Steemit.
Steemit.
Steemit.
Such a stupid name. Stupid word. Silly pun on "steam" and "esteem."
Possibly my favorite word in the English language right now.
Here I am, six months almost to the day since I first ran across mention of Steemit in some ESUT group on WhatsApp (by @voski no less) Together, @madmaxfury and I signed up on the same laptop and commenced figuring out what the heck was going on here.
Obviously, it changed my life.
The obsession that ensued has transcended mere obsession, it has soaked into the skin and settled into the bones like dust into a silent house. I have said it before and it remains true: Steemit is my internet now. When I go on Instagram, it's to see cool pics that I can maybe borrow or be inspired by for Steemit. When I go on Twitter, it's to learn new things to feed into my posts — or to evangelize Steem. When I go on Faceb— hahahahahaha, I barely even go on Facebook anymore because why would I. When I'm not on Steemit, I'm in MarkdownPad 2 composing Steemit posts or on WhatsApp helping to flatten the learning curve for new minnows; the ropes, the dotted 'i's, the crossed 't's and the what-not-to-dos.
Some of them even pay attention.
Speaking personally, Steemit has allowed me a small but increasing degree of financial freedom, the purest translation of literacy into lucre that there is. Leveraging SBD and Steem into other currencies has opened a whole new world for me, towers I never thought of climbing because they looked as big as the world and now I see they are only as big as my vision. With more to come.
But enough of about me. I am but a minor entity, a mere brown dwarf among stars and Steemit is the opposite of selfishness, the garden of the gamified golden rule, the heaven of the long spoons. Others have fed me; the likes of @ogoowinner and @stellabelle are the big driving force, paving the way for others, the fires of their blazed trail still hot behind them as they race further and higher, undeterred and encouraged.
The likes of @limabeing joined so recently but with such surety of self and the way the world needs to be, such incandescence of purpose, that they didn't just hit the ground running, they hit the ground running fast enough to turn it into a runway.
There are the mentors, the likes of @samstickkz, of @eurogee, of @ehiboss and @destinysaid (oh my goodness, @destinysaid !) and @ogochukwu are leading the groundswell of new Nigerian Steemians, from the universities and workplaces, they are rising, a wave of brilliant determined young minds and bodies, seeking nothing more than a chance to connect with their future, together. I am both honored and humbled to work with the likes of them in my humble capacity. The @genesisproject and @africaunchained movements are like nothing Steemit has ever seen, a lever and a stepping stone, a ambition so vast and grand and bright and delicate that I almost fear to speak it aloud for fear that contact with the air might taint it with the prosaic, the mere, might drag it down to the muck and soil of the base earth.
There are the friends I have made here: the likes of @greenrun and @cryplectibles, who have always done right by me wherever possible. There are those I aspire to be like such as @gavvet who quietly cooly dishes out 20th century history and religiously-inspired altruism or @ememovic whose work ethic, speed and quality are unparalleled and far too many more to mention.
Then there are those like me, the cynics who came for the money and, truth be told, are still here for that but are shaken to the core by the possibility that all the ridiculous airy notions of changing the world and new paradigms might not be so ridiculous or airy after all. That the dreamers might be right, might have been right all along.
You see, dreams are ephemeral things that barely survive the light of waking — and yet all reality is shaken by contact with them. The dreamers are the interface between dream and world, the point where one springs to the other like the spark of life from finger to finger of god to mortal, the created creators.
The dreamers are the strongest of us all. The likes of me, the likes of us, follow in their starry wake, eyes wide with shaken wonder, inspired to the blood down to the very toes to do GOOD. To do BETTER. To do MORE. The dreamers are the strongest of us all.
Dreamers like @surpassinggoogle.
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Steem/SBD: @edumurphy
Dash: XdCpkRRxejck5tfXumUQKSVeWK8KwJ7YQn
ETH: 0x09fd9fb88f9e524fbc95c12bb612a934f3a37ada
NKN: NaAKsxh3SycrXNkbJMxYsvfwWbDteBga8w
Doge: DCbNkisABpx4ngYEqypQaTypzm7rfGwDeL
BTC (if you must): 1L9foNHqbAbFvmBzfKc5Ut7tBGTqWHgrbi
PS - sometimes, the nopictures tag really just means somepictures. it's a work in progress