It's hard to believe it's been a year since I made this account and became a member of the Steemit community. This last year of my life has been as rich with experience as any year I have lived or ever will live. It feels like an eternity and like a blink of an eye, like an eternity passed in a dream and lost upon wakening.
A year ago I was in Buenos Aires at a basketball court in small concrete park on Calle San Juan. I had gone there once before with a group of friends from my hostel, a good forty minute walk, and we had played a scrappy pick up game with some locals. I had wanted to return the following weekend, but my friend led us instead to el Parque Centenario (sp?) which, regrettably, proved after much searching to have no basketball court. So the next day, not wanting to waste any time again, I went out by myself with my basketball and I caught the E-Line subway to that same court on Calle San Juan. I played some two on two pickup with some guys my age who were out there, one of them a Brazilian who spoke good English because he had a long-distance girlfriend in Florida. Alongside the court was a father and his two sons, playing catch as well as shooting on the other basketball goal-- a shorter goal with a thick metal rim no more than an inch wider than a basketball. The father had heard me yelling in English during the basketball game, and he stopped me as I left and asked me in perfect English where I was from. I told him New Orleans. He was from the States also, and we got to talking about what had brought us to Argentina. I was trying to be a writer, I explained, but to get by in CABA I was going to be teaching English. He asked me then, "have you ever heard of Steemit?" and I knew immediately that there was a curious sort of serendipity at work here.
I had heard of Steemit, and in fact I had made an account in the past but given up on posting after only a few days. I loved the concept, but I had lacked inspiration and I had had zero success with my posts. The idea of making money in crypto and of working for myself remained extremely appealing, though; and I was depressed by the fact that my crypto investments were down and I had no disposable income to load up my bags. Now here I was, talking to the first American I had encountered outside of the hostel, and he was not only talking crypto but telling me I could make as much money creating content on Steemit as I could teaching private english lessons to strangers. It seemed to good to be true-- after all, my only previous posts had garnered less than a penny-- but he assured me that success on Steemit is about creating the best content you can and about connecting with other members of the community. I decided to give it another chance, starting fresh with a new account.
For a solid month, the rewards were fantastic. I was cashing some out every week and making a legitimate living on it. As we all know, the Steem value began to drop precipitously after that, but I kept active all the same. I could no longer sustain myself on the Steemit income, and I stopped cashing it out, but I never stopped posting, even as life took me from Argentina, to Norway, to Vietnam, and back to New Orleans again. In a way, the Steemit platform has been like another country I have visited. I have learned a lot, progressed as a person, and gotten to know people who I never would have known even existed. It's been a long crypto winter, but it's been a very rich year of experience, and it feels fitting to see our friends STEEM and SBD showing some signs of life on the one year anniversary of my joining the community. Here's to another year, and hopefully next year I'll be seeing you all on the moon.
