Six

11 months ago (Edited)

No, I'm not going to write about Six, the highly-skilled assassin in the deep-cover Sierra program of the CIA in The Gray Man . Not today, as today's post is dedicated to a totally different topic.

Yesterday I got a notification from Hivbuzz, that made me smile.

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I knew my Hive anniversary was on the 20th of January, but with the constant rush, I don't keep count of the days and honestly, when the day came, I forgot. For me, it already seems like New Year's Eve was a lifetime ago and whenever I hear someone saying Happy New Year, I think they went nuts as that was ages ago. Yet today it's just the 21th of January. Time flies.

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Thanks to Hivebuzz, I now have 6 cakes in my collection, one nicer than the other. They say you can't have the cake and eat it too, so I decided to keep them all as I can't eat sugar anyway 😁

This is why I celebrated my Hive Birthday with this beautiful apple. Yes, it's an apple, not a cake, this is all I can afford right now due to my challenge, but no worries as I'm more than ok with it. All the rest on the photo is just for decoration purpose too, as I didn't have champagne or Cuban cigar either.

Seeing the badge instantly made me go back in time, take a trip down memory lane and remember how the whole thing started and the journey I've had since then on the platform.

Yesterday I was thinking how I could define life, if I were to use only one word and I think, that word would be "challenge". Life is a huge challenge in my eyes, from the beginning to the end and Hive is not any different.

For me it started out as a challenge as my primary goal was to practice English and have some fun as well. I said if I can get better at writing in English, it's already a win for me, but what I was about to discover, exceeded my expectations. Yes, my expectations were pretty low back then. There are not high now either, and I look at everything I get as a gift.

I was pretty new to crypto back then and I remember, the first week on the (legacy) chain ended with me having a headache every single day. Everything was so confusing, especially when it came to the financial part. Steem, SP, SBD, all these terms and how the rewards were distributed seemed very complicated, but this was not the first challenge of my life, so I made it a priority to understand and learn what each means, how Steem works and how to ride those waves to my advantage. It was the best decision I could make.

Over the years I met a lot of interesting people and had the chance to know them a bit better throughout their posts as well. This platform has the advantage of connecting people from all over the world, gives you the chance to know other cultures and learn about how real life looks like in other parts of the world. Also made a few good friends and most likely I'm going to meet them in real life at some point.

Over the 6 years that has just passed, I can say I did things I would have never imagined I could. Right at the beginning, due to the influence of an old friend of mine, I started drawing, although I have zero talent. It was a lot of fun and gave me the confidence to keep practicing. Every failure was a lot of fun and this is why I know one day, when I'll have more time, I'm going to continue practicing, not because I want to become an artist, but because it's relaxing and it'd a lot of fun.

Then due to the needlework community influence on me and guided by YouTube videos, I started learning sewing during the covid lockdown. I don't have big dreams, like becoming a fashion designer, as many are dreaming about it here, I just wanted to see if I have what it takes to create something. I learnt to create bags and sold them to the US, Italy and locally. The biggest win of this was to not be afraid of the sewing machine and that I can fix what I need at home, plus create small things for myself.

Photography is something I started to be interested in more seriously, after I joined the legacy chain. I started to pay attention to details around me and took photos wherever I went and saw something interesting. Today however, I'm on a different level and I'm glad I had the chance to meet a lot of very talented photographers in the community, read their posts daily and learn from them. It helped me quite a lot.

Then I had the chance to work on different projects and maybe my tiny contribution helped in building something good on chain. Hive is a web3 platform, we are the ones building it, one way or the other. We come from different fields, everyone is good at something, so there's room for everyone to contribute.

Most of the projects were new to me, so I had to figure out what and how, learn quite a lot and this was (still is) the most interesting part. Every project is a challenge and learning the ropes makes you one step closer to knowing something new every day, being better every day, while contributing to making this place better as well.

I'm grateful to have been given the chance to be part of a strong community, that changes lives, literally. I'm glad I could witness how the community effort helped so many people in difficult situations and still continues to do so. No matter where the problem is, there's always help on its way in one form or another. I had the chance to ask for help, in order to be able to hep others, from people I've never been in contact with or known previously and see them selflessly jump to help those in need, even though they didn't know the person eider. This is the biggest win in my eyes and a treasure not every community has.

I think it's fair to mention the bumpy period in which the community decided to take a different path in order to keep the chain decentralized. I had the chance to decide if I want to stay on the legacy chain, or move to Hive and here I am. Do I regret my decision? Not for a second! It was the best decision and that was the time when the community showed the world what it is capable of.

It's been six years already and only heaven knows how many are left for me. I want to say thank you to those who've been with me and wish everyone a pleasant journey! Thank you!

If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides:

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53 comments

@mipiano 79

11 months ago

Happy Hive birthday, @erikah 🤓

Life and all its moments can be seen as a challenge, as Hive too, then we indeed grow, learn, adapt, shape ourselves, improve, support and learn to be grateful. We hope many, many more Hive birthdays for you and all of us 😉

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