This month I celebrate my first year on Steemit, and am feeling quite celebratory about it. And thanks to the inspiration of @riverflows and @metametheus, I am writing about my natural change that has occurred recently here on Steemit.
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When I began and for the first 11 months or so, I was a daily poster, seven days a week, a post a day, month in and month out. I pushed myself and nothing was more important to me than to get a post out before going to sleep every night. It meant I pushed myself, slept later or less, just to make the post. I haven't worked this hard in years. I don’t need to work hard and generally have a fantastic holiday life because my needs are few and my surroundings are idyllic on the south coast of Africa.
But since the hard Fork HF21, a few weeks ago, I changed. I stopped writing daily posts, and I spontaneously relaxed my effort. Initially I was voluntarily pushing myself to produce content, and it brought out the best in me. But since the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) invoked by the hard fork, and since I was tiring psychologically of pushing myself, and since steem price was dropping like a stone and payouts were dwindling, I decided to just relax and not push myself so hard.
We all blog and curate voluntarily and it’s up to the individual here on steemit. Well, it just happened to coincide with HF21, but my mood forked with the hard fork, and I now no longer post daily but rather whenever I feel like it, which may be once a week or more, it doesn’t matter.
This was the biggest change that occurred in my life this year online, and on steemit. No more working myself hard. The foundation has been created on steemit, now the time to relax or change is in. And this change happened spontaneously. Would I have stopped daily posting if there was no hard fork? I don’t know, but probably, as I was getting tired. 300 posts later and the drop in steem rewards left me feeling less “pumped” to chase the profit, for that’s what it was, along with a desire to share my insights with the world.
So the winds of change arose naturally in my life this Spring – being in the Southern hemisphere. Spring is a natural time of change. Cape Town, my home town, experiences the most fierce and hectic winds every Spring. It is called the “Cape Doctor”, this South-easter wind because it blows away all the urban CBD pollution that may build up in the air. So it’s a built-in wind of change around September. Perhaps that’s why I acted as if "entrained" by a lifetime of growing up in the Mother City – Cape Town. It’s my windy season and time for a change, so I allowed myself to relax, change my focus and my lifestyle.
Writing my steemit daily blog post was the primary meditation daily up until now, and with it absent, I can focus on other things. I still write and post when I feel like it, but now my new focus is creating musical experience. Creativity has shifted to my other interests and dormant skills. I’m a total amateur but I enjoy deejaying, compiling “mix tapes” as they used to be called, one hour seemless dj mixes on my home Virtual DJ software.
Ironically, without any apparent connection, I have just been invited to perform as a DJ at a huge public electronic dance music event here called Organik, which occurs annually. Not on the main dance floor where they pump out 140 BPM (beats per minute) but on the secondary chill dance floor or lounge area. I play Psydub genre, at about 80-110 BPM, starting off at zero beats with Indian chanting and Sanskrit mantras to invoke an auspicious beginning to the event, since I’m going to be the opening act, then moving into a reggae dub style with mystical Indian undertones. Africa meets India you could say. Although reggae is Jamaican, it has roots in Africa.
So without trying, I went with the change internally, and it drew to me the opportunity to use the very creative skill I had begun to focus on. I will get paid for my DJ gig next weekend, so am spending time rehearsing musical mixing on the decks and writing less. This is how I roll with change. If I feel it internally, I go with it and it seems to open up natural doors of opportunity accordingly.
I will keep you posted as to how the musical event goes with my DJ gig next Friday outside the Mother City – Cape Town – in the countryside. It goes on all weekend non stop with electronic psychedelic trance music, a favorite here among the youth for the past 20 years, since it launched. Psytrance has come a long way, is faster than it used to be when it emerged in the late nineties, as the youth evolve into having faster brains, with more stimulus and less attention span, thanks to the digital era.
One thing is certain though, that this too will change, as tastes, styles and generations change constantly. Nothing can stop it. Trying to stop change is like trying to stop the wind.