How Has Steem Impacted My Life

@theycallmedan started How Has Steem Impacted My Life Initiative almost two weeks ago, i thought i will not have time to write anything meaningless but it was extend so... be aware this will be a noncoherent ramble because, well, i don't know any better.

Did steem impacted my life? From the time i discovered it and to this day at least 50% of my free internet time is spent on steem, so it definitely changed my life and my internet habits.

The journey:

I heard about steem in late december of 2017 from photographer Benjamin Von Wong as he talked about it in his instagram story. I made a note about it but did not check it out for a week or two. Then i registered and waited for an account for maybe 10 days. It will be my 2 years on the blockchain in 2 days.

The idea was, i take photos and videos for fun, never wrote a blog in my life, but why not try and share it at this new place (well new for me) and even be able to earn some crypto for it (it was the
"omg crypto is the shit", Lamborghini factory was panicking as they will not have enough Lambos for everyone...).
I seen a lot of people writing about how steem feels different than other widely known social networks. And i had that feeling to. In my internet life there were 3 periods where there was that human personal feeling and with people that i never met in person.
First one was my discovery of internet, dial up modems and some mIRC chat rooms.
Second one was still in my dial up modem days (we were a bit late in technological development) on the MyCity forum.
And third one was when i got to steem.
And all that places had in common is that it was not that easy to be there and to use it. it was not rocket science, but there was a learning curve and people there were people who made an effort to be there.

So i started writing blogs. Mostly bad, as i suck at writing blogs, but here is another thing where steem impacted my life. I got much better in writing English (mostly spelling). There were decent amount of active people on chain, some interactions, but then photogames happened.

That period of steem was the period i had most fun here and the period when i was spending shit ton of my free and not that free time on the chain. And here for me lies the importance of well thought and executed communities. Then there were no communities but it all worked like one and it added to that "personal" feeling and to that feeling of belonging. It helped that there were bunch of good photographers, great people, and it was fun :)

It impacted my life in the part that i took most selfies in that period than ever before and after that :D

than jarvie started building steempeak, derek went to look for unicorns :) the price went down, people started dropping out one by one, and steem got a bit less fun. Still fun, maybe more informative but not that much.

Jumping topics. Steem was responsible for my first bitcoin, well not whole bitcoin just a small piece of it. Steem was my first crypto. I heard about btc, eth, ltc and maybe some more but never got into it. As i joined steem i was skeptical as probably most non crypto people are. So i get this steem token and i can change it for fiat? So steem got me to a journey of wallets, exchanges, account keys, and everything else needed to try and get to fiat. And it worked, it probably still works i did not attempt it for almost 2 years now :D

I am sure that steem is the best way for people to get into crypto, even if they have no knowledge about it. On steem you have an easy readable username (not some long line of letters for a wallet address), with steempeak it is really easy to send it to someone, you can earn your first crypto without investing in it first, and if you are interested you can find a lot of info about crypto on steem (well better search engine would be nice :D )

Will steem have impact on my life outside the internet usage, who knows, maybe one day, maybe never. For now i am happy that some people that would otherwise never see my work had an opportunity to see it, some of them will spend 5-10 minutes of their life to even read this rumbling and i do appreciate that. i found some interesting people, and their everyday stories changed me. So if you survived this freewrite:

steem on, and see you on the chain.