When Kissing Ass Paid Bills VS When it ended!

I was given a prize of 20HBD yesterday, prize, donation, support call it what you may, that's approximately $20, where I'm from, that can feed a family of 3 for at least one week, depending on how deep their bellies are, but that's not even what this post about, I've already expressed my gratitude to the originator of the initiative, if you don't know about it, do check it out here.

I want to share a defining experience with you especially as it concerns the journey through Hive. I've had this post mapped out in my head for almost 3 weeks since I had a conversation relating to it with Uncle G-Dog(@galenkp), I've been waiting for the best time to write it, which never came, so maybe there's just no best time afterall.

There is a popular saying around here that goes how far one gets in life depends on who's holding that person and how fast one grows in life depends on who one is holding or something like that.

Sometimes my life's experiences are like a movie, I wish I could record them and play them over to entertain myself, but life's on a roll, life goes on, I can only share these experiences so that it may be of value to someone who might find themselves in similar situation at some point in their life and maybe its only meant to entertain someone, who knows, both are fine with me.

So @galenkp(Uncle G-Dog) asked me a question after I made a comment on his post a few weeks ago, the post was tailored to new bloggers on Hive and it was totally on point, so I said I wished I had seen posts like his when I first got into this space, I said I wish I had read a post like that when I got into Blockchain, then he asked what i would have done differently, that was the point when I actually took a step back to look at where I'm coming from and dammit, I've transitioned tremendously.

Let me first get this out there, this whole blockchain system is an entirely new paradigm for the average person, how much more someone from the third world who's most social attempt was managing chat rooms on Facebook or groups on Blackberry messenger, for me I wasn't even using either, I knew them and could use them but I had no reason to, unlike the average person, getting to Steem blockchain to "Blog to Earn" was all I knew and the wrongest mindset to have when coming onboard,

Apparently the guy who introduced me to the platform had some delegations and I was put on auto-upvote, so all was good and rosy because all I had to do was post and voila money! 1 steem was 7$.

At some point, the delegation was stopped, things weren't longer as they used to be and the mayhem began, trust that I scampered around numerous posts on how to Steem and do this and do that, most of which didn't lead me anywhere meaningful.

I saw a lot of posts from Nigerians like myself with upvotes that made my jaw drop, I even tried to say hi to some of them but I got no responses, maybe they didn't know better themselves, even at points when I came about posts that I really liked, I didn't know how to make comments, or that they even mattered. I felt very alienated, I had no idea what was going on, the biggest thing I'd learnt at the time was turning SBD to BTC then to naira. How, what, why, where???? were questions that were killing me.

This is where it gets interesting.

A friend who I also introduced into the platform(lol blind man leading another blind man) began talking to this whale on the platform who promised to have a plan to help people like ourselves, for a brief moment it felt as if all our days of poverty were over, several promises of how our lives were going to change and how that was his purpose and bla bla.

We were invited to a discord channel, it was my first discord experience, I don't like discord, not as an app, just that I hate that every conversation cannot be had on chain, sorry to digress, so the first plan was to build a school where people learned how to use Steem, we decided to title it Steem schools, there were several trending users in the channel too, sometimes, other crypto investors or well known steemians were invited to talk.

I thought by all means I was in the right place.

That was when I met Dobartim and I will not deny trying to kiss his ass for some upvotes, heck, with the Steem power he had, if he said jump, I'll say how high! I was dumb and naive and I just wanted to make some money like everyone else.

I really dislike discord channels, I wish we didn't have to use it. Anyway, so it got to the point that I began spamming on the chain, there were prizes to be won for bringing the most users to the channel, I'm not condemning that, I probably blame myself for handling it the way I did, at that point all I wanted was to change my life lol as I was told lol.

Call me delusional,...

I'm still yet to understand if it were good intentions gone bad, I can honestly say some discord meetings were worth it, in the sense that we got to interact with users already on chain, but I began to realize a lot of inconsistencies and shadiness, the tip of the ice berg was when I was going to be turned against friends I had made,because of a rift between them both, a rift caused because someone dared to challenge one of the many faux promises told to us.

These were months after becoming a Steem school guy, "Make 50 comments and 10 posts a day, we win together", like I said, perhaps they were good intentions with poor methods, I don't know, at that point, I wasn't even receiving the upvotes I had envisioned, my posts weren't getting better, I was spamming, we became his merceneries it was like I was in a quicksand and sinking deeper.

Then it happened again a friend called out their authority and was banned from the channel, then I began receiving some sort of query for still engaging with the person, like I was supposed to pick sides, that was the height for me, I kicked myself out of the group.

Not long after, my friend got kicked out for plagiarism on the platform, then it became just me, I didn't give up, I read a whole lot, I spent so much time on old posts and comment sections reading, absorbing, learning, then I began participating in contests, this was when real engagements began for me, then I started having favorite authors whom I interacted with because we vibed, I began getting little supports from guys who we've become more than strangers, if I see @smasssh tomorrow, I'm going to jump on his head and mess with his hair, if I see @ckole, @belemo @nonsowrites, I will do the same thing, there are more people who we can identify with ourselves because we've been coming along together for almost 3years.

The truth is whoever will vibe with you will vibe with you in real life, its the same as on here, you don't have to kiss anyone's ass. The people who've been there for me at my worst times are people who I hardly even interact with, as far as the platform is concerned, all I needed to do was be active and engage with other users, if anyone says he has the ultimate secrets to success on here, its a very big lie, what defines success for you? Money? Audience? Influence? Relevance? It's relative and you're the only one who can tell at the end of the day.

Also like I mentioned earlier, the people who've impacted me here the most are people who I've made the least "effort" to engage with, its almost always as natural as possible, this is the mistake most newbies make on the platform, there are zero needs to impress anyone, just be natural,original and engage, that's all.

If there were anything I'd have loved to do change about how I started here it would be my mindset, my mode of engagement and ever associating myself with Steem Schools, by the time they'd even began asking people to pay for classes, I was far gone!

Few months ago, I wouldn't have thought that I'd be receiving some sort of prize or support for doing what I already love to do, writing about technology and decentralization.

Its been a long time coming of many blood and sweats, fears and losses, mistakes and regrets, learning and growth, that's why I say newbies are in a very much better position today, at least a larger variety of people are more knowledgeable about the system than were before so they stand a better chance of starting the right way.

I'm always up for discussions and to answer questions on here mostly, but then ofcourse discord. This is just one of my many adventures here, I'm yet to tell you about the experience with Dim Imp, the user who had almost a million steempower and gave most of it out to Nigerians, stay tuned.

If you're newbie kindly go through this post

You can also find me on Twitter @mistakili
Some discord rooms...especially Hodl and Naija community.

Remember you own your destiny!

Thank you for your interest and time.