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I had an interesting day today listening to conversations on @steemspeak while working on a post and I started to reminisce on how life has been prior to Steem and until now.

Growing up I was getting into trouble and trying to find my way like everyone else. I was always out partying and neglecting my responsibilities which lead me to struggle a little later in life. 

I even looked back at past relationships and how glad I am that those didn't work out and that I ended up with the best person I could find. She is my best friend and the love of my life. My other half as many of you would say and glad I have her in my life.

I used to be a bit of a hip hop head growing up and thought about this classic track from 
**Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth.** 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BONgL61snlM

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I wasn't too much into technology during these times but when I realized I needed to work on a career. I ended up going to school for electronics and even got a degree. I wasn't really satisfied with the field so I decided to do my own things and find my own way. 

Eventually, I found crypto-currency. I remember looking for ways to earn money online and stumbled across a blog outside of Steemit and it talked about a Social Media Blockchain. Let's just say I dove into the rabbit hole and ended up really intrigued by the platform.
![reminisce2.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmUKTMeJRNuVLNySY9rNBmTa2pLwAkipyrH8Q4XFBafHjo/reminisce2.png)
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It was tough in the beginning trying to learn how everything worked on here and I went through an emotional rollercoaster. I would do the common mistake of vote begging, trying to message whales and sharing my link to my post in hopes to get an upvote. I even complained and disagreed with a lot of how the platform worked. I would spend lot's of time trying to make a post that will get me a big reward feel discouraged when hours spent on a blog post earned me a few cents. It's better than nothing but at times I felt I could have done something better with my time. 

<div class="pull-right">https://www.pocketfives.com/profiles/admin/albums/article-images/592431-angry-mob.jpg</div>

I started my own project that helped distribute STEEM and SBD last year and it started off well but I ended up shutting down the project due to the community seeing it as something that is not of value to the overall platform. It's funny because there were other projects that were similar and faced huge scrutiny and now, we see vote buying projects and that's accepted. This is a whole nother story to get into but I just find it amusing. 

Things have gotten even tougher when the hyper inflation brought the price all the way down to 7 cents. I'm not going to lie, I had my doubts with the way things were going and kind of took a step back and slowed down on things here. 

![reminisce.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmY8jg8QoxfdsUNuFwU78UYm7XvxzLDv5SupGGrpP61RUQ/reminisce.png)

After the tough times, things started to turn around not only with Steem but the entire crypto community as well. Then @ned, **The CEO** of Steemit, came by **SteemSpeak** and discussed Community Tokens and a few other things but this discussion rejuvinated my excitement for Steem. I wasn't focused on content creation prior to this but this just made me so excited to blog again. Things will get bigger and better for Steem and it's only a matter of time. 

You can listen to the discussion here:
https://steemit.com/community-tokens/@fyrstikken/ned-scott-ceo-of-steemit-inc-have-a-40-minute-conversation-with-the-steemspeak-com-community

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Now is the time get moving and prepare for the huge changes that are to come in the future. HF 0.20.0 titled "Velocity" is being worked on and from what I see, it's going to open the doors to let in the crowd of users and take things to another level.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/proposing-hardfork-0-20-0-velocity
 
@bitcoiner created a post that he noticed that the "beta" has been removed from the readme file on the Steemit github by none other than Ned Scott.

https://steemit.com/steem/@bitcoiner/steem-software-is-out-of-beta-now

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It has been a wild ride over the past year and I hope many of you are ready for an even wilder ride. 
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Image sources: <a href="http://racqueal.blogspot.com/2011/02/reminiscing.html">1</a>,<a href="https://www.pocketfives.com/articles/poker-community-upset-wsop-colossus-payouts-590902/">2</a>,<a href="http://icomputerdenver.com/data-back-up-service/">3</a>,<a href="https://www.theodysseyonline.com/experience-sandblast">4</a>,<a href="https://brilliant.org/wiki/rocket-physics/">5</a>

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