I found this out while making courses on skillshare and udemy, instead of being a teacher in the first six months all I was doing was doing it for the money, in the starting days of steemit I think I was trying to do the same and put the fingers up at the data mining man when it comes to facebook and others like them.
I’ve never felt that with twitter but that’s because I had my pay off when they bought me.dm off me because they were launching (medium) I was paid to go away and after two years of having no money I was happy to do it, I felt in some ways I was paid for that moment in time, buying the domain and hanging on to it — I basically HODL’d my creative moment and it paid off.
Over the last decade I’ve watched platforms come and go, sell out, close down, leaving the communities that loved and supported them fall away at the way side, posterous was one that hit hard and so did blab (although I knew where it was going) but it did bring me to meet 
the battle I have in my forties is not with other people, but myself — where and what do I do that I feel grounded in so firmly that I know it has a positive and inclusion feeling for me that creates value for others. That I make something of value, that I can hold a decentralised conversation with some one no matter where they are in life, that search for ones role in a decentralised eco system.
i feel it’s very generational, we are full of spunk and determination in our twenties, willing to take risks, happy to fail and go again with vigor, in my thirties I battled with waking up to a world not like it said it was, that in fact it was damaged, hurting and was in pain.
my youth growing up with presenters on tv that I admired or found funny to then find out they were abusive or had terrible life traits that effected other peoples lives that ended up make me have utter destine for them — those people you consider peers were actually false and not the full rounded humans you looked up, they had played the game and exploited weakness.
I was the 80’s kid — the first generation to have a desktop computer in the home, I was lost for hours typing in code from a magazine and then later had a modem that connected me to the WWW — the world wide web of more overwhelming information, choice, potential. I filled my head with as much information as I could store like a super computer in war-games.
We were so connected that we were the starting blocks of becoming the most disconnected generation because of sheer overload and we did this in the cover of digital darkness, no blockchain ledger to account for my time and lack of brain, no proof needed — just time, we gorged on it like monkeys trying to evolve to the next level but out of sheer persistence built the groundwork of how these things maybe should function.
I’m not sure what that means for me. I understand what it means for others, that you want to put in the time to get to where you want to go too. That you want to spend all your hours trying to be noticed, relevant, accessible even, that you want to not lose yourself in the vast possibility of connecting with others that will assist you and hopefully visa versa in this data stream exchange we all seem to be on.
Everyday I wake wanting to be useful, wanting to keep my brain fresh, wanting to share what I know, not for proof of brain for the wider world or to be algorithmically crunched by a set of computers but mainly to start with for myself, that I can still have that thought process, it’s my way to work that grey matter, I spent my early working years being in operations, to keep the ship running the rules and the helmsman needed to be able to safely navigate that digital ship through chaotic waters.
I understand the need to show up for me. Everything else is gravy after that, the things that are of interest to me are future conversations that we potentially might have so why not just have a ‘video for that’ — that’s the way I see my digital life these days, I’m making expressions of digital art by optimising the mental route for you to deliver it, it’s way passed tutorials, it’s how we utilise our time better as we juggle these plates.
And this has been a point of contention with me this week, this network or that, jump on here or over there, why not all of them, we have no ruleset, no guide book, it’s all the same blockchain, what makes us choice or gravity to one place over another — are we trying to stay relevant or are we really providing value, what else is happening underneath that we are ignoring by putting out digital media in this way?
Are networks interchangeable, is it possible to bolt on your community to what I consider to mine, do we ever own community in decentralised ways, maybe we are just hitchhikers dropping in and out of our self governed digital societies where that remote connection is more important to us that the upvote, that the acknowledgement that we exist is more necessary?
I watched in horror years back when instagram sold out to facebook and facebook moved in like a tiger hunting it’s prey as it made it’s billion dollar move to just gorge up the krill of the social network for it’s own end. The usual case of a big fish eating another fish until what’s left is whales that travel the globe looking for a mate because they are lonely — sounds like real life men in Silicon Valley to me.
Do you miss the milkman?
Did we ever need a milkman if we can buy milk from the stores now anyway? Was it only price and value that severed our relationship with that person that just wanted to run a business that they probably hated getting up that early to drive that not fit for purpose electric float that ran on terrible lead batteries — was our social fabric of hearing the clink of the bottles and the array of different colours fizzy drinks not also a source of joy in our younger years what we now hold dear to and see as ‘retro’ when we see the design styles come back into our day to day now?
