Ok, look...
I'll be honest.
A few weeks ago I was in a really bad spot.
Savings were running out and I wasn't sure what I was going to do.
You see, I'm a game developer, and my dev partner and I had decided that we were going to really go full-tilt into game development and see if we could make it work.
Since I worked in a shitty warehouse that I didn't like anyway and it was making me so much money that I was slowly going deeper into debt and falling farther behind, we decided that I would quit that job and dedicate myself full-time to development.
Well, as it tends to happen in life, things don't always work out as planned.
Development started slowing down
We were supposed to have a demo for our upcoming game.
We were supposed to have it two months ago, but we are closer to two months away from being done with it.
Life happens, you know? And my partner was building an engine from scratch on nights and weekends while holding down a full-time job and spending time with the family.
It just took longer than planned. And since I had enough funds to support me for a little bit after the projected demo release -- which was supposed to be two months ago -- I was starting to panic.
I feared that I would have to beg for my old job back, or put myself back into the workforce -- which has never ever done anything good for me in the long-term -- and this would completely distract from game development, which is where the real meaningful money is.
Embarrassment and Shame
Well, it turns out that I did try to get my old job back. I tried to get two old jobs back, actually. Places where I had spent years of my time working long hours. I applied to both of those places, and they were looking for workers... and both of them rejected me.
I didn't even get a personal call about it. From one, I got the standard "You don't have the skill set we are looking for at this particular time" template email, despite the fact that I am fully skilled -- expertly skilled, in fact -- for the position they were looking to fill. And the other place didn't even get in touch with me at all.
Imagine the embarrassment. I was so ashamed with myself.
Like, I'm such a loser that I can't even get hired back to a job I hate but for which I am expertly qualified. They don't want me that much. They so badly don't want me that they are willing to turn me down even though I could pick up and do the job flawlessly on day 1.
This was a major emotional low-point in my life.
Never before had I felt so hopeless in this way. It felt like everything was slipping away from me. It felt like I was giving up on my dream of game development. I wasn't going to be able to provide for my family soon. And I couldn't even get back jobs that I hated.
A dark, dark time...
And then -- Steemit
I remember that I had an account on Steemit.com
It wasn't that I had abandoned the account -- rather, I just hadn't really devoted a lot of my time to it. Sometimes I would post ideas or a video I'd made on the account, and it would make a few cents here or a few dollars there. So it worked, but I hadn't really tested the boundaries yet.
So I figured: What do I have to lose?
I was on my own. I wasn't getting my old job back, and it didn't look like there was any promising new part-time work. So, why not treat this Steemit thing like a job and see what happens?
So I treated Steemit like a job
I set my alarm, like I always had, for 5am.
I would wake up, get some breakfast (sometimes), and log on to Steemit.
I started exploring the community. Observing what the really successful accounts were doing. How did they respond to their audience? How active were they in the community at large? How many followers was a good number to expect a nice average reward on posts? Was there a particular kind of follower that was best? How frequently did I want to post? What would be a realistic reward per post average to expect and work towards? How much would I want to make a day on average?
These were all things that I worked to discover. I decided that I would try to be as active in the community as I possibly could be. I would comment on as many things as possible, and make sure that the comments were quality. I would go to the influential accounts and really try to contribute something to their posts, to add a new perspective or approach that would be valuable and establish a connection. I wanted to gain followers without doing a "follow-4-follow" thing, because I learned from Twitter that doing that actually meant very little in terms of having an engaging audience.
So I built up my following by commenting and establishing networks. By giving back to the community and offering my illustration services to help build up a Steemit economy -- I wanted people to be able to spend their Steem and SBD. Some notable Steemians bought avatars from me and started using them. That built up my reputation.
I realized that I got a singular kind of satisfaction out of analyzing my account and keeping strict records of how it was growing. I wanted to share my findings with others, and it turns out that people really appreciated this. When you put information how there in an authentic, clear, and honest way that most people would keep tightly guarded, people will respond to that.
My posts started gaining notable payouts...
I started getting noticed
People started to come to me for advice, for art commissions, or just to have a friendly person to chat with.
My notifications would explode whenever I logged on in the mornings, and before I knew it I was spending an hour every morning just responding to the dozens of replies I had gotten while I was sleeping.
Engagement on my posts was massive. It became a regular occurrence that my posts would get about as many views as they had votes -- which is a very, very rare thing, indeed.
In many ways, I appreciated the engagement more than the increasing payouts. But I'm not going to lie -- the payouts are great. I mean, I was running out of money before this, so when I see a weekly pending payout number of $600, or $800, or $1,700... it means a lot to me. It means I'll be able to pay the bills this month.
It means hope.
The Deepest Darkness before the Steemit Dawn
I was approaching one of the potentially darkest times in my life.
Then I took a risk with Steemit.
This whole thing was a gamble. There was no assurance that anything would come from working on Steemit. I was dedicating my time and talent to this platform in the hopes that it would pay off.
And seeing as how my account here is now valued at over $4,000 when it was just $100 two months ago... and seeing as how I've been able to increase my Bitcoin holdings by more than $700 in less than 24 hours... and seeing as how the following I've built up here is more valuable than any other network I've ever established in my life...
I'd say the gamble on Steemit paid off.
The darkness of the doldrums of everyday life was about to consume me. I was going to be overcome by despair and consumed by hopelessness. But in that moment of greatest sadness and heartbreak, there was a faint opportunity just barely shining through.
And I took it and ran with it.
And now I am thankful that my old jobs rejected me, because had they not I would be working a job I hate right now, and my sorrow would be even greater because I would be valuing the worth of my life by the dollars-per-hour I would be paid.
But now… my honesty and authenticity are what is valued. My character as a person is rewarded by a curious and bright community.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
What do you think?
What is your overall opinion of Steemit.
To me it is a savior that has gotten me out of more than one tight spot in my life.
This platform gives me hope that the technological innovation that my generation is supposed to be famous for are actually revolutionary.
I believe there is an economic paradigm shift. It started with Bitcoin, and now it's broadening into every field of human activity. And before you know it, everything we do will be part of a user-generated-currency platform, and we will all be able to just live and let live.