Hi everyone, I'm Joe or Ablaze as some of you know me now. Today is my 30th day on Steemit. When I first joined, I was going to do one of these #introduceyourself posts to let some of you know who I was, and try to get some followers and carve out a little niche for myself here on Steemit. I was going to talk about Sport and Crypto, and other interests of mine. In the end, I decided against it, and said I'd wait until I was here for 30 days and then introduce myself and give everyone some info on what my experience of Steemit has been, while also introducing myself at the same time. So here goes..
So, who Am I?
Let's kick this intro off! I'm an Irish man/Dad/Husband. That's me and my oldest son above, a couple of years ago. We're admiring the view over a lake in Connemara, in the West coast of Ireland, which is where I'm from. But we live just outside the capital city of Dublin, as all the jobs are up this side of the country, at least in my industry :o)
What do I work at?
I work as an Optical Engineer for a big Telco, it's a really cool and interesting job, and I might do a post on some of the more interesting parts of it, like helping to fix subsea fibre breaks on the sub-sea fibres that allow us all to communicate from across the globe in milliseconds. The map below shows some of the fibre cables that span the bottom of the oceans, over which our voice, business and data travel daily on the information superhighway. Every now and again, one of these break, usually a fishing trawler drags it along the sea bed and damages it. Then I get a phone call, and a whole series of interesting events happen.. Although not so great, if it happens when your about to tuck into the turkey on Christmas eve! The joys of being on-call! I'll cover this in another post..
What do I like?
Anyway, enough about work :o) My interests are many, and include everything from surfing to astronomy; reading to football. I am into a real mixed bag of things, and most recently I took an interest in Cryptocurrency.. I did a load of reading and have built up a solid understanding. That is what lead me to finding Steemit, I'd love to give credit to one of you wonderful folks for bringing me here, but the truth is I kind of stumbled upon the place myself while researching Crypto. So I applied for an account, and waited patiently... an hour turned into two, then a day, then 3 and I still wasn't approved. I started to think I may not get approved, then boom, the mail hit the inbox and in I came.
Finding Steemit
The whole thing was new to me, and I stumbled around the trending page wondering what to do, I upvoted some Crypto posts and commented on a few, then I did my first post, and I got 1 upvote from a guy who said: "Good post thank you :) I followed you follow me " I soon realised he hadn't even read my post, as he was having a serious dose of repeat post, as he spattered this same stock message on loads of pages in his attempt to gain followers (I've just checked, he has 48 followers now, so clearly his approach did not work) I was disappointed that noone had read my first post, but promised myself to give it 30 days..
Fiftywords
I then had the good fortune to happen upon the the #fiftywords page on day 2. I posted a 50 word story, and I managed to get 0.28SBD worth of upvotes – hey this Steemit thing wasn't so bad... I have continued to take part in this since then, and I find it really enjoyable to stop by and see the worlds, thoughts and visions people can conjure up in 50 short words. I'd recommend you stop by and have a look.
I was back writing creatively for the first time since I was a 17 year old student, when I had to write for my English exams, but to be fair I enjoyed it back then too. Then I embarked on a technical career through university and work,so the creative writing never happened again, that is until 30 days ago.. All thanks to Steemit and the warm and welcoming community within it.
Freewrite
On day 4 I found my new favourite little corner of the internet #Freewrite This is a daily writing exercise organised and administered by the friendly and wonderful @mariannewest. Here you have just 5 minutes to conjure up a story from beginning to end and then post it to your page. This my most recent one https://steemit.com/freewrite/@ablaze/the-last-one-on-earth-freewrite
I felt so encouraged and appreciated from the beginning, which gave me the confidence to continue to post freewrites, and today I take part nearly every day. The community here is amazing, and there is nothing I love more than reading freewrites, upvoting the ones I love and having a good natter in the comments section underneath. If you are new to the platform, come hang out with us in #freewrite, there are a great bunch of people from around the world here waiting to talk to and encourage you.
I wrote a song!!!
With this new found confidence I entered a song writing competition and won! @edprivat is going to compose the music to acompany my lyrics, upload it to Dsound and share 50% of the proceeds with me. But aside from maybe making a few quid, it was so cool to write my first song! And, again this was all thanks to Steemit! This is it.... It's no masterpiece, but I'm still quite proud of it..
The Man With No Home
[Verse 1]
So desolate, so down
When he looks the people flee,
Sits all alone in his hometown,
He's a patriot you see,
This man is just like you and me,
But with no family around,
No dignity is found,
[Chorus]
He's a lost soul on the road to nowhere,
Switch the penny for the pound,
Trodden dreams upon the ground,
He's a lost soul on the road to nowhere.
Just a lost soul on the road to nowhere.
[Verse 2]
This man fought bravely for his flag,
His shoes with holes upon the floor,
Them dirty clothes are made of rag,
To die in war's considered valour,
Not this traffic and its clamour,
Not indignity's cold quiver,
As he poisons his own liver.
[Chorus]
He's a lost soul on the road to nowhere,
Switch the penny for the pound,
Trodden dreams upon the ground,
He's a lost soul on the road to nowhere.
