Learning to Listen to Your Heart & Your Instincts
It has taken me a long time to learn to do what comes naturally to most people. Recent mounting health issues have broken through a lifetime of self-critical mind-set and self-destructive behaviour as I've realised that these mental constructs are just this - illusions built on societal and familial conditioning. A combination of substance abuse issues and severe depression in my late 20s, and into my early 30s left me with the type of mind that constantly questions itself.
It is never popular to talk ill of hive on hive, and to be honest, I think this is a problem that some of the 'holier than thou' whales on hive could really think hard about.
If you create a platform that seems to actively punish intelligent people from stating views that run contrary to the popular Zeitgeist, - that on hive seems to be, we are web 3.0, which is the wave of the future, so all you naysayers can fck off because us web 3.0 people are going to usurp Google, Facebook and Twitter's power and then it will be us that you have to lobby for your place in cyberspace.
How is that any different than decentralizing to the point where we have tens of thousands of Zuckerbergs, Jack Dorseys, Elon Musks, Bill Gates, Larry Pages, Sergey Brins, and Sundar Pichais wannabes acting in exactly the same way, wielding power for its own sake and changing NOTHING. There is no paradigm shift without a change in both structure and behaviour.
And if you want to start waving the accountability flag around, there are plenty of anon accounts on hive with over one million HP whose agenda is completely unknown, possibly they don't have one.
Who owns the @freedom account?
Most people seem to think it's either Ned Scott or Daniel Larimer.
Pftttt, I think the likelihood of either is quite low given what the account's wallet shows, and I think that an agenda seems to emerge if you really look at those delegations.
But none of that matters really, because that account could nuke me into oblivion if it doesn't like what I say in this blog. It could also crash the hive market to near zero at any time by selling its liquid hive.
Hive, home of the free š
Regardless of the minutia of the power structure of hive, which I would argue is so chaotic right now that if the online world did all migrate to hive it would cause just as much censorship, agenda lobbying and outright nepotism as web 2.0 currently does, if not more.
Regardless of all that...
On a personal note, the distractions that hive provides feels like it has become a deeply unhealthy barrier to achieving my true potential. I'm torn between hanging around to a lesser extent, and continuing to enjoy writing (what I think are) quirky photography posts, or just pulling the proverbial pin and blowing up the little rowboat that is my account.
I have over Ā£20k of student debt that I accrued completing a creative writing degree to which I was accepted based on my portfolio writing alone. I'm not sure if anybody here understands what this means, but basically, my grades were not sufficient for me to get onto that degree, but the university professors (all successful mainstream published novelists) said "let him on the degree based on the 15000-word portfolio of work he has submitted."
I have the levels of procrastination that would put Victor Hugo to shame, coupled with the constant inner voice that tells me that my fiction isn't good enough, and in fact, a lot of what I have self-published on hive sends me into fits of self-doubt, despite glowing reviews from writer's on here that I recognise as quality, professional writers.
Here is a famous anecdote some of you might know about how Victor Hugo finally beat his procrastination to complete one of his best-known works, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
By the summer of 1830, Victor Hugo was facing an impossible deadline. Twelve months earlier, the famous French author had made an agreement with his publisher that he would write a new book titled The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Instead of writing the book, Hugo spent the next year pursuing other projects, entertaining guests, and delaying his work on the text. Hugo's publisher had become frustrated by his repeated procrastination and responded by setting a formidable deadline. The publisher demanded that Hugo finish the book by February of 1831 ā less than six months away.
Hugo developed a plan to beat his procrastination. He collected all of his clothes, removed them from his chambers, and locked them away. He was left with nothing to wear except a large shawl. Lacking any suitable clothing to go outdoors, Hugo was no longer tempted to leave the house and get distracted. Staying inside and writing was his only option.
The strategy worked. Hugo remained in his study each day and wrote furiously during the fall and winter of 1830. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was published two weeks early, on January 14, 1831.
Source: The Week
How does this relate to me? Why should I have the audacity to compare my problems to that of a successful novelist of yesteryear?
