I am a writer who has spent the last year publishing original works exclusively to the steemit platform. My blogs include a wide range of subjects, from travel to short fiction, poetry to comedy along with articles focusing on nature and meditation. I graduated from university with a degree in imaginative writing so there is a strong focus in my blog on creative writing and I have also been experimenting with blending a narrative style with more traditional factual travel writing. This is one of the most rewarding aspects of steemit, the community is open to this type of experimentation which can drive creativity and result in interesting content.
In my professional life I have worked in many different roles but a few in particular have inspired and informed the direction I have taken on steemit. After university I busied myself building up a successful gardening business before a back injury forced me to re-evaluate how I would earn a living. It was toward the end of the recovery period from that injury that I moved into a new career in the charitable sector working for a national environmental charity in the UK called The Land Trust. In my role as community engagement officer, I was part of a small two person team that built an award winning environmental initiative called Green Angels. This Big Lottery funded project helped address issues of unemployment in the impoverished area of south Liverpool where I grew up by providing training courses in horticulture, environmental education and countryside management.
This focus on the environment in my professional life has directly influenced my content on steemit. Some of my travel articles address how I find creativity and balance through connecting with nature. Similarly in my scuba scribe articles, I share the wonder of the undersea world through creative narrative and photographs/videos from diving trips. I feel very strongly that spreading awareness of the wonder of the natural world should go hand in hand with more fact-focused conservation content. This builds both the appreciation of what needs conserving as well as the knowledge of how to help bring about change.
Blockchain - A Catalyst for Change
I personally believe that there is massive potential in decentralization as a movement/ethos for an evolution in societal structuring. To qualify this, I see the potential for the devolution of financial power and central bank authority as an essential step toward a world where power structures in general (like governments) have less autonomy to act with what Nietzsche expresses as the will to power. Our current global economic model creates poverty and is destroying our planet through the depletion of resources and government's inability to hold businesses accountable for their practices.
Could cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technology truly change these things on a fundamental level? I'm not 100% sure, but I have seen the power of blockchain tech to address poverty on a smaller scale on steemit. During the December market peaks there was an increasing number of people from poorer countries earning enough from blogging on steemit to help alleviate the poverty that they live with on a daily basis. I was a mentor in a popular discord community at that time where there was a high proportion of both Nigerian and Philippine members. The number of people I spoke to who said they were using steem earnings to help pay for their day-to-day food, bills etc was staggering.
As a creative, Blockchain interests me for the innovative and community driven nature of the space. Steemit provides an example of this dynamic in my experience of cryptocurrency in general. This platform has reawakened my creativity to the point where I am actively writing content almost daily and now working on a fantasy fiction novel which began development in university. It is both this sense of community and the monetary incentive which have contributed to my turn around as a writer. Before steemit I had written no creative works (fiction or poetry) in two years and over the first six months on the platform I literally relearned my craft. It is this wealth of community knowledge and support that is this platforms greatest strength.
@sndbox is a diverse group of talented steemians who are supported and encouraged to build or help with projects that add value to the steem blockchain. My ideas around project development incorporate two key areas, one an established charity which I have helped to build and the other ideas focus on engaging steemit writers.
Before this market downturn, I had big plans to sell everything I own and travel the world as a digital nomad, writing on steemit while working as a freelance writer across a variety of media. These plans have had to be put on hold and with this hiatus, some of my project plans have also been reevaluated.
@projectgiving is a charity that was built as part of the Sndbox summer camp process. I have already been heavily involved in setting up this amazing charity which is quickly building momentum. I can see Project Giving snowballing and becoming an organisation which promotes Steemit on a broader level. If I make it to steemfest 3 I will be promoting and networking Project Giving as well as actively showcasing our fundraising achievements through my blog.
In the longer term, when I can finally afford to follow my travel dreams, I would like to act as a grassroots promoter for the charity. To explain further, as I will be travelling through countries which have massive problems with poverty, I will be perfectly placed to assess, engage and empower community initiatives through Project Giving’s fundraising mechanism. I will also be able to teach members of these community initiatives how to access Steemit, plan effective blogs and utilize cryptocurrency to their benefit. This is an opportunity to empower organisations to help people tell their story and gain a voice through the power of blockchain technology. Working with Project Giving also ties in with my wider goals regarding educating and enriching the steemit community through meaningful content. Project Givings blog posts highlight the charities we support through professional journalistic articles, this level of writing can only encourage press interest in the charity and steemit as a whole, helping to drive promotion and mass adoption in the future.
I planned to host a research based competition/challenge to merge creative writing with travel writing. These planned competitions would challenge steemians to research an interesting legend/story that I encountered on my travels. I would then post some creative content and then ask participants to research the location and write their own post inspired by the prompt. I'm a big believer in adaptability being the mother of invention, so rather than ditching this idea altogether I have decided to pursue it in smaller sense. I still have a trip planned to an area of Europe this autumn which I know has the history and landscape to inspire many creative works. Additionally, I shall hopefully be attending steemfest 3 in Krakow. Both of these locations will offer a fantastic chance to test this competition idea and find out many local legends to inspire my own creativity. The key element behind the competition idea is research, I want to help encourage high quality creative writing on steemit. Research is key to believable, rich and complex settings in fiction, this contest will be my way to encourage this professional practice among steemit writers.
I also have ideas toward building some type of bridge between traditional publishing and steemit in the creative fields. Many talented creative writers on steemit publish quality works daily, some of which are of mainstream publishing standard. Unfortunately, most journals and anthologies will only accept work which is previously unpublished (they require first publishing rights). Although in its infancy, my current idea revolves around the possibility of steemit anthologies in partnership with publishing houses. If I make it to steemfest this idea is something I will be actively exploring with other steemians and organisations. Although I do have a contact outside of steemit in the publishing industry, I would be interested in speaking to anyone who may have any insights or feels they could help bring this idea to fruition. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me in the comments section of this post or on discord where I have the same username as steemit.
Many Thanks for Reading
This post was authored by @raj808 , a member of the sndbox incubator. Learn more, follow @raj808 or begin a conversation in the comment section below.
Empower artists, writers, musicians, non-profits and community initiatives - delegate Steem Power to @sndbox (using the links below) or follow our curation trail. Learn more about Sndbox - watch our introduction, here.
