Hive has been a Rollercoaster ride for me since I joined in August 2021. I just came across someone talking about it on a Nigerian forum (nairaland) and immediately I signed up for it but I didn't exactly know what I was getting myself into back then. You see, I have blogged for some regular blogsites (like Opera News), and usually, what I had to do then was to just publish my article, and that's it.
So I brought that same mentality to hive and at first, it worked well and I was getting some nice upvotes but suddenly, it stopped coming. I tried everything I could to continue earning on my articles but it wasn't working, so what did I do? I gave up, and yes it isn't surprising that I will end up doing that because I knew nothing about the platform and in order to be successful on hive, you have to settle down and LEARN!
I came back after a year of blogging on another platform (read.cash) and this time around I had some experience on how things work on these "cryptoblogs" but I still knew little to nothing about how things work on hive. So, what did I do this time around? I learned. I sought knowledge on how things work around the platform and I was patient enough to learn before I started applying what I learned and guess what? It totally worked! Even though it was hard at first, I kept at it and this brings me to the biggest lesson I learned on the blockchain.
Perseverance
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, preserve means "continued effort to do or achieve something, even when this is difficult or takes a long time". This doesn't mean I didn't learn a lot of other things like patience, hard work, and others but perseverance is what tied all these together and kept me going. Look at it this way; I may have been very hardworking and patient but when faced with difficulty, I may give up and that's exactly what happened in the first year I joined Hive.
Hive has taught me to persevere in whatever I do even when it looks like it will take a very long time. When I returned to hive and started publishing again, I wasn't getting any upvotes on my articles despite the fact that I engaged with others like crazy. I remember back then, the universities in my country were on strike, so I had all the time in the world and I spent the majority of it on hive. Every day when I woke up in the morning, I rushed to hive and started engaging with others from morning to night.
But despite all these, I was seeing little to no engagements on my articles but that didn't stop me from doing my daily routine. It took over a month before I started seeing some action on my articles 😅. I'm usually a person who gives up easily but with Hive, I had to learn how to persevere and it totally worked! And let me tell you that it feels so good when you finally succeed at something after so many challenges.
This has also impacted my life outside the blockchain in a lot of ways. I now put more effort into what I'm doing no matter how difficult it may seem. Nothing good comes easy, so it's best to just put in the effort and see it work. These days, even when faced with a difficult challenge, I know how to keep my cool and confidently tackle the problem with a "never give up" mentality. If it worked in hive, then it should work for everything else, right? 😉
Moving forward, I'm still going to keep persevering no matter what. I'm no longer as active as I used to be back in the day and that's because the workload in the university is now a lot. I keep telling myself that I can't wait to finish school so I can fully focus on hive and by the grace of God, I will be done in less than a month from now. I'm currently writing my final exams which will end in the coming week.
After that, it will be project defense and I will be done! I still try to stay consistent and I only take part in hive learners contests which means I only publish articles 3 times a week, as compared to writing and publishing articles every day. I was active in some communities like the programming and dev, weekend experiences, and freewriters communities, and I'm looking forward to being active in those communities again. So in summary, I plan on never giving up and to consistently be active on hive.
Thanks for reading
Connect with me on:
Twitter: @kushyzeena
Readcash: @kushyzee
Edited with Canva
First image: Image by kenshinstock on Freepik
Second image: Image by jcomp on Freepik