Because my lecturers believed in me. Half of my hyper-critical family believed in me, in fact, just like Victor Hugo, the only one who didn't believe in me was me.
It is time to change that!
What Have You Ever Done to Help Build Hive?
So much goes on behind the scenes on hive that it is difficult for new users to understand how it all works. Although the idea behind Hive is innovative, it says a lot that most people can't figure out how to progress and find a community that suits their interests without joining discord, although this is becoming easier to be fair.
I'm not able to dedicate any more time behind the scenes than I already have as real-life issues have taken all my time, but in the past, I was one of the busy bees who built some of the cells that makes up the hive. And, unlike some people who have taken $1000s dollars from the DHF (Decentralized Hive Fund) while achieving sweet FA of their promised goals, I have never even applied. The one community I launched, built and ran for a time called The Ink Well, I tutored the current owner/manager on how to make it self-sustaining.
- In the summer of 2017 my first attempt at community building was to start a steemchat group (a chat website created by @firepower that has now shut down) and later a similar discord group called Scuba Diving. A place where divers from around the world could share their stories, promote their posts and generally provide each other with mutual support.
- In late 2017 I joined curie as a curator and worked about 20 hours/week helping to find/reward posts from new users for the best part of two years.
- In 2018-2019 I ran a creative writing workshop for the Promo-mentors discord community spending roughly 10 hours/week offering editorial services and tutoring some second language English writer's to help them improve their craft.
- In 2018 I ran a weekly radio show on the whaleshares discord (prior to whaleshares forking from hive). This discord radio show was called literary corner and I hosted it for nearly a year. In the show I interviewed the most talented poets and fiction writers on hive/steem at the time, discussing their influences and how they first discovered they were destined to become a writer.
- In 2019 I joined the @sndbox creative incubator and worked as part of a team building the @projectgiving charity which helped fund a community/environmental project in Tanzania.
- In 2020 I started @theinkwell creative writing community with @stormlight24, designing the community media, writing creative prompts and community initiatives for 6 months until I had to facilitate handover to new management due to my own health issues, and a family member getting cancer at the beginning of the pandemic. The Ink Well was run successfully by @shanibeer who did an amazing job during her time managing it, and The Ink Well now remains an active and vibrant writing community thanks to the efforts of @jayna, @agmoore and @gracielaacevedo who I want to thank from the bottom of my heart.
To be honest, even I'm bored of looking at the list of stuff I've done and patting myself on the back š
Future Writing Goals and Hive Content
I have recently posted part one of a fantasy fiction three-parter called Red Days for the @dreemport and Scholar and Scribe community monthly collaboration. But, I stupidly didn't check the dreemport submission guidelines that are PG13. Part one of this gruesome, 'Joe Abercrombie style' violent, hopefully with, twists and plot devices that make it more than just violence for violence's sake, adult fantasy, was completely unsuitable for Dreemport š¤£
However, I will submit the last two instalments to the Scholar and Scribe community which I know welcomes gritty genre fiction of all kinds.
Beyond that, I just don't know. Maybe I shall continue to post a few photography-based articles/week, I haven't decided yet.
I'm currently focusing on submitting short stories (fiction) to literary, and genre-specific, mainstream magazines to increase my reputation as a writer. This is the main reason why I'm not publishing much fiction on hive anymore as I just don't have the time between editing and other jobs.
I am also working on a trilogy of fantasy novels... but. well, you have already read the anecdote about the terrible curse of writer's procrastination š Let's just say I have a complete area map for the first trilogy, 20,000 words of sub creation (details of politics, militaristic policies, monsters, magic systems etc) and not much else.
If you'd like to check out some of the fiction I've written on hive in the past please check out this catalogue post I made last year.
I'd like to say a massive thank you to all the people who have helped and supported me over the years.
I'm going to celebrate my Hive 5th birthday tonight with Pizza š and a healthy swim in the morning to work it off.
I hope one day you might read one of my books and think fondly of me š
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