The day the steam blew off

in #introduceyourself7 years ago (edited)

Hello everybody,

My name is Sorin Cristescu and I live in Luxembourg (little landlocked "Grand Duchy" in the middle of Europe).

Antithesis of a hot dancing chick, I am an owlish, nerdy, rather fat middle-aged man, so I guess (human nature being what it is) I'm out of luck as concerns my production being upvoted and resteemed.

I could take a picture of myself holding a paper with "SteemIt" and today's date on it but
a) I would look very silly; it's ok to look silly when 23, less so when you could have kids that age
b) You'd really not find much to please your eye (if anything at all) in that picture (and possibly quite the contrary)

I'm here because I'm interested in blockchain technologies, game theory, social sciences (organizational dynamics, social action), politics, economics (especially behavioral economics), psychology, education. I love writing thought pieces (which require effort both to write AND to read) and I love reading well thought-out articles. Steemit might not be quite that place yet, but I see no reason why it could not become.

So, as the Zuck once said, "better done than perfect", here is my introduction.

Second-day edit: I thought I'd enliven the post with a picture nonetheless. A white rose for fellow Steem-ers from my younger daughter (who gave consent to dad using a picture of her, unlike my elder daughter, who knows better ...)

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Welcome! Gave you a follow! giphy.gif

Thank you davidmccauley. I see (52) next to your name. Am I right to suppose that is your "steem power" ? I need to read how this works, seems a bit complicated at this point.

Hi Sorin!
Welcome to steem! Great article. Keep them cool! I am your follower :)

welcome @Sorin.cristescu to Steemit :) Glad to see you. I hope you enjoy your time here, its a great community :) Nice post, i will follow your account, please follow me at @khunpoom

Well khunpoom I understood you are a bot. I'd love to meet the guy who programmed you.

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Welcome to Steemit! It's good time to start create Steemit better :)

Hi dobroman, I've read a very similar message from you on another "introduceyourself" post. And then there was someone sniffing that you, too, like khunpoom, might be a bot. Are you?

Hi @sorin.cristescu welcome to Steemit, have a nice time ahead.

Welcome to Steem @sorin.cristescu I have upvoted and sent you a tip

Welcome to Steemit @sorin.cristescu, I have upvoted and sent you a tip. Check my blogs if you are looking for tips on how to earn more Steem and SBD.

Hi, what do you mean by "sent me a tip"? I'll try to check your blogs at the next opportunity

😄👏🏻 Welcome to Steemit! I wish you all the best in this platform and in all your projects! You can count on me for anything you need. I send you a big hug from Argentina! @kryptoland 👍🏻😄🇦🇷

Thank you kryptoland! I would be grateful if you'd read my other articles and told me what you think !

Hola! I saw that you are new on steemit so welcome to steemit. This deserves an upvote and maybe upvote some of my stuff too!
When having a new account it can be hard to recieve many upvotes so my advice would be to give Steemfollower a go as you can earn up to 5x more steem than just upvoting by yourself! It's a simple and safe vote exchange that is free to use. I have more info on it in this post where I go over the system in more depth and, believe it or not, this has become my most upvoted post yet.

I guess having two daughters keeps you too busy for writing new posts? :)

You write well and have the ability of organising your thoughts so as to make your point (I'm not very good at that - even when I have a point to make).

I look forward to seeing more articles, though hopefully, not all about bitcoins, blockchain etc.

Thank you, Arthur. Have you read the one about Luxembourg? What have you thought of it?
Thing is, I am very passionate about the power of blockchain to change the society (for the good) and I've also noticed that most people on steemit are here because of interest in bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, so these are the topics most likely to cater to the audience.

Basically the idea is that we each make posts of the kind and subject that interests us. For me to write an article about blockchain, just becuse it pays better, apart from my ignorance showing through, my lack of interest means my post will be boring.

It would be nice if the number next to our name (nik) were our ages. I would do all I can to tke my Rep back down to about 10.

As for the bots and those endless 'I voted for you, so vote for me', either ignore them, or else just give a curt 'No'. They know that it is against the rules, but each young person always thinks he is more intelligent than everyone else and sees ways to make money here that we have not. When they get flagged by some-fed-up-posterand taken down to zero, then they get bewildered and plead they did not know. It may work with European courts, but it does not with Steemian posters.

Interesting thing though is how you discovered Steemit then? You could have posted your nice stories on Blogger or Wordpress or Facebook or in many other places. How did you discover Steemit and what made you go through the rather annoying process of account creation?

