Hello Steemit community! My name is Tim! This site is amazing and I would like to introduce myself seeing as it's the polite thing to do when you are a part of a community! Here is a brief story of my life so far. I apologize in advance that I'm not the best writer but, I'll try my best!

Early Years

Born in Montreal Canada, I'm a proud Canadian who never really lived there. When I was very young (1-2) my Mom moved my brother and I to the USA because she was a nurse and at the time, wages for nurses in Canada were almost half of what they were in the States so we ended up in Connecticut, where I resided until I was about 10. At age 10 we moved to Northern California. I grew up in a very small mountain town near Yosemite National Park named Twain Harte, population 2226.

Pinecrest Lake where I grew up.

Sonora Pass near my home town.

Growing Up

Growing up in a small town in retrospect, was actually pretty awesome. I got to snowboard, skateboard, wakeboard, mountain bike, hike, and grow up in one of the most gorgeous places on Earth but at the time I took that all for granted. I was a trouble maker, I hated school, and ended up dropping out at the start of my junior year. I just found school to be a waste of time and I wanted to do things that I actually enjoyed in life (which at the time was skateboarding, snowboarding, drinking beer, and chasing girls). At around the age of 17-18 I started working odd jobs here and there like working at the local lumber yard or lake resort but I always found it hard to stay focused on something I didn't like doing. After being in and out of jobs and really not having a clue on what I wanted to do, I got the opportunity to move to Mexico. So I did, and I loved it.

Montreal at age 15

Mexico

At around the age of 20, my Mom had bought some property in beautiful Todos Santos BCS Mexico and asked me if I wanted to move down there to help develop the property. Being young and having no clue what I wanted to do at the time, I jumped at the chance. Todos Santos is a small little town at the very southern point of Baja about 30 minutes of Cabo San Lucas on the Pacific Ocean that's very popular for it's art and surf spots. Living in Todos Santos was great! What's not to love about beautiful women, beautiful beaches, amazing surfing, and cheap beer! My everyday routine was to wake up at sunrise, go down to the local cafe to grab a coffee, then head to the beach with my surfboard and dogs. I would surf until about noon then I would go home to work on my property for a few hours. In the evening I would head to my friends pizza place for dinner then after we would head out to the local bar to have a few beers, shoot some pool, party on the beach, and if it was a full moon go surf naked with the tourist girls. Each night would head home and go to bed excited to do it all again the next day. After about 2 years of this routine I was broke and homesick, so I decided to go back to California.

View from Property in Mexico

Surfing in Santa Cruz CA

Poker

Once I returned home I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with my life. I was 22, broke, and lost at what I wanted to do with my life. I got a temporary job at a nursing home that I hated and eventually ended up quitting and going to the community college to study computer sciences. While going to college , I found what I wanted to do with my life at the time... I wanted to play poker for a living! I started playing online poker while going to college and eventually one or the other had to give. Since I was having success with poker I decided to quit college (which I wasn't all that interested in anyways) and focus on poker full time. Soon after I did this the FBI shut down online poker in the USA and I was crushed. All my money at the time was locked on Full Tilt and I didn't know if I was ever going to see it again but I was determined... playing poker is what I wanted to do with my life. So I went back to work doing odd jobs here and there until I saved up enough money to have a bankroll to play live poker. My girlfriend and I at the time had moved into my Mom's vacant house in Stockton CA. Living in Stockton was terrible but I was able to play poker all over the Valley and Bay area and save money. Eventually I ended up getting a pretty awesome job being a "prop" or "shill"at a local card room that paid me $22 /hr to play poker . I saved up a lot of money and things were going really well... until I was robbed for 75% of my worth by (who I think was) one of the card dealers at the card room. At this point my girlfriend and I were sick of living in Stockton and decided to say "Fuck it, let's take a chance" and we packed our bags and moved to Las Vegas!

Thunder Valley Poker Tournament Win

Cash Game where I was a Prop in Tracy CA

Las Vegas Living

My girlfriend Emily and I arrived at Circus Circus Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip April 1st, 2014 with 5000.00 and no clue what to do. We were both anxious but also excited for whatever was to come. Within the first couple days of us being in Vegas we found a room to rent, a job for Emily, and I was playing poker daily. Things were going great. That summer, I decided to play some World Series Of Poker events. My luck wasn't going so well in the tournaments and I wasn't able to cash a single one which put me a bit in the hole but I still had enough of a bankroll to play and get by. Towards the end of the WSOP, I met a poker player that had Muscular Dystrophy and his friend asked me if I wanted to work for him as a caregiver. After having a not so successful summer I decided why not, the extra income could help. Once I started to work for Ryan I instantly became good friends with him and decided this was something I wanted to do full time. Poker was becoming more of a struggle and for the first time in my life I was doing a job that not only I enjoyed but I was doing something that helped someone else. After working for Ryan for 6 months I was asked to move into his house and take care of him full time, which I was more than happy to do. Now I have been working with Ryan for 2 years and it has been an amazing experience and it will probably be something I do until his last breath or mine.

Emily getting ready to go out on our first night in Las Vegas at Circus Circus

Second day in Las Vegas at Red Rock National Park

Photo of Ryan with his ladies

Ryan and I

Emily playing the ladies event at the WSOP

What brings me to Steemit?

About 3 months ago I was on vacation in my home town. While having dinner with a good friend of mine he started talking to me about Bitcoin, Ethereum and Steemit. At the time I had heard of bitcoin and I even had some from donations through my Twitch stream but, I had no idea what it was really. I was like everyone else just thinking that Bitcoin was just magical "internet money". After that dinner where my friend explained what it really was... I was hooked. Ever since that conversation I have been spending all my free time researching this amazing technology, investing what I can afford into cryptocurrency's, mining rigs, and more importantly educating myself so that I might have a future in this technology. Steemit for me as been an awesome source of information and I absolutely love the idea behind it as well as the community! Everyone here is so friendly and seems to share the same excitement I do! So as of right now my plans are to move over from broadcasting gaming content on Twitch (which I had been doing for the past year), to making a Youtube show about everything cryptocurrency (news, mining guides, how to guides, etc) that I will post up here on Steemit as well.

I thank you all for reading this! I look forward to the future of cryptocurrency and seeing the Steemit community grow! Also look for Emily's #introduceyourself post coming soon!

tim-johnston