@onos (of blessed memory) has texted me something like, "you should get on this platform". I was a mobile phone photographer at the time. I'd take random pictures of birds, flowers, the earth, skies, etc. If you scroll down my blog you'd see them. Immediately I wrote my introductory post. It wasn't the best obviously. I remember seven days later I reached out to him wondering why I hadn't received money in my local bank account yet. He laughed. In hindsight, I really was a noob. From the hard fork, to diversification, to the governance, to the "abuse-fest'", to the power tussle, etc. I really have seen it all. I got the notification from 
@hivebuzz and I thought- It's been seven years already?! Well, here are my takeaways and lesson learned so far.The community is your greatest asset. Not the $, not the posts, not anything. The connections you spark along the way. The ones that lasts for ever. I realized after the hard fork, that you really need the people more than anything. A democracy.
"It gets easier, it does get easier, but you've got to do it everyday, that's the hard part". That's one of my all time favorites quote, from the show Bojack Horseman. I remember the early days being the most difficult. Its kinda like how life is. Consistency is key.
Find a tribe, find a community, find a family. I feel like this is an advice to newbies. The old heads know this. Find a community of like minded people, that share you type of content and invest in that. There is so much you could learn, and as time wears on, you only realize there is so much you don't know.
You usually don't get what you deserve. This is even a life advice. I remember the early days of Hive (then steemit). Chances of getting any sort of curation is like making a camel go through a needle hole. Now, the community is thriving, there a good distribution of well deserving authors getting curated regularly. There are new innovations, like waves form Ecency, threads from Inleo, snaps from peakd, etc.
Every year I come back and tell this story. Its a sort of a ritual now. I was thinking this would be some sort of reminiscing about the old times and what not, but I'm not sure what it is now. Anyhoo, Happy Hive Birthday to me. Thank you for reading. Looking forward to more exciting times.