I am Officially a Dolphin now

I've finally reached the Dolphin level and it took me "only" 4 years. It's time for a little story, the story of how i achieved that and my ups and downs before i succeed! Grab your popcorn and get ready for an epic journey with me that starts....now

How I Joined Steemit

So the story dates back 4-5 years and to be exact during September 2016 if i remember correctly. I was searching for ways to earn money online without having to invest a certain amount at first.

I couldn't actually find something interesting, i kept hearing the same stuff like completing surveys and microtasks or sell products via eBay. First of all, i had nothing to sell on eBay and secondly, the surveys that i could complete were so scarce for my country that there was no point.

To add to that the microtasks that some sites promoted as an amazing opportunity to make money online, were nothing but peanuts. The amount of money that you could earn from those is close to nothing.

So among these searches, i discovered steemit. A place where i could write whatever i wanted to and get paid for it. On top of that, i wouldn't have to invest a single dollar to get in. To add to that too, the front page (trending page) was full of large payouts so you can imagine my surprise and doubts.

I couldn't believe whether this was the actual real deal or a well-structured scam and i had the tab opened till February of 2017. Yeah, that much! I was searching daily for additional info, read the whitepaper and still had doubts. I just couldn't believe that i could get paid for writing whatever i wanted to.

Long story short i decided to give it a go after a couple of months and it was a decision i haven't regret, not a single time! I regret that i lost some months doubting it!

My Ups and Downs

Steemit

In my Steemit journey, i had my ups and downs a lot of times. I started out big create revies of anime/series/movies and it was quite successful. i was constantly on @curie's posts as a featured author and i enjoyed some sweet rewards.

I also tried and be as active as i am these days so generally speaking my early days were gooooood. Moreover, more Greek members were in and we started a small greek community. Sadly half of those members and maybe more decided that steemit/hive isn't the place for them.

I lived through a lot of drama, we got NED, fights between the witnesses or community, bid-bots, circle-jerking and a lot more. When i saw things like that i was usually discouraged a lot and i used to log out for Steemit for months.

I couldn't handle how some people only care for money and at the same time a lot of cool authors were earning close to nothing because they didn't know a person with a huge stake or they didn't suck up to them.

When the price of steemit when to the moon i thought i would be "rich". To be more precise i see some of my dreams getting closer and closer. The total worth of my account plus 2-3 litecoins and a tiny fraction of btc was 50.000$ while before that i was somewhere between 1000$-2000$.

I sold the btc and i cashed out around 1000 euros from Steemit just to say that i made some "profits" but i was greedy and thought that my stake will reach 100.000$ That never happened ofc and then the downfall of Steemit began.

Hive

When the downfall happened i stopped being active. Not because of the price but because we had tons of abusers and spammers, circle jerking, bid-bots and close to 0 efforts to reward quality users.

I only came back when i heard about the creation of Hive and even though i once again wasn't that active due to limited free time, a couple of months ago i decided to be as active as i can!

I made tons of comments and i stick to at least one post per day trying to earn something having a goal to make my life somewhat better in a couple of years' time.

and here we are reaching dolphinhood and achieving that organically!

The Future

Now my next goal is to reach 10k of Hive which will be tough and generate 5k of LEO. I have other goals as well for the different tokens that exist in the Hive ecosystem but only time will tell.

I want to make this community great along with you all and together to achieve our goals casting aside all those that only care for the "I" and not for the "WE"

Special Thanks

At this point, i want to give some special thanks to people and curation teams. Please note that i just wanna thank you for supporting my content both now and all the previous years!

@ocd @curangel @curie @ctpsb @nathanmars @behiver @cflclosers
@taskmaster4450 @anggreklestari @trumpman @funnel @knowhow92 @cryptomaniacsgr @nikosnitza @katerinaramm @nikoleondas @steliosfan @arrixion @lordneroo @mindtrap @acesontop @oldmans @khazrakh @tbnfl4sun @chekohler @blocktrades @erikah @lbi-token @leo.voter @khaleelkazi