Years ago, I had a phone that gave me so much headache I can't even begin to tell you. It was still in the two year warranty period and was already sent back for repair three times. I'm not going to tell you what brand it was, because that's not the point, but going through all that trouble made me more cautious for sure.
One of the most frustrating thing the phone did was saving contact numbers in the phone memory, without giving me any other options, like saving them on my SIM card, which would have been the right thing to do. Then when sh*t happened, I lost all my contact numbers, several times. Yeah, I can see a lot of you are ready to comment that we have cloud services, which is true, but I'm not a huge fan of these services for several reasons, so I took my notebook and wrote down all the numbers I could recover from friends and family and updated it whenever it was necessary.
Then when the war broke out and we did not know what's going to happen, putting my life in order was my main priority. I asked myself, if I have to pack and leave in 20 minutes, what would I take with me? This is a million dollar question and I bet not many of you know the answer to it or can be ready to leave with all the essential information and belongings you need to survive and be ready to start your life for the beginning and I'm not talking about your luxury items here.
These events were a very friendly reminder to not take everything for granted and be ready to survive if your comfortable life is suddenly unplugged and you need to go back to analog life.
Not long ago I came across the list, started reading it and was shocked to see how many names and numbers I can cross from the list as those people have left for good and not coming back. Old, young, middle aged, all age categories.
This made me think of the people I am following on Hive and the early days of the legacy chain, when we didn't have millions of accounts, most of them alts and fake. It was early, close to the beginning and relationships were easier to build and meant a lot. Don't get me wrong, relationships mean a lot today too, always will, but everything is changed and half of these relationships we have today are based on selfish interests and fueled by ulterior motives. Yes, hard and ugly truth.
This past week I remembered two people who used to be active on Hive and I haven't seen them for awhile. It's easy to lose track of time for me as trading keeps me busy and when the market conditions are favorable, my focus is channeled to the charts full time, but still. So I dropped them a message to see what they are doing. Thankfully both of them are fine, they both got back to me and they are not leaving the chain, just tied up with life and planning to come back at some point.
Back in the day, on the legacy chain, we had these initiatives picked up by a lot of us, during which we went through our following list to identify who has not posted for some time, dropped them a message, a note to ask if everything was ok with them and that we're expecting them back. I hope you noticed the way I formulated my last sentence. I said "dropped them a message, a note to ask if everything was ok with them" and not " we said we hope everything is ok", like people do nowadays and don't even expect a reply as they don't give a sh*t, just dropping a message to get it done.
Anyway, his is a basic thing to do, in real life too, you do that with friends and family you haven't been in contact with for some time and they matter to me, why shouldn't it be normal on Hive?
From time to time I'm going through my following list and unfollow people that has not been active for a long time ago, but not everyone. There are several users that has not been active for years, but they are my friends and still keep them on my list for several reasons.
Once I did a deep cleaning and regretted it after. There are users who had an impact on me, or should I say I admired what they did. I remember there was an artist, who used coffee to paint. it was mostly instant coffee and he used it adding different amount of water to it, to get a lighter or darker color. It was so exciting and I thought why not try it out? So I bought two or three packets of instant coffee with the intent of creating something, then I never did. This was the artist I unfollowed as he was not active and needed all my detective skills to find him and only God knows how I did, but I did it.
There was another user, an European photographer who I admired a lot. Still do. He had a particular style, out of the box thinking and something you don't see these days. My plan has been to try to take photos the way he did it and focus on what he used to focus, but time ... time ... time ... is always a problem. he was the other one that I unfollowed and then I had to work wonders to get him back on my list.
There was another user, a lady I met on another platform, before joining the legacy chain, then we connected here as well. She was a forager and was teaching us what to forage, how to dry or store the foraged items and even how to cook them. These are skills that can come in handy, especially when you live in a village, ranch or you go to the woods often. She has never been active on Hive, but I can't let go of her.
Looking back, those were some exciting times, without exaggeration. Times have changed since then as next year we're going to make 10 years since the legacy chain was born (I hope I got that right) and the content and people we're getting today is very different.
Unfortunately people come for money, hoping to get rich quick and would do literally anything to reach their goal. Some go as far as guilt tripping you for not following or voting them, which is the fastest road to nowhere.
Genuine people are less and less. the amount of garbage we get is unbelievable, unfortunately, so worth keeping those that matter. Most of us have made friends here, have met people in real life too, have donated to those in need and have saved quite a few people from their worst nightmare and helped them to restart their life elsewhere. These are the real values, not the few bucks you can make with a post that breaks every rule on the chain.
Yeah, I warned you that these are crazy thoughts.
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