Hosting a contest is a fun way of uplifting the community and one generous way of rewarding conscious efforts - when I first came across the bdcommunity contest, I was thrilled at the topic because it was something that was easy for people globally to join without too much hassle and incessant racking of the brain to participate. However, before I dive into it with my entry I wanna applaud the team and the brain power behind the community because in my own little retrospection - the community has come a long way to were it is now - the beginning wasn't all peaches and ice cream like my friend @shoemanchu would say - it got to were it is now by consistent series of hard work, sacrifice and investments of different facet to lay the first stepping stone and now they are here on hive doing what they do best - which is to contribute immensely to the growth of the ecosystem with their potential and to impact the community at large.

A few days back in neoxian city - a couple of my friends had a chat about the contest capped "A tale of 1000 hive" - we talked about how buzzing we were about the contest, how nice all entrant posts will be given some lofty incentive through curation, we talked about the grand prize for the three lucky winners, whether to join or not and what to write if the decision to participate is a “Yes” - along the line one of my friend who goes by the alias “burl” made his entry and almost every online in the city of neoxian community in discord read his post and felt heart-rending at the content of his entry. He walked his readers through a fracture part of his memory lane that was not pleasant to experience coupled with his motives if he was given the money - describing what he would do with the thousand hive, which was altruistic for a tale since half of it will be dedicated to help a selected few with a relative story if they cross his path.

Reading his post brought some sad vibe and I have promised myself that I won't share my sad story - yes, mere reading the topic of the contest, I came to the conclusion that it will only incite that part of my pen that's full of economic and financial woes - to digress a bit, a lot of people stretched worldwide are going through one hell or the other and the current pandemic has added more salt to the injury making it extremely difficult to survive - if not that the world has evolved so much in technology - getting exposure of the globe/other country seamlessly would be limited but the invention of social media and the likes has made the whole world a global village - creating portals to make people connect and stay up to speed with what's happening in other nations across the shores - I have seen some people who couldn't bear the pressure of surviving anymore after the pandemic started by ending their life either by jumping/climbing on an electrical pole/high tension, by drinking poison and lastly by starving to death.

What will I do with a thousand hive?

• Stake it?

As a minnow, staking makes no difference to my ability to influence post payout but it can make a difference to make passive income if I stake it and delegate to any curation oriented project that rewards delegators who decentralize their stake for the benefit of others/community adding value to the chain. At the very least, 0.200 - 0.300 hive will be my daily income.

• Investing?

What about investing it on hive dapps or buying tribe tokens? Well, dapps/buying alts are a way of diversifying, since not everyone can be a blogger and could lack the skill - having branches on hive that piques people interesting cushions the tentacles of the hive ecosystem, take for example steem monsters and notably the top five tribes like neoxag, leo, lassecash, palnet and creativecoin. Investing a thousand hive is another way to foster on chain dapp growth.

• My opinion

Left to me, life has not been a bed of roses since my father lost his job - if I am given a thousand hive - I would use it to do what I have always been doing since I joined the crypto space - sell it off and use the fiat to support my family - since crypto found me and brought some sort of hope with the friends and rewards I have made along the line. All my earnings have been contributed to support my dad and mom who have been struggling to rise from the sudden financial collapse caused by manipulation of black magic since 2004. Someone envious tampered with our silver spoon and since then hell was let loose but that's life for you, it's all about ups and down - living in a continent were black magic(village people/evil powers) is rampant makes it inevitable to evade - the sad part of the crisis is that we noticed the hand of black magic late when everything was lost but I thank God for life and the ability to recover all that's lost gradually - somewhat in the future, I know everything will be alright and a distant memory but right now that amount of hive which is equivalent to 100,000 naira will help to sort feeding and rent bills which is one priority that causes seldom sleepless night. I can go on and on but I'm done lamenting and only want to focus on the positive side of life.

That will be all from me. Good luck to the winners and Shout-Out to my bro @zayidsakib for encouraging me to join - gracias.

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