When I came to Steemit in June 2017, I was at my lowest financial point in my life. I had (and still have) to provide for my wife and daughter, and my job as a memory coach was not getting me forward anymore whatsoever. I started doing Fiverr jobs for 1 Dollar an hour, translating disgusting foot manicure package inserts, just to realize that someone else was playing the middle-man, reselling my translation for probably much more. I had hit rock bottom.
Steem Changed My Life
Luckily, I stumbled upon Steem and my life was about to change. I worked very hard and created content after content (up until today 693 posts and 9688 comments)! I became a full-time Steemian, long before I was actually able to pay my bills with it, due to a lack of alternatives.
Finally, the payoff came, when Steem shot to its all-time high in early January 2018. I was able to go to the incredible Anarchapulco conference in Mexico and even pay for a ticket and flight for my dad. This event changed my life and dominated my entire 2018 afterwards, by surrounding myself entirely with the content from the speakers and other Steemians I met there. Hence, I went through the greatest personal transformation, on a scale I would not have believed possible before.
Of course, like most people in the crypto world, I did not take any profits and plunged into the bear market, reducing my Steem's worth from over 50,000 USD (far more than I ever owned in my life before), to a value of 3k now (despite a much bigger stake than a year ago). Thanks to my family, I was able to survive for a while, burning through my inheritance, like a hot knife through butter. Some of which, I used for buying into Steem Monsters, creating a pretty decent stake for myself.
Entering The Crypto Winter
Well, the money is used up now and I have reached a point again, where I need to shift my income streams. Steem has become something, I cannot trust anymore. Most dApps talk about leaving the blockchain behind the curtain and the Dollar value of our payouts is not even enough to buy food for my family. I still believe in Steem but on a much larger time frame. I don't see becoming a fulltime Steemian again at any point in 2019 - at least not as content creator.
I love making animated videos with @thecryptodwarf and I believe that the quality of these videos is excellent. It has been my goal to increase my video quality level step-by-step and I am finally close to where I want to be (partly thanks to @illucifer, helping me with the animation and intro). At the same time, I basically earn nothing here anymore. That wasn't a problem, as long as I had money in bank account - but that is gone now.
Anarchapulco
Going to Anarchapulco 2019 has been my greatest intention throughout the last year and I already got my ticket and airplane. But so far, paying for the hotel will be a stunt, as it costs like 750 USD, just for the 5 days of the main conference and I am there for 10 days straight. On top of that, I have to still pay for rent and provide for my family.
Yesterday, I got very depressive, realizing my situation. For a brief moment I was ready to get a job at McDonald's again, where I used to work 20 years ago (the only job I ever liked and made some good money). Of course, that is ridiculous and would not even pay for my rent here in Costa Rica. Also, I love my freedom and never want to get hired for a 9-to-5 job again. Working from home allowed me to be more with my wife and daughter and basically do whatever I want.
It got so bad, that I resignated for a moment and offered my entire Steem account and Steem Monsters for a fraction of its price. I've got some nice offers but the most incredible thing were all the kind and supporting comments on Steem and Discord. I even got a nice offer from @stoodkev to lend me the Steem without any fees, using my account as a security. The response was so overwhelmingly beautiful and caring, that I snapped out of this brain fart again.
Thankfully, @illucifer is staying with me until Anarchapulco and we came up with a pretty cool plan to represent Steem dApps at the festival, together with the @stateofanarchy (aka @chickencaam). After bringing back @mpassio to the festival, @JeffBerwick owes them one.
The exact plans will be announced soon but it will hopefully allow us to raise a little bit of money to cover some of our expenses. Stay tuned for more.
Conclusion
Steem has been very good to me and vice versa. The crypto winter is testing us and I refuse to give up. I probably have to double down and improve my Steem strategy. For too long, I was not giving it as much attention anymore as I should have (too much @steemmonsters). Promoting Steem at Anarchapulco is also something that I look forward to a lot and what could become something I do more in the future, if this works out. In the end, we are the creators of our creators and manifest our will into reality. Sometimes it is hard to do so but keeping once focus opens the door to everything. So I keep on keeping on.
My Steem Projects
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60 Steem Tutorials with Steemy | The 1UP Curation System
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Meet @TheCryptoDwarf | The SmartCash @SmartBee