Posts

Taming my greed while enjoying the ride - Remembering 4 years ago - my crypto story

avatar of @vincentnijman
25
@vincentnijman
·
0 views
·
5 min read

Hi there,

How has your day been?

If you are as active on Hive as I am, it might have been pretty exciting - or nerve wrecking - depending on your time on the blockchain/ in crypto, your daily caffeine intake, your blood pressure and so on and so forth...

Today Hive went to an all-time high again ( and a pretty serious one, above 3 USD ). A couple of days ago, the value of Hive was around 1 USD. Suddenly Hive is nearing the top 100 of all 10k plus crypto currencies.



While the crypto Fear and Greed Index finds itself at 47, today, I sense that the needle would point at around 95 ( Extreme Greed ), right now, if it would have been "Hive" only.

Long story short, I really felt my caffeine today - being Hypersensitive and all - and I had to tame my greed and stay calm.

I felt like making a post around this theme and started drawing this beautifully imperfect claw in MS paint with my touchpad.

A little later, I went on a walk ( without my phone, intentionally ) to relax a little more and get some groceries.

I spent some time at a nearby river beach but couldn't really relax. Sitting there, I drew the following.

It is actually depicted upside down here but I like it like this. It's a ( dino ) claw grasping for a coin.

GREED



A little later, once arrived at the local cafe and minimarket, I sat down for a tea ( as coffee wasn't advisable at that moment, I was still hyper... ), some sparkling water and a grilled ham and cheese sandwich.

I laid out my paper and crayons ( a gift from my brother and his girlfriend, who arrived at my twin sister's house yesterday and will come over to my place tomorrow or the day after ), after having asked in my best Portuguese 'whether the table could be cleaned' ( there was milk and crumbs on there ) and continued my drawing.

"Trying to harness all of this energy / momentum and use it to finish my first book"

I realize that it was probably just cafeine induced energy, mixed with excitement over Hive, but I have had these kind of ideas more often:

What if I could actually focus this energy and turn it into productivity?

The latter is easier said than done for me.

I usually either have too much energy to focus/ sit still or too little.


I tried out some dino faces with different expressions



Meanwhile, I also started drawing a kind of meditating HyperZENsitivosaurus, in some kind of SuperSayian mode.

I ended up not giving him a face, just the bottom half of his head.


The drawing and the tea kind of calmed me down.

I later thought of drawing Hypersensitivosaurus with some kind of laser focus, writing on a laptop.

I drew this just now for your entertainment:

It reminds me of wanting to get a standing desk to get rid of my back issues, while still spending a couple of hours a day in front of a computer.


Now back to Hive and the crypto market, for a bit:

These days, my memories go out to 4 years ago, when Hive was non-existant and Steem(it) was still a place, on the blockchain, where I enjoyed hanging out. A space where I tried to climb out of my depression, a place that was changing my life.


For Your Information: a month or two later, early February 2018, I would leave my motherland, The Netherlands, to make my way toward Portugal.

It's now almost 4 years later and I am still in Portugal. As we speak, I am renting a house at about 5 kilometers from my twin sister's quinta / land.

Less than two months ago, I sold my house ( that I owned for over 3 years ), in a mountain hamlet named Monte Frio. It was located at about half an hour distance - by car - from here.

4 years ago, in December 2017, I was seriously struggling.

Not only was my only remaining grandparent about to pass away ( my mother's mother, an amazing soul, aged 93 ), I was also depressed and so very tired of my life in The Netherlands, where I had felt stuck for over a decade, since graduating from University in September 2007.

It wasn't all darkness though.

I had already made some critical decisions, to free myself from ending up a soulless slave, stuck in the system.

I had quit my last job ( for a boss ), in August 2016.

Aside from that - and this was really life changing - I had discovered crypto and the blockchain, in May 2017. Then, in June of that year, I had discovered Steemit and become a blogger.

In December, after a month or two of dedicated blogging, I suddenly had a huge payout on my blog, while the price of Steem went parabolic.

For the first time ever, I tried to sell and cash out crypto.

I had to make an account at an exchange, and all the steps and verification took up so much time, that when I finally succeeded in selling some Steem, the value had already gone down a lot. I still managed to cash out a serious chunk of money ( a couple of hundred Euros ), at a time when I was pretty poor.

Less than two months later, I was on my way to Portugal, with about 3000 Euros in crypto, a laptop and a backpack mainly filled with clothes.

It was this little bit of success ( and my trust in crypto and my blogging capabilities ), that made me decide to jump into the deep and make my way towards Vincent 2.0, starting a new life in another country focused entirely on crypto.

There is more to this story, but I merely wanted to express how life changing moves like these can be.

I'm now in my second bull run ( after a little over 4.5 years in crypto ) and I am not struggling any longer ( financially ) and still fully invested in crypto currency.

I really hope that this is gonna be life changing for many of you, on here :<)

Enjoy the age of abundance ( the opposite of what the mainstream media might be trying to make happen or tell you )!

Enjoy the ride! It's a rollercoaster, with ups and downs. But - if you play it right - you'll move upward, in the long term.