When
I joined Steem back in January 2018 and since then have been a loyal Steemian. Here are few facts about my profile. I still have some 700+ followers. I am sure half of them would be inactive by now but I hope to see them back when Steem price crosses a dollar. It's 0.18 as I write this post.
How
Bitcoin, the optimus prime of cryptocurrency had a great season back then in December 2017. It created it's new all time high which is still the same as of January 2020. That is when I and half of the world paid real attention towards cryptocurrency. After the bulls run ended I had enough time to study and understand few more currencies like ripple, litecoin and Nano (then raiblocks). I learnt that raiblocks was paid to users for solving captcha. What a smart faucet it was. I started my hunt if there were more currencies like it. That's when I came across Steem.
Why
It was pretty much a no-brainer thing. A platform where you can post blogs or comments and earn cryptocurrency. Who wouldn't try it. Steem was between 3 to 4 dollars then. I started exploring Steem. Networking was a very important factor then. More the followers and more your network, more was your chance of earning good Steem. I wrote a nice introductory post and boom it earned $23. I was excited and very happy. I started following Steem religiously.
I invited quite a few people on Steem then. @chetan9, @aalsi-you-later, @aniketmore1925, @kushalbang93, @sayalijain, @yashmaheshwari. Most of them are not active though. I used to follow posts by @purepinay, @talkatore, @getonthetrain. I used to love their posts. They wrote amazing posts. I think purepinay is the only one still active and I still follow her posts. Shez an inspiration. Extremely health conscious and super healthy.
Keeping interest
Slowly the cryptocurrency saw a bear market. All cryptos dipped lower and lower. So it was difficult to keep up. But Steem is an amazing platform. I saw a lot of contests and raffles coming in. I kept participating and earning small amounts. I even played poker at lucksacks.com. I played offline games like black jack and poker hosted by @bethalea and @nicnas. I made friends like @jonsnow1983 and some I don't remember now. But then winning again got difficult. That was the time I had given up on Steem.
But then came the era of gaming on Steem. The amazing game @drugwars came on Steem. Play game to earn Steem. How amazing was that. I played the game like anything and earned some amount of Steem. I still play some games like Drug Wars, nextcolony and Steem Monsters. I am crazy about Steem Monsters and play it every day without fail. @clove71 managed to keep me motivated. My strategy was stagnated and I wasn't winning enough. That's when @clove71 helped my with some amazing gift cards. Things changed greatly after that.
Over the time I made friends with @mermaidvampire, @cadawg, @gerber and few more. They all met me in a community called plankton. They have their token on steem-engine.com. Amazing people they are
Becoming a minnow
I was struggling to earn steem. The prices hit their all time low and remained low. Steem Monsters was on but still it wasn't motivating enough. That's when I participated in a contest hosted by @daan. I was surprised to see that I won and he turned me into a minnow by adding SP to my account. I can't thank him enough. I am grateful to his kind gesture.
I can go on and on. The journey on Steem has been really amazing. There were many ups and downs but the community manages to stay motivated. I just hope Steem will be at it's all time high some day. I want to cash out some fiat out for sure. But Steem is definitely a part of my daily schedule. Some scrolling on partiko, drugwars, nextcolony and Steem Monsters are a part of my daily routine. I plan to continue and never stop using Steem. I believe in it.