My Introduction to the Hive Community
Hello Everyone, I’m JW, and this is my introduction to Hive. But first, a bit about how I got to Hive.
I wrote an introduction post my first day on steem, in March of 2018. I joined steem then, because I had read a post on an internet forum describing it as a site where one could write, draw, paint, post photographs or do anything creative, and receive cryptocurrency in return.
I didn’t know much about cryptocurrency, but I knew that if there were rewards of any potential value being passed out, then there would be people wanting to collect them. The more people, the better the chances that some of them would actually read what was written, or appreciate the art they were seeing.
I still don’t know a whole lot about cryptocurrencies and blockchains, but Justin Sun made me learn considerably more than I had known before his hostile takeover.
I’m not very naive, and I knew the probability that a majority of people’s interests would be based primarily on the crypto rewards, had to be pretty high. I thought it would be silly to think otherwise, and so I was prepared for doing lots of writing that would receive no recognition.
I can understand how this would be a problem, perhaps, if someone was an established author who had joined, posted some really great content, and received no upvotes, no comments and no indication that anyone had even looked at the words they’d written.
But I’m a nobody, and it would not be logical at all for a new, unknown person like me to expect to get much of anything, rewards-wise. But with steem people on YouTube talking about how they joined steem and got paid over $200 on their first post, a lot of the new folks were expecting to do the same.
Hive is a breath of fresh air after all the hassles we all went through with the steem takeover, and it’s very comforting to be able to write again without having something like the takeover looking over our shoulders, and interfering with the whole reason why some of us are here.
My Writing
I first became interested in poetry when I was quite young. It began in school in third or fourth grade, when we studied the poem, “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer. I’ve written lots of poems myself over the years, and it all started because of Kilmer’s great poem. I didn’t write prose and I had no inclination to write prose at all.
That changed some time after joining steem, as I entered a contest and finally found that writing prose was actually fun. I think my nearly life-long experience with writing poems, prepared me to do “okay” with writing prose. I count that as a big plus!
I was a software engineer for over 30 years and I enjoyed designing and writing software. I’ve enjoyed writing creatively, no matter the genre in which I’m involved. Now that I’m comfortable writing prose, writing fiction has become something I really love to do.
I don’t think there has been one day since I joined steem, (and now on Hive), when I haven’t at least logged on, if even just to look at and/or read, upvote and comment on others’ work.
The greatest benefit that I, personally, have reaped from the experience, is that I’m here on Hive, doing what I love to do – writing. If I hadn’t found out about blockchains and the connection to creative content and its creators like we have with Hive, I may have never been motivated to write anything more than the poems.
To me, that’s more than just latching onto some good Karma. That’s a whole nother me, that might have never existed. That I found my way here, and to be doing what I’m doing, is a nice bit of good Karma that’s been delegated to me, I think.
I am grateful.
This is my post for supporting the initiative by 
Thanks for reading!
Sources for images used in this post:
(Public Domain photos are from Wikimedia Commons)