Introduceyourself is the who post; everybody should also have a why post. Why are you (still) here? What are you trying to accomplish? I’ve been thinking about it lately.
Documentation – A link to the past
I am almost five years into a two year Permaculture Diploma program. For a long time now I have needed to document my progress with Permaculture and my sustainable development efforts.
I have observed everything, done the work, experimented with the designs, taken the photographs, but writing it all down was just too much for me. I was too busy doing everything else, plus making sure the bills got paid, to have time to write. This is what I told myself.
But over time I started trying to tell myself something different. Make the time, write for 10 minutes, write every day; I began attempting to fit the task into my life. I needed practice; I needed to do it more. I ended up with a folder of half finished, unedited word documents.
Ephemeral Blogs
I have had more than one website, and the earliest websites I managed to operate are now gone. I even wrote an article explaining how my attempts to blog had led to more computer programming hours than writing hours.
Then some people said to me, ‘Hey, you should blog about your experiences!’. That sounded reasonable; maybe other people, who haven’t been able to live a drastically different life than the ones they were raised in, would like to hear about what it is that we do and how I spend my time. So I made the decision to ‘blog’.That was almost three years ago now. What have I learned? Let me tell you.
One - 98% of my time has been spent learning how to make a blog.
I now run a multi-site wordpress installation. I have several domain names, I use amazon web services’ EC2 for my server and their S3 for image and document storage. I have a half dozen plugins out of the hundreds I tried that I like and continue to use. I can add html tags to my posts or emails, and I can adjust my style sheet manually. I measure my nearly zero traffic accurately with Google analytics. I have read all about ads and affiliate marketing, and have tried half a dozen of each.
And how many posts have I written in the past three years? It depends on how you count, but definitely less than 20. I have been, by any definition, unsuccessful as a blogger, but I definitely have learned some things about computer science. I have learned how to make a space where blogging is possible, but I haven’t actually done much real blogging.
Immutable blog
What does immutable mean? On the steem blockchain, after 7 days posted, the articles are permanently stored inside the blockchain, unable to be changed. As long as the internet and the steem blockchain exist, my articles will exist within.
I am generally writing long form, picture-heavy documentation style posts , and not only are they locked into the blockchain, but I also have an opportunity for people to upvote me and comment on my work.
I can continue to refer and link to these projects (for as long as the steem blockchain exists). In this article I made a reference to a past article that you can now view, because I transferred it to the steemit blockchain.
Long form, picture-heavy content is not something that everybody does, or maybe even could do. But it is the type of content that I have been rewarded for the most, and it is the type of content that I need to be creating, the type of content that adds permanent value to this world by documenting some knowledge and experience and locking it into this blockchain.
Community – Added value
One of the things that has most surprised me with Steemit is the community aspect.
Yes there are bot networks running rampant, rewards schemes and spamming behavior, but nowhere else have I seen such an open, innovative and optimistic community trying to build something positive.
Here I have found genuinely interested and interesting people trying to build a better world, trying to do something unique, trying to make a difference. People here are trying to live their lives, as I imagine all people do, but have found that time spent on steemit somehow seems more valuable than time spent on facebook or in front of the television.
It is the wonderful connections that I have made here that continue to validate and encourage my writing.
Groupings
I was very honored to be recently accepted onto the ecoTrain, and ever since I have been learning how important a close group of supportive and interested people can be to help one achieve goals.
If I were looking to start again, to start fresh, I would follow @ecotrain and its members and start commenting on all their interesting posts. This group is chock full of interesting people, so much so that I haven’t really gotten around to meeting them all properly yet!
To encourage others
As a last note I will mention that it is an incredible responsibility to invite others onto this platform, and only then remember the crazy bot networks. I stick around to help those that I think could benefit from writing, sharing and having a connected community.
Like @snook!
@snook is my mother! And here she is participating with me, even though we are thousands of miles apart. It is so beautiful and I will do everything that I can to continue to make this a place where she, and I, and hopefully many other friends and family members (like @simgirl and @ch3lo) can continue to feel comfortable sharing.
And do scroll up a bit and click on that interesting train image.