Five today!
It has been quite a five years too - but I assume that all parents feel that with respect to their children. While there have been many challenges along the way, we are extremely lucky to have such an awesome daughter.
Smallsteps was the reason I joined Hive back at the start of 2017, as after months of various issues starting from before she was born, my wife and I were tapped out and had absolutely nothing left, in either our financial or energy accounts. We were struggling to make ends meet in every way imaginable, yet since there was no other option but to keep going, we did.
Smallsteps has been a driving force behind my content journey on Hive and you guys have shared in many of our struggles over the years, as well as the small triumphs along the way. One of the hardest times was back in 2018, when we awoke to her unresponsive and having seizures of some kind. It was difficult to write about at the time, but I made sure I did.
As some of you know, I haven't missed a day posting on Hive and that really has come through the thick and thin of what life offers. This has meant that regardless of personal conditions, every day I have made it a priority to deliver something that offers some kind of value to readers. I am not saying I always accomplish this goal, but I do try.
This approach has a huge amount of value for me and in times of challenge, I am able to disengage from events, get some space and reflect on what is going on. This gives me the opportunity to build a different perspective, without being as emotionally triggered as I would be from inside the bubble. On top of my own disconnection, I am also able to get feedback from the audience, who may connect with what I have written and bring in their own experiences and insights to the discussion, which creates a pool of information to draw upon. It isn't always helpful directly, but with a little creative thinking, much of what people bring to the table is useful.
I think this is one of the often ignored values on Hive, where people are not only able to get information, but are also able to be a large part of the discussion surrounding quite specific or personal events. When we read content that we connect with through our own experiences, we become reflective and can perhaps go back in time and use or learn from what we have done in ways we may not have earlier. We can actively reinvestigate our pasts and use what we learn to improve our future.
These days, a lot of consumption is passive and many people are looking to be purely entertained without actually learning anything life-changing. Life-changing is often seen as huge shifts in experience, like winning the lottery would deliver, but life is constantly changing through a million incremental moves. Where the journey takes us depends on what kinds of small steps we take.
As you can see, there is a reason Smallsteps is called so, because I believe that it is through small steps that lead to the largest changes. We might not notice them all, but in retrospect, we can see much of what led us to where we are today. It is, the greatest journey begins with a single step and the flapping of butterfly wings approach.
When I started on Hive under the life conditions we were, the goal was to earn enough to pay for the things Smallsteps needed. I didn't come close. In fact, I was so far off that it just wasn't worth going through the hassle of using any of my earnings for living expenses at all and instead, I used them to learn about other things - technology, investing, social habits, economics and future possibilities.
By doing this, I was able to explore parts of myself and build skills that I would likely never have touched upon otherwise and in so doing, get a perspective on life that has led me and my family out of the abyss that we found ourselves in at the start of the journey. It hasn't been an easy process and has been filled with what for me is an incredible amount of work and sacrifice, but when zoomed out, it has been a consistent uptrend in life value, much like the market cap of crypto.
I think many people's lives are similar, but the direction of the trend might be different. It is easy to get caught up and focus on the day to day spikes and dips of life, while missing the steps needed for the journey to where we want to be. We can become reactive to the content we are fed by the media and society, spending our time, money and energy on what they want us to consume, while missing the opportunity to meet what we are able to produce. We sit back and react, feeling like we are living, what we are actually doing is responding in a way that we have been programmed to respond.
Since the world is geared to be value-extractive from the masses, the top of the narrow peak doesn't want the masses to be value-generative. While they ridicule and spread FUD, they are actually scared of what may arrive, a world where we the people they extract from, are no longer interested in what they have to offer and no longer need their premium-priced services, because we are able to provide for ourselves, generating value amongst ourselves.
Change moves in both directions and some people have cake for breakfast daily, and then complain about where the trend takes them. For many a better world is a dream. For many more, an impossibility. However, I believe that it is only small steps away and if we all took a few daily, we'd look back and be surprised at how fast the things we have done have changed our lives.
Five years old, and still changing our world.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
