Hive turns five, and what a wild ride it has been. In the Hive birthday post, they made a contest asking you to write about your favorite Hive project. A post like this seems a simple task. All you have to do is think about the project that most impacted you while on Hive.

I could write about the secret group I know, which is not a formal group but a fellowship of people you can call on to help a newbie you find on Hive. People who will drop what they are doing to answer your questions and send you in the right direction to help place the new Hive person in the best place/project/community for them. But then you would have to start naming names, which would not be secret. What fun would that be?

I could go back five years and start naming all the people who, at one time or another, went to the New Posts tab and read every post posted daily. People picked out posts they saw potential in and offered help where they could for nothing but the love of Hive, The Blockchain. These people never had a group. They just did it to help pay back all Hive had given them.

There have been so many well-meaning leaders who have helped empower people on Hive. Some have stayed, and some have burned out and left. What they all have in common is empowering and uplifting people. They showed the everyday person that Hive made it possible to learn anything you wanted, regardless of age or gender.

Those leaders answered your questions no matter who you were or who you knew.

The people of Hive have held Hive together for the last five years. We, the people, are the project that has had the most impact on Hive.

If not for all the people, the votes for the top twenty witnesses would not have happened. If those votes had not happened, all the work the top twenty were doing setting everything in place for the fork would not have happened.

People didn't sleep for days before the fork five years ago. Each minute of each day mattered. One minute, you saw a witness climb to the top, and the next minute, they would be four spots down.

Through it all, the little people made their voices heard. They finally understood that their votes and voices mattered—and still do!

While Hive needed 15? 18? - 20 people in the top 20 witness spots for it to come to life, it also required every other person's vote to make the fork happen.

The people who had massive projects and stakes needed the little guy who blogged once a day and made groups of friends along the way. The little guy just wanted a place to write about their life and, if they were lucky, meet someone they had things in common with too.

The little people became the backbone of Hive and kept others coming back because they wanted to see how their friends were doing. A band doesn't play, and flags do not fly when they write a post, but boy, would Hive be freaking boring without them.

With 544 words written, I said what I needed to say. I am delighted and will go to sleep with a smile.

I didn't write this to win anything but to remind........

A big stick started as a small twig. If the twig wasn't supported by other little twigs, it never would have grown bigger.

I will be missing from Hive again for a few days as Hubby has surgery tomorrow. He and I are nervous about this surgery, so writing this post has helped calm my mind.

God, isn't Hive GREAT? If you use it correctly, it can even bring calm to those in need.