I was aware of the fact that today is my 6 year Hiversary, but I still felt pretty good when the notification popped up in my feed :<)
In all honesty, I impressed myself for sticking to this place, through thick and thin.
Applause for myself! 👏
Now sit down and make yourself comfortable. Poor yourself a drink and grab a snack or two, this is gonna be a lengthy post ( and even lengthier if you read ( some of ) the posts that I will link to).
Are you ready? Good!
I never held a job for 6 years, not even close to that, in my 41 years of life in this body.
And not just that... in these past 6 years, I have been pretty consistent ( that is: for an unstructured creative like me ), as those who have been following me since the early days can probably confirm.
In the Autumn of 2020, I wrote a 2 part story on how I got to discover crypto in May 2017 and - a month later - crypto blogging and how I went pretty much all-in, from the start.
You can read about this in Cabin in the Woods - Part 1 and Part2 as that is where it started, in a cabin that was pretty much located in the woods, in the Eastern part of The Netherlands.
Believe it or not, even a country as small as The Netherlands has a Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern part and 12 provinces!
The rest is history.
History for me that is. If you want to know more, I invite you to read on.
So what happened ( in my life ) in those 6 years, starting in June 2017?
can't answer it all but I'll give a 'quick' overview.
When I just started out on Hive, I was trying desperately to keep a film project alive. It was called 'Los Ojos Rojos' ( The Red Eyes ) and I had worked on it on the smallest isle of The Canary Islands, from Fall 2016 to Early Spring 2017. It was supposed to be my first finished feature film ( and my second attempt at one ).
In July 2017 I pulled the plug, after a 'dramatic' conversation with the friend with whom I had been producing and writing this project, long distance, a guy living in the USA, with whom I had collaborated on film projects ( more or less actively ) since late 2013. I felt pretty devasted afterwards, as I had pretty much quit my job to focus full time on filmmaking and this was yet another unfinished project.
Writing about this lead to my first big payout on my blog, probably because of its title based on the words this friend used during our 'break up' Not Saying this to be a Dick but I don't think you're ready to do this...'
Fall of 2017, I 'fell' back into depression. It was time to make some serious changes.
My twinsister and I started to make plans to move to Portugal and to leave The Netherlands behind.
November 2017: I started blogging daily, to make money and keep myself accountable, building an audience as an added bonus.
It was also pretty much 'paid' therapy.
February 2018: I left The Netherlands, spent a short time in Berlin, 6 weeks in Spain and arrived in Portugal in April 2018.
Late March: I arrived in Portugal and felt at home immediately
July 2018: While chilling in Portugal, waiting for the paperwork of my house to be ready, I learnt that my father was diagnosed with a serious illness and that he would have 2 to 5 more years to live. Talking about timing... both my twin sister and I really struggled with this but we had to live our lives too,
I started working on another long distance film project with the aforementioned friend, called 'Shadows of the Tunnel People' ( shared dozens of posts about it on Hive, up till early 2019 ).
I also considered starting a podcast, for the very first time.
September 2018: Bought my first house ( and not just that: a house in another country! )
Here's a post on my first night in Monte Frio
I just realized that I still have those shoes!
December 2018: bought 1.3 Bitcoin and a couple of other coins at the bottom of the bear market, using inheritance money.
Quit/ paused my Tunnels of the Shadow People film project, after finishing 6 episodes. More on the why ( this time it was Ted proposing it, not me ) in The Power of Quitting - Part 2
Find all 6 episodes here:
Tunnels of the Shadow People on YouTube
2019 January - officially moved to/ registered in Portugal.
Spring: renovated my house and spent most of my crypto on that, selling off most coins at the worst possible time, when the market just started to recover somewhat.
February-March: Wrote a fictional story called 'Carnival Apocalypse' about people being afraid of the air they were breathing. It seemed funny at the time but wasn't funny a year later.
Read it here Carnival Apocalypse
Summer of 2019: met up with @yangyanje in both The Netherlands and Switzerland.
September: started playing around with gamemaking in bitsy.
October: invented a character called 'Hypersensitivosaurus' and created two ( attempts at ) computer games around it.
Finished my first game
November: almost went to India to attend @inuke 's wedding.
Also partook in NaNoWriMo ( National Novel Writing Month ) for the very first time and wrote 50k words for a never to be finished book, at least not in that shape and form, about a man writing his very first book titled: 'The Life of Hypersensitivosaurus'.
