Has it been 5 years already? Nice! Cakeday anyone?

Did it really go this fast? I think this is a great time to write a bit about my journey and my experience on Hive. If you're a newbie to Hive, or you wish to join Hive, I think this post may help you understand why Hive is so life-changing, as it has been for me.

I'll be flashbacking back into time. Sharing some memories, content, and thoughts. Hive is awesome, and it is no surprise that I'm here for already 5 years, can't wait for the next 5!

Ruben

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My Hive journey

My journey on Hive started actually before I joined the platform when I was in an Electroneum Mining group. While I was chatting mostly on the online chat, which was actually a Telegram group chat that I found out about later on. After chatting with some of the members there, I met @jemmanuel. He needed some money to pay for his college, and as I was pretty new to the group, I had not that much ETN to send his way. I then, Googled "how to earn crypto online" or something. I stumbled upon Hive, and I did recognize the blogging platform from other cryptocurrency reviews that I found way before the search.

I thought to myself... this can't be real. Who is going to pay me for blogging? So, before giving the signup link to Jemmanuel, I wanted to try it myself first. I didn't want him to waste his time if it wasn't the real deal. After trying it out myself for a month or so, I instantly told him about it and encouraged him to sign up and try it out himself.

And there we go, I made my account on the 10th of January, back in 2018. As eager as I was, I tried to find out as much as I could about the blockchain. Chats, DiscordChannels, Communities, etc. But the first 'real' home was OCD, together with the DangerZone homies, where I've met awesome people and made life-long connections.

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The best decision ever

Hive has always been on my mind, and I've been an ambassador ever since I witnessed first-hand the good that it did. In dire times, it actually also saved my life, as I struggled with buying food back in 2018 due to the kickback of suffering from severe depression and insomnia. The rewards I got from Hive were used to buy stuff that I need, and even a few people anonymously helped me out. Hive has also helped me a lot with being able to vent and speak my mind, which gave my soul some rest and reflection. I changed a lot these last years, this mostly has something to do with depression and transforming into a better version of myself. But it wasn't all confetti and beer, some of the debates that I had online here made me think and reflect on myself in many ways, and helped me eventually to understand others, and also myself. The meaning of censorship for example, or that it is ok to say no (that sort of stuff). For me, it was the best time to get on Hive and start putting in the work.

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Working hard, play later

I can't think of not opening my Hive feed for a single day unless I'm sick. It's the everything app that I open first thing in the morning.

Hive isn't a sprint, it certainly is not a quick easy money grabbing machine as many may want to think. Hive is a marathon where you have to put in the work before, during, and after. And most importantly; willingly. The harder you work, the more you can play. There are many ways in which you can work hard. It isn't about who is the loudest, or who gets the most rewards. It's mostly about being your own genuine and authentic self. And trust me, it's easier to be yourself than to pretend something you are not.

Even if writing isn't much of a thing, it wasn't for me either, once you start writing, you will experience that the next blog will be much easier. And so on. For me, it was a great way to learn and improve my English. It was also a meaningful way for me to publish my work and write about it. Writing still takes me a decent amount of time, and it certainly doesn't come naturally.

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Hive is my one and true Web3 Identity

If you're here on Hive, you're blessed. You truly are. I'm not going anywhere. I've seen the coin go up to $8, and stayed when it was around 10 cents. It doesn't really matter. You're building your presence. You're making connections, building relationships, and people will start knowing who you are. You're building a global immutable reputation. This is priceless to me since my account will outlive my own as long as Hive has at least one operator.

I'm glad I joined in 2018, it feels as if I had a small boost. And trust me, while it is getting a bit more crowded here every single day, you're still early in 2023.

If a Hive account was considered to be an NFT, which it is in a way, it is the most diverse, powerful, and dynamic NFT out there. And not many realize this.

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We went through a lot, haven't we?

We really went through a lot. I experienced the short All time highs and extreme long lows. Bear market after bear market, and we're still building our presence. A hostile take-over, a blessing in disguise (truly). I saw some friends leave the platform, people I never have met in real life, yet I still miss some of them. I tried to invite and onboard some of my closest friends that I thought they would understand and perform well on Hive as those are community people. We survived many HardForks together. And, we finally got a chance to meet each other during HiveFest7.

This is probably a good moment to say thank you to our ~witnesses, developers, curators, and community leaders (obviously we all have to thank all of our friends that we've met here).

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From nothing to something

You know the phrase, here is my two cents? I was so excited when my upvote turned into actually something. This happened quite fast because I had no idea how exactly my vote was counted for. I did a post about my two cents and I was happy enough to share this awesome news. I still can't wrap my head around it. Since my 100% vote is 20 cents worth right now, this means I could "hand out" 2 whole dollars per day from the reward pool. If this sounds like not much to you, bare in mind; that's over 700 dollars per year, and for the next 5 years: over 3500 Hive dollars.





But I'm not planning to be going anywhere else with my stake. I'm planning to grow it, and stock it up somewhere safe in a cold wallet. The next mark would be 50 cents, right?

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Participated!