Just a lost soul on the road to nowhere.
Then a poem!!
And before this I wrote my first poem since I was a young child in school.
Steemit has made all this possible. It is a wonderful platform and I'm so very glad I found it
I'm a month in, and I've amassed 33.5 Steem Power and over 300 hundred followers, not bad for a little minnow from Ireland :o)
How many countries can I get a comment from?
I can't wait to get stuck in and try to make a postive contribution to this budding community.. I'll do my best! If you do leave a comment below, and I hope you do, you might include what country you are from, so I can see how many different continents I can connect with via my introduction!! Well maybe not Antartica, that'd be a tad ambitious :)
I hope it doesn't seem like I'm fishing for comments, that's certainly not my intention...
So where are you from and what it is your Steemit story or thoughts on the platform?
As we say in Ireland in our native tongue Go N-éirí an Bóthar leat which means 'may the road rise to meet you'
Welcome man - Nice and long intro ;)
I can offer a comment from Austria: My thoughts are that this has a lot of potential and you are probably lucky to have found this place!
Resteeming you for some publicity, good luck!
Wow, thanks so much for the welcome, and the resteem! That is so decent of you to do for me. And that ticks Europe off my list... It is the elusive Antarctica which will be the trickiest I think :o) I also think Steemit has huge potential and can challenge some of the bigger multinationals in this space.. You can be sure they know about Steemit, and are keeping a close eye on it.. The platform is breath of fresh air for me, and I look forward to logging in each morning.. That was never the case with other platforms I used previously, and which use very sparsely now, if at all..
Welcome to the steemit community. You will do well here!
This post was picked at random and resteemed to 5200 followers.
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Thanks a lot for the resteem, much appreciated
You just planted 0.71 tree(s)!
Thanks to @theleapingkoala
We have planted already 5532.76 trees
out of 1,000,000
Let's save and restore Abongphen Highland Forest
in Cameroonian village Kedjom-Keku!
Plant trees with @treeplanter and get paid for it!
My Steem Power = 20600.00
Thanks a lot!
@martin.mikes coordinator of @kedjom-keku
Welcome to Steem @ablaze.
Do read A thumb rule for steemit minnows - 50:100:200:25 for starter tips.
Spend time reading Steem Blue Paper to know how Steem blockchian works and if you still have any queries ask them on our Ask me anything about Steemit post and we will try to answer that.
All the Best!!!
Thanks @streemladder. Some very useful advice right there.. Thanks for sharing
welcome to the magic that is steemit!
Thank you for dropping by. That's Indonesia and Asia ticked off the list ;o)
Well my friend - you know you can tick Melbourne, Australia off on your list. I love reading your freewrites (actually I love a lot of everyones, and being a busy parent makes it hard to appreciate them all as you well know!) It's great to finally know more about you and it will give me some insight as we continue to write our freewrites!!
PS - your song is great - designed to be sung with a pint of ale in the little Irish pub I know called "The Drunken Poet" Cheers!!!
Ah, great to have one of my freewrite pals drop in.. I spent a bit of time in Melbourne actually back in 2007, it's a great city, spent most of down around St Kilda.. Thanks for the kind words about the song, I wrote like a freewrite, in around 5 minutes, it just kind of flowed.. Cant wait to see what Edprivat does with it..
Great intro! I'm a Canadian of Irish heritage. Welcome to Steemit.
Hi @noxdarkness, thanks for stopping by and for those warm words.. Cool to hear about your Irish roots, have you ever made it over to Ireland? Thanks a million for the welcome and resteem, much appreciated..
Welcome! Can't wait to see more of your adventures.
Hi @Ipreap thanks for the welcome and kind words, I'm starting to feel right at home here on Steemit..
What a great song you wrote!! I hope you let us know when it is up on DTube or Dsound (or both :)
And thank you for the shout out!! We so love that you are writing with us and it is a wonderful community.
So, I can count as 2 countries.
Born and raised in Germany
Now in the US - California.
Looking forward to reading many more of your freewrites :)
Thanks as always @mariannewest You're the best! The #freewrite is such a great community, filled with such a diverse and vibrant bunch of like minded folk, who support each other.. I'm so happy to be a part of it, and the future holds great things for the #Freewrite and Steemit, so happy to be along for the ride... And I will definitely post the song when it's finished.. @edprivat seems like a really cool guy, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how he arranges it.. :o)
Hi @mariannewest The song is on Dsound now if you want to have a listen :o) https://dsound.audio/#!/@edprivat/20180304t175524029z-man-with-no-home-by-ed-privat-lyrics-by-ablaze
Warm welcome from Bulgaria!
This is a great place where you can meet indeed any nationality.
Love the lyrics and your first poem and I can't wait to see more of your posts.
Thanks a million for the warm welcome @nelinoeva and another country! I think that's 6 I'm up to now, from 4 continents.. I'm so glad you liked the song and poem too. See you around :o)
Welcome to Steemit Joe @ablaze,
Thank you for sharing this intro about yourself with us :D
Thanks a million @theleapingkoala Great to have you visiting my page
Welcome to Steemit Joe!
Thanks @archive.xyz It's great to be here!!