I enjoy a good retrospective as much as the next chap, so I thought when I saw this post that I would jump into the fun. I also know that I'm going to go over the suggested 300-word limit, so I'm not doing this as part of the contest. It's been a wild ride since my initial joining in December of 2019.
Back then we were unknowingly in the final days of that other chain. I was a complete newbie to the entire world of crypto, though I had fiddled around with blogs before off and on. I have more or less maintained my niche since joining, and I've talked a lot about building fictional worlds, writing, programming, gaming, and tabletop roleplaying. Occasionally I rant about dumb Canadian politics, but the core of my content has always revolved around the creative hobbies I have and enjoy.
On my @worldbuilder account, for example, I've written a whopping 806 creative writing and worldbuilding prompts! I've built myself up to dolphin rank with around 11k HP, and as of this year subsequently had to fully power down as we had some larger expenses and debt to take care of before my third kiddo arrives in July... but I'm already back to 550HP and aiming to regain my prior HP value in a lot shorter timeframe than it took the first time!
As I think about my time here, it's impossible to divorce my blogging from achievements made in my day-to-day life. I've gone from a Quality Assurance Specialist to a full-time Programmer, and exposure to folks making cool stuff here definitely helped me push through teaching myself to program and ultimately landing my current career position.
It is directly because of Hive that I ended up self-publishing a book of Worldbuilding and Writing Prompts. I quite literally would never have taken that step without having spent time here, putting my creative ideas out into the world and seeing folks actually use them and enjoy them. Without folks like @lacking, @alonicus, @killerwot, and everyone else who took the time to write comments and posts, I would never have completed the childhood dream of making a book and putting it into the world.
I've also found a passion for talking about the tabletop games I enjoy - both solo and group ttrpgs - and while we don't have a very large tabletop community here, it has been rewarding to find a few folks that do share that interest (I keep saying on InLeo that I'm making it my personal mission to geek this place up).
Beyond that though, I've found an amazingly diverse community here and I love reading posts from folks around the globe talking about the things they love. I've read so many posts about rocks and gems from @rt395 (something I wasn't even interested in prior to Hive) that I've found myself on YouTube some nights just watching folks talk about neat rocks, or cut them open.
I've read posts from @slobberchops about such neat abandoned buildings that it immediately inspired me to take those locations, turn them into tabletop maps, and run them for my players.
And these are just the examples I can think of off the top of my head! It's been unbelievably cool to get to read about so many experiences and hobbies here. The way most social sites work kind of corners you into one specific niche and you don't get much exposure beyond that unless you directly look for it - but Hive doesn't bow to some artificial algorithm trying to tell me what I like... it just puts cool people making cool posts onto my feed... and that is something I don't think we really have anywhere else anymore.
It has been an amazing four-ish years so far, and I'm excited to see what the next four are like (and the four beyond that, and... etc).
As always, thanks for reading if you made it this far. If you like gaming, tabletop rpgs, or writing, toss me a follow!