I'm not the greatest example of showing on-chain participation, so participating is quite new to me. I think I did a few things out of the blue for Hive. Made some banners, and some social media assets, and did some stuff for OCD, but most of it was me making stuff for something else on the chain. Maybe welcome, but not entirely 'needed'.

So, there is this contest that I joined in 2022, and I had a good feeling that I had a chance to win it. Of course, you never know, but I thought to give it a go and I participated. I decided to treat the contest just as if a client hired me with the prize money serving as the budget. And, what I tend to do with most of my clients who hire me: is to over-deliver.

Not sure if I think that the sketch is more awesome than the result though :P.

Sketch Infographic	Result Infographic (1st place!)

You can definitely tell that I've been creating lots of content, and putting a lot of energy and time into it. I wonder where it went wrong... just kidding :p While most of the above are screens I saved from the early days when we were still cruising on the Steem blockchain, my journey didn't stop after the takeover by Justin Sun. Instead, I thanked Justin Sun (in my mind while pressing the SELL button) for the extra Steem that I could exchange for Hive.

And of course, my "newer content", definitely deserves a place in this post.

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Life isn't always easy

If you have been following me since the beginning of 2022, you may have noticed I started writing more frequently again. This has something to do with @Lackofcolor going to the hospital, and I wanted to let her know what I was up to. Before I knew it, I started writing again way more frequently than the Monthly reports that I thought would be nice for her to read.

While I'm currently struggling with my liver, I honestly don't know when I get better, but I sure do notice the difference physically. I wake up drained, for quite some time now, but recently it has just been awful. It was nice to close the year with a [30-day challenge about not-so-ordinary objects](LINK HERE), even though I was getting sicker and sicker at the end of it. I could tell by the way how I engaged. Just didn't have the energy for it.

And, there are also awesome moments that I got to share with all of you. Like sharing a trip to Paris to photograph @hiddenblade's artwork and my first HiveFest event where I finally got to meet more Hivers!

What I'm trying to say here is that life isn't always easy, but that you have to push through to make it work. You'll notice a shift of positivity once you start doing what you enjoy. I'm truly enjoying seeing all these old pictures from my 5-year-old journey on Hive. It does bring back a lot of memories. Hive is the right place to feel like shit, as there are -many- people on Hive that are there to listen to you, and maybe even help you out. The people on Hive have played a big role in my mental health, you know who you are.

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Shitposting

I've tried to not shitpost, but, when I was feeling off, I feel like I was shitposting, but in fact, I was pretttttyyy much trying my best to let those around me I was still doing something and was still alive. lol. Ye... damn. I'm also pretty happy that I didn't shitpost that much. I wouldn't be able to look back at all the awesome stuff that I shared (complimenting myself, who have I become!?) otherwise, there would be many more shitposts in my feed.

I have created a gaming account, but I have yet to post there, but I probably will have to use that account for gaming, so I can keep my current feed more work/professional/photography related.

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Growth

Not only the account is growing in stake, votes, or rep. Over time, you'll end up growing something awesome to look back to, like the above, right? All you can think of is; damn, I did all of this. Truth is, you never know how much you will grow, or how much energy you get out of something that you enjoy doing. Reading other people their blogs, replying, and making new connections are awesome as well. Especially when those people are similar-minded. Quality above quantity!

So, what's next?

I'll continue to write and share content (mostly exclusively) on Hive like you're used of me.
At some point, I need to buy a new camera, so its nice to save HBD rewards along the way and lock them up. I'll continue to get other people on Hive as well, but so far, not many have been sticking around for a long time.

Speaking of my blog, I've been thinking about this for a long time, actually since I felt I was "cured" of my depression. I have the feeling that I changed a lot, and am a bit different then from when I started 5 years ago. Reading these old blogs pretty much showed me how my life looked like, and how deep I was. You guys really got to know me while I was rock-bottom, those friendships that I made in that period of my life are for a life-time. Anyway, as I was saying, I was thinking about this for a long time, and I am planning to going to split and spread different kinds of content over multiple accounts as mentioned above. This account will be more filled with the photography that you're used of me, some graphic design, food recipes maybe, and maybe some content creation tips and tricks.

I'm also thinking about starting a professional business account, but since I have changed my business name from Brein & Design to Rubencress, this may get a bit confusing if I were to use my 'personal' account. The idea is to create a business account on Hive, where I can offer my services to the Hive community, and accept HBD as payment. While the first things are pretty easy, it is the latter that makes it a bit more complicated (accepting HBD as payment). This is something that I have to research more before launching it. OR, I could just launch it, and treat it as a business and find out more about it later on.

I'm going to pick up Web3js, NodeJs, and ReactJS. These languages are ultra-new to me, so any help in the right direction is helpful. I'll mostly be focusing on UI/UX design and front-end development. The end goal here is to eventually be able to pull and display real-time Hive data. I've already tried to do the first JS tutorial and seems it was outdated, so I felt that I was -instantly- stuck.

Of course, all the material that you've seen in this post is my own, and most of it has been exclusively published on Hive.

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Damn, it has already been 5 years on this magnificent blockchain, and I can't believe it became such a big part of my life today. What a time to be alive! Thank you all for visiting, commenting, and curating my blogs, I'm super grateful for all of you.

Cheers,
Ruben