During day #5, we asked "What can we do to increase the value of Steem?" and I received one amazing answer that I will share in my next post along with the story of our adventures yesterday in Lisbon, Portugal featuring from left to right @starkerz, @ashleypeat, @tomasgeorge, and me!

Yesterday I was shocked to find it was 1 PM when I woke up! I wrote https://steemit.com/steemfest/@jerrybanfield/stories-of-steemfest-connecting-comedy-voting-music-uber-and-witnessing as soon as I woke up and then went out to dinner a bit after 5 pm.

I am so impressed with my body's new ability to go long periods of time without eating or complaining because the last food I had before this was around 8 pm at dinner the night before! @tomasgeorge helped me stick with intermittent fasting which I normally do as eating 8 hours a day and not eating 16.

Here is our dinner together! Guess which one is mine?

Alright here it is the best whole plant food option I could find! Yes this is the exact same restaurant we ate at a couple days ago. We liked it once so why not twice!

I ate another creamy and delicious desert which surely was not vegan and I view my eating with a "bend to avoid breaking" philosophy.

Wow!

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After dinner I had an amazing experience in the lobby with @quinneaker, @saramiller, @virtualgrowth, and @everlove which was incredible and only possible in person. We stood in the lobby of the Hotel HF Fenix Lisboa maintained eye contact and were mostly silent for 5 to 10 minutes each! My thought to describe the feeling was "this is way better than getting high."

We initially started what I this is called "Deep looking" while we were talking in the lobby. In making my usual heavy eye contact with each, I noticed that unlike most people I talk to that look away before I do, Quinn and Sara maintained eye contact with me as long as I would which initially left me feeling a bit awkward because I am used to being the dominate eye contacter among almost everyone I see every day.

At first, I made a joke of it but then @virtualgrowth stepped up and offered to give it a shot with me. I laughed almost the entire 5 or 10 minutes I looked him in the eyes. Next I went up to my room wondering why I had been hesitant to maintain eye contact with the others after feeling comfortable with @virtualgrowth right away.

Then I got a hunger for more and went back downstairs. When I came back down, all I wanted to do was look and not even talk. We spent somewhere between 20 minutes and an hour in the lobby with next @saramiller then @quinneaker and finally @everlove taking turns maintaining mostly silent eye contact for around 5 minutes each with then some slow and deep conversation.

While this paragraph may look ordinary on the page, for my brain this was a supernatural experience. I felt high for the next hour which stands out in a life where I avoid any state of intoxication and stick to almost all natural whole plant foods and green matcha tea. @tomasgeorge laughed when he had to repeat himself when it was time to go because I could not comprehend anything he was saying. The language center in my brain was off and it took a noticable few seconds to spin up.

Most of us are like a peasant or a beggar in the street when it comes to true human connection. Many of us make it through almost every day of our lives without having more than one or two moments of true connection. A lot of us want this so bad and yet are not ready to actually receive it when the opportunity is in front of us. I have been having inspirations for months to help people meetup locally where I live to do this and now that I have experienced it for myself with people I just met, I am ready to go forth!

We often reserve moments of connection like this for loved ones only and often we miss even those as we have a busy day. If we want to have happy lives, it is essential we simply take time to really see each other without our masks, egos, titles, and armor. The easiest way to do this is maintain silent eye contact for as long as comfortable although often starting may be uncomfortable. Get through the discomfort and into the immense joy of true connection which is a 100% natural way to achieve a higher state of consciousness which so many of us try to do by ourselves with alcohol, drugs, sex, work, etc.

Thank you @quinneaker, @saramiller, @virtualgrowth, and @everlove for connecting with me so completely!

After @tomasgeorge finishing editing and rendering the video of my standup comedy last night which took over 9 hours to upload to YouTube, we went out to Timeout for more food!

The best option I could find was a stand with an amazing selection of dried fruit and nuts where I dropped 20 Euros on this bag of delicious treats!

With enough food for nearly the rest of the trip except for the dinner tomorrow, @starkerz and @ashleypeat stopped for another creamy and delicious treat this time with cinnamon on top!

We then talked for hours about the best ways to add value to Steem and I got an incredible idea that I will share with you in my next post. Until then, here is my standup comedy from YouTube filmed and edited by @tomasgeorge! I will plan to get a transcript of this and dedicate a post to the video and everything said in it this week!

Thank you very much for joining us for our adventures! I am excited to share what I hope is my best idea for Steem so far in the next post! Originally I put it all in this post and I realized it was already long enough ... again.

Love,
Jerry Banfield

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