How Has Steem Impacted My Life - a surprising journey

@theycallmedan came up with this great initiative to think about the impact that Steemit has in our lives since we became part of the community. I am lucky that he extended the deadline for the submissions as I wouldn’t be able to write my post on time. And here it is! But firstly, I would like to take this opportunity and thank Dan for this brilliant idea. I find it important to think about the positive side of things as there are many complains that I keep reading in some posts.

And now it’s time to share my thoughts about my Steemit journey…

Around two years ago, a musician whom I followed on Instagram mentioned Steemit and its benefits in his stories. Don’t kill me for mentioning Instagram please 😊 I don’t remember his name as I don’t follow him for a long time, and he isn’t active on Steemit anymore, but he was the one who got me thinking about cryptocurrencies. I had heard about Bitcoin before, but I didn’t know much about it and considered it a scam. But there he was, a real person who was talking about cryptocurrencies. I had to check it out!

I opened my Steemit account with ID 789,524 in March 2018 and it took me two months to start contributing to the platform. Why did it take me so long? I was afraid that I had nothing to say and that people wouldn’t be interested in my posts. I think that my biggest fear was that I would fail. But I was dreaming about blogging for many years and my fears couldn’t hold me back forever, so finally in May I wrote my first post. My rewards were close to 0 for a long time but I found many friends and started to enjoy myself, and Steemit of course.

And let me tell you that I’ve been enjoying Steemit ever since. Well, at the beginning I was lost, and it took me some time to learn how it works here but I found @davemmcoy (or he found me 😊) and he taught me a lot about the blockchain. He is the one that I still keep bothering anytime I have a question.

So how has Steem impacted my life?

There are so many things and I hope that I won’t forget to write about any of them.

• Steemit helped me to believe in myself. I was excited about every single comment and surprised that people liked my posts. Slowly, I was building my confidence and I was looking forward to writing more posts. I remember when I got my first curie vote. I was so excited that I was jumping up and down and my husband thought that I was crazy! He didn’t get why it was such a big deal to me. There were more and more people coming to my posts and they were leaving those great comments. I could see that they really read what I wrote, and it made me feel good. I think it’s right to say that thanks to that I have built my confidence as writer.

• I have developed my photography skills as I wanted to post good photos, photos that would tell a story, those photos that you enjoy seeing, and that make you feel like you were there with me. This was a challenge as I didn’t have that much experience because I spent most of my time at work and didn’t have a chance to develop this hobby (or any other hobbies). I was encouraged by the community and started to learn about the photography. I have realized that I really liked it and now I can’t imagine going out without my camera. I carry it with me to the strangest places – even to the gym, but this was more of a coincidence 😊

• I have gained many new ‘online’ friends. I am not going to name them here as they know who they are. I am grateful for all of them as thanks to them I fell in love with writing. Their support means a lot to me and I hope that they know it. I haven’t managed to attend a Steem Fest yet, but I do hope that this year will be my first one. Steemit made me change my opinion about the social media. It doesn’t need to be all artificial and they are real people behind the account names. People who are there to listen to you and help you as much as they can. I wish I could meet all of you in person.

• I found a new passion – art. I’m not an artist by any means but there are so many amazing artists on Steemit! I have visited many galleries across Europe but found them rather boring. I couldn’t understand those paintings or sculptures and at some point, I didn’t feel like visiting such institutions anymore. Last year, I started to follow tags such as art, ntopaz and creativecoin and found so many interesting artworks. And the best thing is that these artists talk about their inspirations and motivations. This helps me to understand them and appreciate their work. I’ve been following these tags ever since and support many of these artists on a daily basis.

• I have learned about the blockchain which was a new word to me. What does that mean? Now, I am that cool person who can speak about it with my friends and family even though I have no technical background. I am sure that I still make some mistakes, but they have no idea, so it’s all good. I am also trying to onboard them, but it will take some time. I might be getting my brother here soon as he would like to share his photos but it’s a tough cookie as he doesn’t really speak English and doesn’t want to write in Slovak neither. But I think he will get there.

• Money, money, money - I usually don’t talk about it but we all know that there are incentives for submitting our stories on Steemit. In the past, I used to be very active on Instagram. I had more than 10k followers and I spent hours maintaining my account each day. Nobody ever paid me. And then I started posting on Steemit. It was a totally new world and I couldn’t believe that incentives were real.

• I started trading - I’m not saying that I have big fat wallets but I have some small amounts invested in various cryptos which is a big development if you know that just two years ago I considered cryptos to be a scam. I remember when I first bough some Steemit. I was so nervous and literally sweating as I was afraid that I would make a mistake and lose my money. Now, I am much more confident, and these transactions come naturally to me.

I have listed quite a few points and I think that everyone can see that Steemit has changed my life in a positive way. I am not the same person that I was two years ago, and I can honestly say that Steemit has played a big role in this change.

Thank you for reading!

Cheers!

Martina

(Photos in this post were already used in my previous posts)