2020: Started a podcast with Zack ( now known as @selfhelp4trolls , back then as @whatamidoing )
2020: February, planned a visit to The Netherlands and seriously started dating. Then Corona took over all attention and dating became impossible, a 'danger', something only crazy people did.
Talking about timing.
March to June - Was 'locked down' in The Netherlands, started writing short stories about Hypersensitivosaurus and other animals.
I wrote this one at the end of the lockdown Leaving the Cave- a hypersensitivosaurus story that we can all relate to, days after having returned to Portugal.
Summer: left my house in Monte Frio and moved into my twin sister's guest house, as Corona had made Monte Frio extremely depressing and isolated and I hadn't come to Portugal to become depressed, once again.
November 2020: put my house up for sale.
December 2020: Moved into a house of friends with 5.5 hectares of land, bordering a river. These friends would migrate to Portugal and move into that exact house, in May 2021.
April 2021: almost lost a lot of crypto, after my laptop's internal harddisk died on me and my phone died the day after ( due to a toilet accident )
More on that in and then I dropped my phone in the toilet'
May 2021: moved to a neighboring house on a hill, basically just above the aforementioned house.
More on that in King of the Hill
my twinsister and I in front of that house, back then
October 2021: sold my house in Monte Frio
and then invested most of that money in crypto at the worst possible time, just before the short lived peak of the bull market ( and did not sell at the peak as I expected it to go a lot higher ).
February 2022: Finished and printed 10 copies of my first book and sent it to my parents' house
Spent months working on lino carving and -printing, in order to create illustrations for an improved edition of my book
that I ended up not making.
It didn't feel right.
July: Started working on my next book
Went to The Netherlands due to my father's deteriorating health and stayed there up till his passing mid September 2022 plus another month to be with my mom and spend some time by myself.
Bought a ukulele.
Rest of 22. Slowly got back into creative mode.
Got back to working on my book Hypersensitivosaurus and Cold Turkey.
February 2023: moved into an apartment in my favorite town in this area.
Here's a story on my first night and day there
Also in February: Started a podcast on the creative process
April 2023: Finished my second book and printed 50 copies and later 35 more, due to disappointing quality of the book binding.
May: received the book
Also started gamemaking again or gamifying my stories
Back to the now: 6 years on Hive!
Long story short:
This place pretty much healed my depression.
I made loads of friends, from all over the world.
It enabled me to pay my bills and maintain my freedom ( instead of slaving away for a wage and losing my creativity and thus my happiness, burning out )
It has been a testing ground for all my creative endeavours ( half of which I haven't even named here )
Hive is an important part of my life and I am grateful to all of you who are and have been upvoting me, giving me feedback and leaving me comments, encouraging me to keep going, no matter what.
Thank you! :<)
Huge ❤️🦖
raptor hug
Hypersensitivosaurus
aka Vincent
@vincentnijman Lit me up that you mentioned me. You are really inspiring to me. You are a really sensitive, sensible and mindful guy and so alive! You're much appreciated my dear friend!
:<)
Cheers buddy! Glad to hear thatr I could brighten your day!
Man, what a story! I loved reading this, thank you for pointing it out. I am sorry for all the losses, trials, and tribulations. Life is just hectic sometimes. But I am glad that things are looking better, I presume? Oh the feeling of having your book printed is the best! I have a poetry book that I managed to self publish in 2014 and the feeling was beyond this world. I also printed in manuscript form my novel, and nothing came of it but just having that stack of paper knowing you wrote it, that you made something tangible. Crazy. Anyways, thanks again for sharing your story!
A beautiful Hive story 😍
So lovely to hear it and so pleased we spoke on the day!
I look forward to many more creative conversations.
Happy Anniversary! ❤️
Thank you, Shani.
Yes, it was nice to have you join in on the call, albeit briefly :<)
Hear hear!
P.S. I appreciate your support :<)
❤️🦖❤️
What a story. I went to get cake and coffee in my favourite coffee mu- then got distracted and never left my long comment. However a lot has happened in these 6 years and like you I started my crypto journey May 2017. I joined the platform early though.
I will still need to cosy up as there are lots of links to click here and also 6 episodes to watch.
