One of the positive effects of the whole Corona thingy is that it kinda coincided with the whole drama we went through which led to the creation of HIVE. A few weeks ago, I did spend most of my extra - spare - time in following what was going on, and acting on specific topics while at the same time I started more thoroughly thinking about how to contribute more to the new HIVE ecosystem.
published at PNGWING (source)
Marketing HIVE
Last few weeks I got into using Twitter, and I love it! Mostly I use it to promote HIVE, discuss with other community members specifics around our community, but also start using Twitter to get some extra fun in my life and hopefully I'm also providing some of this fun the Twitter community. It's a strong tool for sure! The crypto universe seems to be well connected on this platform. Something I intend to continue to use.
I plan to come up with ways we can onboard new users. One I already created; In a HIVE post I address the long form Twitter users (those who publish threaded Tweets); A post that I regularly comment with to Twitter users falling in the target group. So far no real results, but the post is there and the energy as well :) I do plan to create a few other posts, each talking about a specific use or benefit of HIVE. My plan is to create every second week a new pitch for HIVE to be used for Twitter users to try and grap their attention. The second one is schedule for next week.
Pick Up Drawing
When I was a child - late primary, early secondary school period - I was totally into drawing. I did spend so much time with a pencil in my hand, drawing cartoon figures, my parents decided it was time for me to try oil painting. They got me a kit and I enthusiastically started to paint, first cartoon figures (relatively easy to do) and then more complex work like landscapes and animals. Not sure what happened, but I never really finished these more complex paintings, and soon after I stopped painting and drawing completely. Guess school got more demanding and maybe the true reason was my move to a kinda students home when I was 15 years of age. From that moment onwards I took care of myself, started grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning the house, agreeing with the others in the house how to jointly take care of things etc etc etc. My adult life started and I guess no time for true creativity anymore.
Wishing to become this Good | published on Wikipedia (source)
Now a few decades later, its time to start again. I plan to pickup the pencil; The drawing version to start with. No idea what to draw, but I'll find something. This weekend I target to create my first real drawing in more than 3 decades. When I'm kinda pleased with the outcome, I'll investigate what materials I need to buy to get the next drawing done better. Yeah, I think I have to settle for a mediocre drawing at first, but truly hope I'll improve soon. Although I like to set the goal to create one decent drawing every week, I don't think one should set a goal on production rate. But what I'll do is to reserve around 6 to 8 hours per week for the drawing 'project'.
Reading
Throughout my life, I've been reading a lot of books. This started when I was really really young, and a never stopped reading books. I'm one of those traditional readers; I like to have a paper book in my hands. In last decade or so, I do tend to read more online, articles, papers, and blogs then I actually read paper versions of books. Though I purchased quite a few.
The extra time I have to my disposal coming weeks to maybe months, I'll plan to reduce the pile of unread books. I want to reserve at least 8 hours per week for turning paper pages. Normally I'm a serial reader, one book at a time. Now, I want to read two books in parallel: One novel and one book to learn from.
I'll start with an unopened book from one of the Dutch literary gods (Harry Mulisch) and I just started a book written last year with the statement/question: "What if People are Good?". Can't tell you when I'll be finishing these, but I do plan to write a post about the People are Good book. This book contains a wealth of information - not opinions but research results - about the realities of human behaviour in specific situations. Some pretty big topics are debunked and proven wrong. Lord of the Flies, Milgram experiment, Stanford Prison experiment and even the WW2 German army are discussed and researched with eye opening results. More about this book when I turned the last page.
published at Pexels (source)
Education
From profession I spend my time in the IT sector. Though the demand for IT is super high at the moment, many customers requesting immediate implementation of solutions for remote working, the demand for my time seems to be lowered. As a solution consultant and architect, I'm mostly involved in the sales side of things, trying to onboard new customers. That side of things seems to be kinda on hold at the moment. Certainly some parties are continuing their selection and purchasing processes, but many companies concentrate on solving the issue at hand - keeping their workforce working - rather than thinking about implementing their mid to long term roadmaps. The time I've gained, I use for some extra online courses, and attending online conferences.
I do like to reserve education time outside the topic of IT as well. As I've been reading from some other HIVE members, also I like to take advantage of the online courses so many ivy league schools made available over the last decade. Interestingly, already for years I wanted to look at them, but never really found the time to do so. My best friends triggered me last Friday, stating she starts a course from one of these school beginning of this week. Immediately I felt like: "I shall grab this opportunity as well!" Next week I plan to research what all is available and intend to select at least one course by the end of next week. Can't set any goal yet to when to complete; Need to research first :) I do hope they have some cool courses available about topics like blockchains, AI and philosophy.
Stop Drinking Alcohol
Now, this is an easy one! :) I usually don't drink more than a few glasses of alcohol per month, so to stop completely should not be a problem at all. I do allow myself to continue to use alcohol in dishes I cook. Wine, Port, Cognac, Whiskey can tremendously enhance the flavour of a dish while the alcohol is evaporated. The later is the reason I can continue using alcohol as an ingredient when cooking my dinners without breaking my goal :)
This post is in reaction to the call2action by Anomadsoul (click me); An OCD/C0ff33a/Blocktrades challenge to force ourselves to so something cool with the extra spare time we have.
Such a wonderful challenge, since it gave me an extra stimuli to determine how I like to use the extra time given me. Will this also help you to start things you always want to do but never felt you had time for them?
NJOY :)
hive curator for @illuminati-inc @qsounds @c-squared / @c-cubed