Thanks, your reply shows you actually took a look to see what I am posting.

I have never had anything to do with any social media. To me they were just a distraction and I was spending at least eight hours a day writing. The internet, for me, was only for downloading SF&F stories (from Baen, as they offer beautiful ebooks for free - I am surviving on a South African pension, so that aspect is important), doing torrent for music and movies and for emails.

After I wrote my 13th book (it ended on Word page 9500, each page the equivalent of 2.5 printed pages) I ended up with Carpal tunnel syndrome and had to stop (2014). Since then I have only been re-reading for proof-reading the books. I was dismayed to realise that even after proof-reading for the 5th time, I was still finding mistakes.

As I now had more time, I started exploring the web. I do not recall how I found Steemit, but the first thing I did is go to the tag 'writing' and discover a number of very well written stories. For my stories to be in such company felt like a dream.

All I understood about blockchain, is that if I put my stories into the blockchain, they will outlast me. I did not know that I cannot make posts with, say a 100 pages at a time, for there is a limit of 65kb for text.

I would have given up, as to add all my books to steemit will take at least six years and I don't think I have that much time. Another thing to take into consideration is that people who come to steemit are like kids in a candy store (the old kind, where loose sweets were kept in bottles), and they want one sweet from here and one from there - and rarely take the time to read anything more than a page.

After four months, I only have one reader, so I have been coming close to giving up. Then, I wake up this morning and find two messages! Yours and another one from someone who is a dolphin and has done very well. He wants to know why I am not creating ebooks with my stories.

Wow!

The truth is, by posting here, my proof-reading is totally different. I have been even cutting out entire paragraphs, or even adding some, so as to improve the flow of the story. I already have all my books in .pdf, but if I were to do a web site and make the books available there, I would give up on the proof-reading - and I do not want to do so.

I've decided I do not have a choice. I'll just have to make certain I live for as long as possible to upload as many of the books as I can. I was thinking I can, as a temporary solution. create a site and place my books there in encrypted .rar files. The moment I die, the password to the files is freely made available, but, in the meantime, as I do my final editing each finalised book becomes available.

Something like that is my way of thinking. Now I will go to see what the dolphin has to suggest.
:)

((If you read this far, thanks.))

Ok, several points.

  1. surviving on a South African pension - being a creative person myself I've always dreamt of being able to live out of the royalties paid for my creation, as you should be able to do. I've read a post or two from a guy nickname etcmike where he talks about getting an income stream from Steemit. I think that is more or less the very philosophy of this platform. His explanation is pretty complicated, I could not yet make sense of it all but I'll try harder.
  2. never heard of Baen. I've kinda stopped reading fiction about 10 years ago, I can't bring myself to it again as I feel guilt - I feel I am wasting time and that I should be reading something more important. When I need to relax I play strategy games (mostly boardgames nowadays).
  3. blockchain is fascinating and has the power to lastingly change society. The fact that it's persistent is just one aspect. Think that done right (steemit is trying) it could allow you to live from your writing without the need for a publisher acting as a gatekeeper and perceiving a hefty toll in the (happy) event that it allows you to offer your writing to people who enjoy it. Blockchain can allow people to "monetize" their work directly by supporting a world where each of us pays with his or her work directly (as circulating personal IOUs but we are maybe going too deep into economics)
  4. I guess the lesson of your story is: never give up!
  5. I hope a dolphin, orca, narwal, cachalot or blue whale reads my articles too, one day ! :)

Thanks.
For most people, it takes about six months to a year before we arrive at the point where we have enough people interested in our posts, for surviving from steemit income to be viable.

As I said, all I'm now interested in doing is posting my stories. I will also create a site where they can be found in pdf and rtf form. The truth is, I love the idea of knowing that the worlds I created exist also in other minds.

You have seen a couple of political posts I've made. I make them, but have no interest in discussing them, it takes too much of my time from my stories. So I cut you off when you decided to argue with me. Now you know why.

hi there Sorin,

I came across your posts for a few times and I thought I should try to contact this guy so here I am, at your first post. :)

I am hoping that you can give me an email so we can communicate. If you are not comfortable leaving personal info on chain, maybe telegram account first?

Anyway, nice to meet you.

Hi there, Dean

Good, I take it that it was worth promoting my posts to Trending, bought me some visibility :)

Telegram: replace the dot of my steemit handle with an underscore :)