The Loving Hive community is celebrating its 3000 members and we are open to a contest from them. It's all about how you began on Hive, what was it at first? How were you able to jump the hurdles? Were you challenged to keep going despite the tough moments?

_{I will be inviting @merit.ahama @blezyn @olawalium to come narrate how it was with us. Here is the link}

Like I have said before on how I came to know Hive, I was introduced to hive after Uptrennd closed up and how I hesitated in registering. After some days, I logged into discord and saw where @Dreemsteem told everyone to come join hive so we can continue our project since we couldn't do that on Uptrennd. I finally opened an account on the 30th of March, 2021 and wrote my first introductory post.

I didn't earn as I expected but I can't remember who told me to do another introductory post and use the right tags. I wrote another one on the 31st, which was the next day.

On the 2nd of April, I joined the Newbies Initiative program for all newbies to help us build our accounts. I was delegated some hive power to make my posts especially for the Newbies Initiative and I made my first entry as an application to be part of the program.

The funniest part of my Journey was where I wrote my second entry of the Newbies Initiative talking about my goals and how much hive power I would have after a month of the program.

We wrote about our goals and what to achieve and then, I was having 47 Hive power already and I wrote that I would want to achieve 500 HP after a month.

I knew @kenechukwu97 must have laughed so hard when he read my post 😅 and he made a comment

He has been on hive before me and knew about Hive and how hard it is to achieve such a goal. This is why he said I made a bold target. I didn't know I was deceiving myself because Hive isn't that easy, which was one of the reasons I never wanted to come here but thank God for those who pushed me here.

Hive is so wide and I was lost in knowing the right way to go. I didn't understand much about hive and the right communities to post in but I was posting and going offline. I couldn't give more time to focus on this platform even though I was always posting daily through the 30 days blogging challenge I saw in a community.

This challenge made me keep posting every day as one of the rules of the initiative said that we must always post daily for thirty days pending the time the program would end. It was challenging at first for me because I couldn't manage Hive, with another platform I was engaging with, coupled with my academics but I managed to write for thirty days.

After the initiative ended, that was when I was skipping days coming to hive to post or even interact. It was after two months, I found out about the tokens in the Hive engine.

I was just finding my way through the platform using the peakd app, then I was taken to my wallet where I saw "Hive Engine '' and I was curious to see what it was all about. I saw some tokens including Proof of brain worth $23. I was confused which made me go to meet @kenechukwu97 to explain more. That guy really tried because I was always going to meet him for every question I needed an answer to and he was always online to help me out. I withdrew the Pob instantly instead of keeping and staking them because I haven't gained more knowledge then.

The first few people I met in my journey were @dreemsteem @kemmyb @esther-emmanuel @mcyusuf @zellypearl and a few people I can't remember for now.

While getting images to back my post up, I saw that I was doing fine in a little way on hive when I first started. I had spent enough hbd and hive on this platform to help me in school and I have survived for many months through what I earn.

Because of other things I engage with, I didn't have time for hive and I couldn't find time to engage and build my account. It took me months until this year in January to realize I have been missing a lot here. I got to know that one needs to know the right community to post in, also to participate in contests and challenges. Though I was trying my best last year to join contests, it's not like now that I now take time to participate in contests and challenges.

I also joined the Dreemport Challenge which also helped me on this platform but I was still not paying attention here unlike other platforms.

I started enjoying Hive this year and enjoyed it more when I became a moderator at EcoTrain community and that gave me more time to be active. At the moment, I am into contests and challenges that I am now enjoying and giving my time more with engagement. I have gotten more followers through my activeness and also increased my Hive power.

This was possible because I never gave up. I was consistent and posting into the right communities. Contests and challenges are getting more interesting and fun and through that, Hive has become a part of my routine.

This is how I began on Hive and here I am today still working hard.

Thanks for reading.