What a great life journey during these 6 years. Congratulations. Like that post with the long title - this post has also done amazingly.
All the best wishes for many more Hive years yo come.
Oops. I forgot to reply here.
❤️🦖
It sure was nice to actually get 'valued', for a change ;>)
❤️🦖❤️
I love your overview here, dear @vincentnijman - and what an achievement, to keep up this activity, creativity, transactioning and faith in a system like Hive: I love it! I went and checked my own logs and found that I am just 6 or 7 months behind you: I joined Steemit in January 2019, I think after being onboarded by Anja @connecteconomy - who I think I met through Marie Forleo's B-School??? I signed back into Steemit this morning, and was able to scroll down to my very first post!
Fascinating looking at the trajectory of the past few years, because I genuinely do not hold a linear view of years now, having moved into a very different relationship with time and chronology, since January 2019. The whole year of 2019 feels multi-levelled strange, and if I was forced to sit down and remember it with my front-lobe conscious, there'd be a big complex cloud of events and feelings - but at least having a record on the blockchain is powerful for reminding.
This does all make me reflect on the usefulness of linear thinking, as a creative: our Right to live organically, and to be fluidly moving between dimensions, dreams, visions and projects - the linear interrupts our creative genius! Hehe.
Happy Celebrations to you dearest friend: I am so glad to have met you and to have you beautiful presence in my lifework!
😍
Thank you, Clare :<)
I have this from 2020 onward. ( It does seem like ) we went through some kind of shared psychosis, that - unfortunately - started earlier and/ or lasted longer for some people. Anyhow, I don't want to dwell on that now.
This was supposed to be a celebration ;<)
but yeah, looking back in time, it sure brings back a lot of feelings, of ups and downs.
The feeling is mutual :<)
❤️🦖
I read your post when you posted it and wanted to comment at length, then got called away, so I'm sorry for the belatedness of this.
Huge congrats Vincent!!! 🎂
You managed to edit six years into a synopsis really well and I learned so much about your journey that I didn't previously know. I enjoyed your photos as well.
By the way, I finished your book and enjoyed it immensely right the way to the end which made me tear up. I knew there was a twist in there somewhere and he didn't actually do what the beginning makes you assume. I'm trying very hard to not include spoilers, it's not that easy lol.
It's very inspiring what you've achieved here and offline in the "real" world. Big hug and well done 😃 Have a great rest to the weekend.
This made my day. You're the first one bringing this up.
Love to hear it!
Another compliment I happily receive :<)
Thank you so much! 🦖❤️
You are so very welcome. It's well deserved.
Have a wonderful day Philosoraptor 🦖
❤️🦖
You made it! You’ve actually accomplished a lot. I didn’t even remember some of those things, like I didn’t realize you were still working on that older series well into your time at hive. Let me know if you wanna India next year. I may get happily dragged into a trip there 😆 would love to visit @inuke and maybe convince some others to have an international meet up there
Thank you, buddy! We have been pretty much brothers in arms ( as in arms and legs ) during this journey ;<)
Yes, or at least Steemit ;<)
time is weird, to say the least ⌛
India next year... I have to sleep on that. Yesterday @inuke asked me about moving to Portugal and buying a farm here ;<)
See you around! 🔥🦖❤️
Well tomatos 🍅 in demand and I need a farm...
Dude it was a pleasure (en een feest) to have met you both (@yangyanje ) in Switzerland. Always following the endeavors of what is happening over there and it is good to hear you are always building.
Congrats on the 6 years jong~!
Hee Karin,
yes, ik moest ook aan jou denken, toen ik dit schreef. Had to think of you too, when I wrote this and the couple of hours that the three of us spent together :<)
Thank you and I appreciate you calling me 'jong' ;<)
!giphy congratulations
!PIZZA
Via Tenor
Thank you :<)
❤️🦖❤️
Happy hiversary XD
And yay for it having a positive impact :)
Thank you! You are, without a doubt, one of the people on here who has had a positive impact on me, over the years :^)
Wow 6 years, unreal stuff and I love hearing how Hive brought you to a better place and enabled you to move on and even print some copies of you're second book. That's so cool, well done and best of luck with it.
Greetings from Ireland ☘️
Cheers! Another half a year and you will reach the big 6 yourself!
Greetings from a Dutch 🦖 in Portugal
Yes not long to go! Greetings back from an Irishman in Spain (temporarily)
Haha, on holidays? ;<)
disfruta españa!
