MY FIRST MONTH ON STEEMIT - Learning The Ropes & Making $5000

A TIME TO REFLECT

It's now been a month since I joined Steemit so it's time to look back at the journey that I've taken as I became a part of this groundbreaking website. When @senseiteekay introduced me just over 4 weeks ago I had no real knowledge of cryptocurrency and I definitely didn't understand the implications of such an idea within our world.

UP, UP AND AWAY!

I've always hated the predatory financial systems that destroy innocent peoples lives. Even when I was too young to understand fractional reserve banking or subprime mortgages my instinct told me that something was not quite right within the sphere of our financial system. Steemit has restored my faith in humanity (at least temporarily). There is no central bank, no interest to pay and it is essentially driven by the lower and middle class of Steemit which reflects a truly beneficial functioning economy.

The day I joined Steemit was the exact same day that the infamous "First Makeup Tutorial" video was trending, it was one of my first impressions of Steemit and you can only imagine my reaction when I saw over $30,000 on a post. I was hooked, if I wasn't writing posts I was reading through the huge variety of articles and introducing myself to the ideas of Steem as well as the surrounding culture and technology. Honestly, amongst most of my friends it had me feeling like Homer Simpson skipping church on a Sunday.

For the next month I immersed myself in the world of cryptocurrency and carved out some personal goals that I wished to achieve on Steemit. One of them was to save for a holiday to Europe, I've now done that and I can't thank you guys enough. For the first 2 weeks I found great success on Steemit and I saw myself becoming a regular on the trending page. I must have lost my mojo or perhaps I got too cocky. Since then I've had mixed success when posting articles and I've struggled to make more than hundred dollars off of a post again, but that's okay.

I'm okay with it because I'm in it for the long run, I truly believe in Steemit. I knew it was special from the moment I started, the more I learnt about the economics and functionality of it all the more I invested my time and effort into the overall success of Steemit. But, for all to prosper it will greatly depend on our individual commitment. I've seen so many users (I'd love to name names but I won't) who were constructive popular members when I first joined but are no where to be seen since the recent struggles we've faced. Ultimately they were able to cash out and get what they wanted from Steemit but that greatly devalued the market for the rest of us.

This is exactly how I've felt writing articles the past 2 weeks.

THE UPS & DOWNS

Anyone that's been on Steemit for as long me knows we've been through some ups and downs lately. We bore witness to the invasion of the bots and saw the implementation of a reputation system that has caused the demise of members like the infamous @wang bot. The pay out time on a post has been changed to 12 hours instead of 24 which has definitely switched up the dynamic of posting on Steemit. Since then I haven't seen many of your typical beach and boobs posts on the trending page. We've seen the value of Steem soar, only to fall dramatically but I believe we're sure to see rise again as confidence which is excellent news for all us cool cats that have stuck with it.

It's sure to be a turbulent year, I'm just so excited to be a part of it all and to find out where this Steem powered super DeLorean will take us. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the internet is indeed a cesspool, but it is made a little less cesspool-y because of the existence of Steemit and all you crazy fuckers that make it what it is.

JUST KEEP SWIMMING!

PEACE