Hello Fellow Hivers,
I am Pro Veritas aka Namastoad on twitter, my friends call me Rob. Nice to meet you! 🙂
I was onboarded by @thatkidsblack who has been a true friend in difficult times.
I am originally from the Netherlands and now live in Belgium. As a child I grew up in Persia, Nigeria and Libya, this was quite the experience on which I will share in future posts.
When I was 10 years old me and my family moved back to the Netherlands where I continued growing up in the city of Amsterdam. I was a gentle child and found it difficult to find my place in this concrete jungle, but eventually, I did find my way.
High school was hard on me, as the odd man out I was bullied a lot and coming from such a different culture this was bewildering to me, kids can be cruel.
It didn't change me though, I found friends, had fun, made mistakes and left school at the age of 18.
I was planning to take a year off from education and work to gain some experience, this turned out quite differently than I thought!
I discovered House music! Especially the harder styles appealed to me so I went to raves every weekend after a hard weeks work to blow of steam, started collecting records, bought some turntables and started teaching myself how to DJ and produce music on a computer.
I never became a big household name but definitely managed to gather a following so to speak.
In 1996 my fist breakthrough happened and I became a member of the Dutch Rave act known as "Party Animals" a band that was formed out of the radio edit for Technohead's hardcore track: "I want to be a Hippy".
4 Years of absolute fun were next, we toured all over the place, mainly western Europe and even went to Hong Kong to represent the Dutch music scene at "Midem Asia", an industry event where musicians and artists from all over the world could showcase themselves.
As it is with all trends, the one we were a part of also ended and we went our separate ways professionally.
I made a career in logistics but in my free time still continued with electronic music.
Being an insider of the music industry however, I had also seen the dark side of it, the exploitation, the mass hypnosis, the abuse and so on.
This insight set me off on a new path and so I started my spiritual journey, beginning with the research of music throughout history and its perceived effects on the mind, body and soul. This took me down a rabbit hole of wonder, amazement and profound realizations. 6 years of my life went into this and I came out a changed man.
I will speak on this in another blog post.
For now I'll just continue with my introduction.
after being single for quite a long time I met what could be called my soulmate. We moved in together and as she already had children I became a parent overnight, this was quite a challenge!
We had quite a ride so far, we separated even but we could never get each other out of our systems, the universe had different plans for us and years later, we are still together.
It has been hard though, through making some bad decisions we are struggling financially, trying to make ends meet and surviving.
Enter $TURBO..
I had been dabbling with art and with crypto the last few years and a couple of months ago I came across a project that combines the 2, Turbotoadtoken by Rhett Mankind.
I was really moved by the story of it's inception so I joined the discord, re-vitalized my Twitter account and started participating.. Here is where I met @thatkidsblack and several other amazing people.
I became a very active member, then a mod on the discord and in the meanwhile making lots of toad inspired ai art and memes! Mind you, I had zero experience with ai before turbo and it opened me up to a realm of creativity I had never encountered before..
I came out of a years long depression thanks to some of the wonderful members there, I slowly came back out of my shell and discovered hope where there was only desperation before.
I will not dive into all that has transpired in this community as I am here to share my story.
@thatkidsblack has become a true friend, showing support, giving advice and helping me out any way he could.
He suggested I join Hive to share my story, my insights and anything else I have to offer so here I am.
In full transparency I will say this, Me and my Family are in trouble, my employer screwed me over big time and this months rent cant be paid. I have asked for help in my community and joining hive was one of the suggestions I got from @thatkidsblack to start leveraging my story, my insights, my perspective, my creativity and my vision.
So here I am, out in the open, willing to discover, to engage, to share and to be valued once again after years of having no confidence in myself, having lost faith in life and people and being just flat-out pessimistic about the world in general.
I am so done with it! Life is wonderful, this world is amazing, people can be genuine and loving and making true connections once again is my main objective!
Expect many posts from me in the future, I have closed myself of for years, after being such an open being my whole life. Thank you for having me and thank you for your time!