Ya in Spain for ten days. One of my favorite countries bar none. We come here at least once a year (it will be 3 times this year)
Spain once used to be my favorite country.
Didn't feel the same about it, once I had left the Netherlands, back in 2018 and made my way, once again, to Spain,
eventhough I tried all my favorite cities from the past.
PerhapsI had changed ( since the last time I was there, in 2009 ). As soon as I crossed the border to Portugal, I felt better...Interesting... What don't you like now? Anything specific or just the general vibe? I do like Portugal too, heading there in October.
It's been such a pleasure sharing my Hive journey with you. Wow we both have been through so much.
I've got a lot of love for you Vincent. Thank you for your friendship, can't wait to chill with you one day xxxxx
:<) 👍
❤️🦖❤️
Wow! This is really inspiring.
I just recently started hive and still a newbie at cryptocurrency but with what I just read here I think it's time I write about my experience so far being a pharmacy student and learning about cryptocurrency along side.
Glad I could inspire you :<)
I am really inspired. At least I have no doubt I am in the right place😊. It was nice getting to read your journey on hive @vincentnijman. I believe I will be at your level someday
Glad I could inspire you :<)
Believe is the first step and then it's all about taking things day by day.
Thank you so much Sir. I would definitely put some work on...
You're welcome and no need to call me sir ;>)
🦖
Thank you so much 😊
Congratulations @vincentnijman🥳✨
Obrigado!
❤️🦖
This Story is unbelievable,
Look Forward an write more. Greetings from Germany
Happy Anniversiary.
Danke schön!
It really happened ;<)
but I think many of us have stories like these
Many many congratulations for your 6th hive anniversary. I've been working here for eight months now and I know how much hard work it takes and the way you've been for six years is pretty cool.
Thank you! It takes a lot of work, but it's also about finding the play(fulness), over and over again.
Keep going, before you know it you're at 1 year in.
Most welcome dear.
@vincentnijman Congratulations on ALL OF IT!
Obrigado! :<)
De nada!
This post has been manually curated by @bhattg from Indiaunited community. Join us on our Discord Server.
Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share more than 100 % of the curation rewards with the delegators in the form of IUC tokens. HP delegators and IUC token holders also get upto 20% additional vote weight.
Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.
100% of the rewards from this comment goes to the curator for their manual curation efforts. Please encourage the curator @bhattg by upvoting this comment and support the community by voting the posts made by @indiaunited.
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@bhattg(1/10) tipped @vincentnijman
!LOL
lolztoken.com
To the dock
Credit: reddit
@vincentnijman, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of @phillarecette
(2/6)
Glad this made you laugh ;<)
Happy 6th Hive Birthday OG! 😎
Cheers! First time I'm called an OG. I guess there's a first for everything ;<)
lol I think 5 years + makes you OG status around these parts ;D
Haha, I see.
In that case you're an OG too
😎
Happy Anniversary! 🎉🚀❤️
Thank you, Ana :>)
❤️🦖
Congregations for being here
You are at the congregation too ;<)
sorry, word joke.
congregation
kŏng″grĭ-gā′shən
noun
The act of assembling.
A body of assembled people or things; a gathering.
A group of people gathered for religious worship.
Source
My previous @v4vapp proposal has expired. I have a new one which is running but unfunded right now. I'm still running @v4vapp and all my other services.
I've just updated v4v.app and I'm getting ready for some exciting new features after the next hard fork.
Please consider asking your friends to vote for prop #265 or consider unvoting the return vote.
For understandable reasons in the current crypto climate it is harder to get funded by the DHF, I accept this so I'm asking a wider audience for help again. I'll also add that I power up Hive every day and usually power up larger amounts on 1st of the Month. I'm on Hive for ideological reasons much more than for only economic benefit.
Additionally you can also help with a vote for Brianoflondon's Witness using KeyChain or HiveSigner
If you have used v4v.app I'd really like to hear your feedback, and if you haven't I'd be happy to hear why or whether there are other things you want it to do.
Congratulations @vincentnijman! Your post has been a top performer on the Hive blockchain and you have been rewarded with this rare badge
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out our last posts:
The hive hypersensitivosaurus you are known and appreciated, congrats on the big 6
See ya
Haha! Thank you :<)
💚