If we kill the human component of the legacy, of the the lifetime of improvement for the machine learning emotional devoid manufacture of what we need to sustain is that a world also devoid of history and the love of the grind? Are we grinding ourselves into a grind pit of lonely high speed connections with on demand circle jerks? Maybe. .
Why I understand why we have come to this, while I knew that connecting everything, everything, all the time would have this new playground of dipping in and out of whatever we want whenever we want I also feel like it dehumanises who we potentially might be to each other in a different plain.
if the narrative now is that you have to build up a sustained attention cycle is that cycle running for you or against, do you even know when the line has been broken and you end up servicing what the market expects and are you adapting just because you want to fulfil the quota to get rewards from the system, is that what it will be to be a human being on this planet?
I can fall out of society at the click of a mouse. Feeling down today, I can afford that, I can de-subscribe from the greater world and download a package that can give me an amicable platform of apathy for me to exist on, I can be be ‘proof of apathy’ whenever I want to be.
I have no doubt we have those platforms already running, a blockchain for those people who don’t want to do anything, rewarded for not taking part, the ultimate counter culture blockchain for those with nothing to say.
Listen, I understand and if you have been reading up to now (thank you) your probably wondering what the hell are you on about and where are you going with this, I’m glad you asked because I was starting to question myself.
The truth is this is about developing a human physical firewall about the underlaying biggest time suck of being an active denizen of anything digital ultimately we should never lose site of being a better you, for me information I learn each and everyday here on steemit is making me a better me, I’ve learned so much in the last year alone that I’m overwhelmed.
It’s making me want to be a better version of myself, to rediscover myself, what it is that motivates me, am I just a geek that loves playing with technology, did I lose sight of my identity, did I just get wrapped up in the exploration and never got of the digital wilderness trail — was I just staring at the stars and was locked away consumed by it, I think many times I was.
I was looking for my own journey but was trapped by the unfolding ones of others around me. Not de-similar to the way that groups and niches of people here on Steemit play out — the only true thing I can find is that I’ve always wanted to collaborate and I’ll never forget that experience of feeling that I was part of something bigger, steemit has made me feel that even in my own little isolated way.
There is something familiar about always turning up to the day ahead, I’ve replaced email and twitter as my first ports of call for steemit. I want to catch up on my favourite bloggers (I wish more content creators were here from youtube but they will come) and see what they are talking about if what they are seeing is similar to what I’m seeing — I feel that sharing of information happening all over again like ratios on 1:1 file upload and download on bulletin board systems (bbs) in the early days.
I’m thankful that I can also tune out anything that’s distraction, that the steem blockchain is so big that I can move between platforms but still be in the same network, it’s like this massive eco interconnected rail system full of architects and train masters with a different platform serving different excursions to places you didn’t know you needed to visit yet.
I’m realising that my importance on these platforms is not to be frustrated at the gaps that I feel are missing but instead try and be what’s missing to me, if I have an idea I should sound it out, I should try and build it, I should be brave enough to say I can’t do that alone that I need help with it — that I’m free and open to be able to express it because of the sheer volume of this blockchain.
That we have steemians here that we have not met yet that are passing us by like people at analog street level that could still be some of the best friends we ever meet in life, that by doing out best version of us that might inspire them to course correct or advise how they did that.
in researching the different steem blockchains platforms this week I hit the reality that you don’t have to fit in anyway — that was on me. I was trying to find my entry point and the truth is every waking moment in a blockchain is your entry point, your voice resonates when you truly bring the most authentic version of yourself to the front, ready to bat.
And truth be told while we are all in this together you might never know how you have effected or been effected by the information we are gorging on and discovering each day.
all I know at this stage in my digital journey is that while the power is still coming from the national grids all around the world that this eco system will continue to feed the hopes and dreams of humankind.
that we should celebrate the fact that we have evolved our thinking to understand that communicating in a multi facetted way might just be the very thing that keeps us alive in this interstellar space we frequent.
I thank you for your time today.
T E A M H U M B L E
doing my best to avoid drama like a boss.
