I was aware of the fact that today is my 6 year Hiversary, but I still felt pretty good when the notification popped up in my feed :<)
In all honesty, I impressed myself for sticking to this place, through thick and thin.
Applause for myself! 👏
Now sit down and make yourself comfortable. Poor yourself a drink and grab a snack or two, this is gonna be a lengthy post ( and even lengthier if you read ( some of ) the posts that I will link to).
Are you ready? Good!
I never held a job for 6 years, not even close to that, in my 41 years of life in this body.
And not just that... in these past 6 years, I have been pretty consistent ( that is: for an unstructured creative like me ), as those who have been following me since the early days can probably confirm.
In the Autumn of 2020, I wrote a 2 part story on how I got to discover crypto in May 2017 and - a month later - crypto blogging and how I went pretty much all-in, from the start.
You can read about this in Cabin in the Woods - Part 1 and Part2 as that is where it started, in a cabin that was pretty much located in the woods, in the Eastern part of The Netherlands.
Believe it or not, even a country as small as The Netherlands has a Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern part and 12 provinces!
The rest is history.
History for me that is. If you want to know more, I invite you to read on.
So what happened ( in my life ) in those 6 years, starting in June 2017?
can't answer it all but I'll give a 'quick' overview.
When I just started out on Hive, I was trying desperately to keep a film project alive. It was called 'Los Ojos Rojos' ( The Red Eyes ) and I had worked on it on the smallest isle of The Canary Islands, from Fall 2016 to Early Spring 2017. It was supposed to be my first finished feature film ( and my second attempt at one ).
In July 2017 I pulled the plug, after a 'dramatic' conversation with the friend with whom I had been producing and writing this project, long distance, a guy living in the USA, with whom I had collaborated on film projects ( more or less actively ) since late 2013. I felt pretty devasted afterwards, as I had pretty much quit my job to focus full time on filmmaking and this was yet another unfinished project.
Writing about this lead to my first big payout on my blog, probably because of its title based on the words this friend used during our 'break up' Not Saying this to be a Dick but I don't think you're ready to do this...'
Fall of 2017, I 'fell' back into depression. It was time to make some serious changes.
My twinsister and I started to make plans to move to Portugal and to leave The Netherlands behind.
November 2017: I started blogging daily, to make money and keep myself accountable, building an audience as an added bonus.
It was also pretty much 'paid' therapy.
February 2018: I left The Netherlands, spent a short time in Berlin, 6 weeks in Spain and arrived in Portugal in April 2018.
Late March: I arrived in Portugal and felt at home immediately
July 2018: While chilling in Portugal, waiting for the paperwork of my house to be ready, I learnt that my father was diagnosed with a serious illness and that he would have 2 to 5 more years to live. Talking about timing... both my twin sister and I really struggled with this but we had to live our lives too,
I started working on another long distance film project with the aforementioned friend, called 'Shadows of the Tunnel People' ( shared dozens of posts about it on Hive, up till early 2019 ).
I also considered starting a podcast, for the very first time.
September 2018: Bought my first house ( and not just that: a house in another country! )
Here's a post on my first night in Monte Frio
I just realized that I still have those shoes!
December 2018: bought 1.3 Bitcoin and a couple of other coins at the bottom of the bear market, using inheritance money.
Quit/ paused my Tunnels of the Shadow People film project, after finishing 6 episodes. More on the why ( this time it was Ted proposing it, not me ) in The Power of Quitting - Part 2
Find all 6 episodes here:
Tunnels of the Shadow People on YouTube
2019 January - officially moved to/ registered in Portugal.
Spring: renovated my house and spent most of my crypto on that, selling off most coins at the worst possible time, when the market just started to recover somewhat.
February-March: Wrote a fictional story called 'Carnival Apocalypse' about people being afraid of the air they were breathing. It seemed funny at the time but wasn't funny a year later.
Read it here Carnival Apocalypse
Summer of 2019: met up with @yangyanje in both The Netherlands and Switzerland.
September: started playing around with gamemaking in bitsy.
October: invented a character called 'Hypersensitivosaurus' and created two ( attempts at ) computer games around it.
Finished my first game
November: almost went to India to attend @inuke 's wedding.
Also partook in NaNoWriMo ( National Novel Writing Month ) for the very first time and wrote 50k words for a never to be finished book, at least not in that shape and form, about a man writing his very first book titled: 'The Life of Hypersensitivosaurus'.
2020: Started a podcast with Zack ( now known as @selfhelp4trolls , back then as @whatamidoing )
2020: February, planned a visit to The Netherlands and seriously started dating. Then Corona took over all attention and dating became impossible, a 'danger', something only crazy people did.
Talking about timing.
March to June - Was 'locked down' in The Netherlands, started writing short stories about Hypersensitivosaurus and other animals.
I wrote this one at the end of the lockdown Leaving the Cave- a hypersensitivosaurus story that we can all relate to, days after having returned to Portugal.
Summer: left my house in Monte Frio and moved into my twin sister's guest house, as Corona had made Monte Frio extremely depressing and isolated and I hadn't come to Portugal to become depressed, once again.
November 2020: put my house up for sale.
December 2020: Moved into a house of friends with 5.5 hectares of land, bordering a river. These friends would migrate to Portugal and move into that exact house, in May 2021.
April 2021: almost lost a lot of crypto, after my laptop's internal harddisk died on me and my phone died the day after ( due to a toilet accident )
More on that in and then I dropped my phone in the toilet'
May 2021: moved to a neighboring house on a hill, basically just above the aforementioned house.
More on that in King of the Hill
my twinsister and I in front of that house, back then
October 2021: sold my house in Monte Frio
and then invested most of that money in crypto at the worst possible time, just before the short lived peak of the bull market ( and did not sell at the peak as I expected it to go a lot higher ).
February 2022: Finished and printed 10 copies of my first book and sent it to my parents' house
Spent months working on lino carving and -printing, in order to create illustrations for an improved edition of my book
that I ended up not making.
It didn't feel right.
July: Started working on my next book
Went to The Netherlands due to my father's deteriorating health and stayed there up till his passing mid September 2022 plus another month to be with my mom and spend some time by myself.
Bought a ukulele.
Rest of 22. Slowly got back into creative mode.
Got back to working on my book Hypersensitivosaurus and Cold Turkey.
February 2023: moved into an apartment in my favorite town in this area.
Here's a story on my first night and day there
Also in February: Started a podcast on the creative process
April 2023: Finished my second book and printed 50 copies and later 35 more, due to disappointing quality of the book binding.
May: received the book
Also started gamemaking again or gamifying my stories
Back to the now: 6 years on Hive!
Long story short:
This place pretty much healed my depression.
I made loads of friends, from all over the world.
It enabled me to pay my bills and maintain my freedom ( instead of slaving away for a wage and losing my creativity and thus my happiness, burning out )
It has been a testing ground for all my creative endeavours ( half of which I haven't even named here )
Hive is an important part of my life and I am grateful to all of you who are and have been upvoting me, giving me feedback and leaving me comments, encouraging me to keep going, no matter what.
Thank you! :<)
Huge ❤️🦖
raptor hug
Hypersensitivosaurus
aka Vincent