3 years on HIVE blockchain (Hive OG in the making)

alex-rourke (71)in #hive • last year (edited)

Slex Rourke 3 year anniversary on HIVE.png

I should have started sooner.

Many people probably feel this way, but I really wish I would have.

Why?

Because I probably would have figured out HIVE sooner and would have started building and strengthening the community sooner.

It is what it is.

Let me tell you a little bit about how it happened.

April 2019

My studio, Recording Box, was barely a year old.

I was still figuring out how to find clients. One of the bands that would often come rehearse at my studio was named Jog Shuttle. The singer and guitarist named Ted came up to me after rehearsal and told me it might be a good idea to talk to a friend of his. His name was Ijatz and he was part of a project called Musicoin, that helped musicians monetize their music through something called cryptocurrency.

I was like… oh that thing they call bitcoin or something?

yeah, something like that.

So I agreed to meet with @ijatz

I showed up about 30 minutes before the agreed time. He's a European guy so I didn't want to be rude by showing up late. I ordered some coffee, sat back, and waited.

When the time came, I looked up and saw this amazingly happy human being. He was so full of energy and greeted me with a high five followed by a fist bump and a twirl. It was the coolest way of meeting somebody I had ever experienced.
meeting Ijatz.png

He told me about the Musicoin project and explained a little bit about how blockchain technology worked. he said, you know, there’s this place, it’s like a forum where you can blog and interact with other members and earn some cryptocurrency in the process. It’s called Schleem.

Being the business-minded guy that I am, I thought Why not use this as an avenue to post some of the work I do with recording artists. I’ve got YouTube, SoundCloud and now I have this Schleem thing-a-majig.

And while this WAS a great idea. nobody knew who I was. I wasn’t really a member of the community. I was just someone behind a recording studio name.

My very first post earned me a big fat zero HIVE! hahaha

My posts eventually earned something, but I still felt so anonymous.

So I decided to make my own account and start from scratch.

October 2020

I sat down and started coming up with ideas of what to call myself. I had an avatar I used for years named Event Horizon. Why don’t I call myself that?

Alex Rourke self portrait for HIVE.png

Nah, I already used that one. Maybe I’ll make up a new one, something more bad ass!

Death Defiant
Triple X
Viserion the mighty

Samurai in armour.png

Whoa! settle down there Scooter! someone is compensating!

I threw all those ideas out the window and asked myself, why not just use my regular name?

I checked for Alex Rourke, and sure enough it was available, so I went with that.

Ok, now what am I going to talk about? I’m not a celebrity, I don’t have an incredibly interesting life. I’m not an influencer that travels to exotic destinations with amazing cameras or drive fancy cars. Why would anybody want to follow me. I’m not a YouTuber, damn it! and I’m definitely not a writer.

Well, what if I’m just myself? What if I just talk about what I do, what I like and maybe I’ll make some new friends and get a little better at blogging in the process? Doesn’t hurt to try, right?

And that was it!

That was the first step needed to be part of a community. Just show up, be honest about who I am and what I do and listen to other folks, of course. I started sharing pictures of my garden, and my BBQ grill, and sure enough I started meeting like-minded people who I could discuss a particular topic with, a particular genre of music or just tell jokes. I also met people I didn’t have things in common and that was OK too. We’re human and we’re all a little bit different.

This was the beginning of my journey in the HIVE ecosystem.

Now all of that was fun: meeting new people on yet another social media platform where I could learn about nerdy stuff and maybe earn some cryptocurrency that I could later cash out. Or was there more to it?

Yes, there was more

This was right around the time the whole alien invasion happened and conversations were being had about decentralization and governance. People were fighting Justin Sun and each other, communities were muting members, bots were running amuck; it was chaos, lol. But the community managed to break away from Sun Yunchen and settle it its new home, full of uncertainty, but also full of opportunity.

Developers kept working hard and making improvements to the blockchain and hard fork after hard fork, core dev meeting after core dev meeting, things started improving.

I also started changing. I become more interested in getting involved and using my voting power to help decide the direction of our blockchain. I started doing more research about who the top witnesses were and I decided that I needed to gain as much hive power as possible to make my voice heard within the community and to have some curation power with folks who I considered were adding value to the ecosystem.

And this is where I am now. Just a regular guy with a small business and absolutely zero coding skills, but with a lot of love for HIVE, 3 years under my belt and an 8-year, no-powerdown plan until 2030.

I'm here for the long term you guys.

I'm here to BUIDL, help those that are new to the ecosystem, vote for our witnesses and fight if the time comes.

I'm a HIVE OG in the making.

It's quite convenient that my 3 year Hive anniversary is around the same time as my actual birthday, because I'm going to celebrate another year on planet Earth this weekend.

Images created using Mid Journey
Image of Justin Sun is from CoinGape.com

#anniversary #community #history #commitment