpful tools for players!

Finally, Mondays are my personal posts, like this one. They are there so that I can get out things that are on my mind. I could not care less about payout on those - they are my Catharsis posts!

As for the future plans on my content, I cannot share all the details yet, but year 2022 for me is full of exciting plans that I have already started on. It is likely that from February or March on, I will be sharing a little ficiton writing (fantasy short stories) once a week. On top of that, other topics might come in, such as my passion for photography that I finally decided to act upon by buying a good camera! Stay tuned.

Becoming a Curator

Image taken from the 1up cartel Discord, courtesy of 1UP

My biggest recognition had come very recently, as a few days ago I had been told I should apply to become a curator for the 1UP Cartel as someone sees me as the right person for the job. I did just that and over a few days I got the exciting position that allows me to review posts for their compliance with all the guidelines they need to follow in order to be upvoted by the curation accounts.

This is a huge step for me, as it makes me a part of the community more than anything else in my short journey on HIVE. This does not mean I am becoming some sort of a huge figure, as all I will essentially do is ensure that posts are of good quality and relevant for several hours every week. That said, it is a paid gig, which means I really have been found worthy of doing it, as someone decided it might be worth paying me for doing all this.

I will strive to do my best work and show giving me the opportunity was not a mistake. I hope this will be a great way for me to ease into the 1UP and HIVE communities in general and to grow even bigger as time goes!

I was just finishing up this post (I usually write them a day or two in advance, so on the day I just need to do thumbnails and pictures!), as I had received my biggest upvote to date - as thanks to Clove's curation, my post got an over 120$ vote! I've had posts with alright payouts before, especially through Splintertalk, but this absolutely blew my mind and I cannot express in words how much such a large upvote means to me - not only due to its value, but simply because of the fact that I was found worthy of such a payout.

Anyway, that is it from me today. My journey on HIVE is a short one so far, but I am here to stay. I think I have been growing quite fast and I do not aim to stop - I will strive to reach even higher heights! Thank you for reading if you got this far.