I’m in Hive Heaven! You haven’t seen my final form...

My favorite thing about blogging are those days when the topic and time of posting just seem to match, I hit that nerve that gets people talking, like really talking, sharing real thoughts and feelings. A full comment section is such a treat.

My past two posts attracted the kind of amazing comments that make you forget that payout is a thing. I love it when people bare their soul for you and speak from the heart and I actually post less these days precisely because I want to make sure I have time for conversation in the comment sections and on discord. I’m still swamped with work and stuff so it’s not easy but it’s so much more fun to be here when it’s a dialogue rather than a monologue.

As many know already, and some of you may not, I’m the artist formally known as @whatamidoing. Changing accounts at this platform does not come without downsides. Even if people love what you write and consider you a Hive friend, there’s no guarantee that everyone will notice that you’ve changed your handle. That can be a lot of lost people on autovote (including inactive accounts, lost forever), and a lot of people who won’t see you on their feed anymore.

It takes a long time to reach 72 rep and amass 2800 followers, even if many may be bots and people who left the platform. Those kind of numbers don’t come back overnight. Luckily I was able to get a nice push from the one whale who pokes in to show me love every once in a while since I was a wee little minnow here, and a bunch of shares from friends of various interests and networks.

I never really explained my reasoning for changing handles, not in full anyway. I told you I had reached a new stage of my life and felt like a totally person and that was true and a big part of it but there was a lot more behind the decision.

In all honesty, one of the big reasons was to simplify any future accounting I may have to do...but there was a bigger reason that I never really expressed and it’s one that makes me feel like a true elder here already, and makes me want to reach more people because I can’t think of a better feeling than this at Hive:

I no longer give a crap about how much I earn from Hive.

“Not at all? So I shouldnt upvote your posts?”. No, no, please do. I’m still hoping to reach whale status one day, I love the support. Nowadays though, I’m not counting how much money I’m earning here anymore. All I’m counting is how big my upvote is and how many people I reach.

I used to think about how much I could earn if I were to cash out. How much bitcoin or USD would my account be worth if the price of Hive doubled or tripled? Now I’m just thinking of all that possibilities that a larger stake at Hive can achieve.

I’m stacking, and the only reason for that is influence on the platform. I want to see all I can accomplish here, with such an awesome group of people and an incredible structure that incentivizes people to be their best and to interact in meaningful way.

I may cash out a bit here and there but I’d be ok to just HODL forever too. If I do end up spending some hive, I’d prefer to do it within the ecosystem, rather than cash it out.

Actually, my financial situation isn’t exactly one in which I couldn’t use the extra money, but that’s exactly why I’ve been busy off chain. I want to build a life with multiple income streams, and for me Hive has always seemed better as a store of value (as opposed to a means of sustaining myself) because your stake works for you, to earn more stake but also to decide where the incentives go and how the whole place evolves.

I want to see what I can build here with more passion than plans and with a less strict insistence on what’s on chain and what’s off chain. Hive is my home online, and I think it will be as long as it attracts the kind of people it attracts.

At the same time, there is so much I can do in my physical life, there is much I can do on old shitty social media and I don’t think it has to take away from what I can put into Hive. **My ultimate goal here is to integrate Hive into my social life, my travel, my work, my art, and my interactions off-chain at other social media. I’m tired of trying to compartmentalize my life into “work” and “play” and “blogging” and “art”. It all overlaps anyway.

I don’t want to call myself an “influencer” because I believe all of us with something to share are essentially influencers. I’m also tired of separating my work as a teacher from my work as an artist from my work as a writer or commentator. The profile change was made in preparation for integrating all aspects of my life and creating a network effect between them.

It will be a challenge, there is no doubt about that. By connecting all the dots of my life, I make myself very vulnerable, and also create a kind of accountability for everything I do and say which can be a lot of pressure. I don’t plan on changing my sporadic and casual nature either. I am still a fuckface idealistic experimental weirdo who doesn’t care to sugar coat or to package things. I’m proud of it and I think that if I keep a clear head， anyone who needs to understand will understand. Trying to market my unmarketability is a challenge that only someone like myself would dare to try. Is it pure foolishness though? I do not think so.

I discovered the difference between inspiration and motivation a few years ago, and I realized the reason I’ve never been very successful in reaching my goals is that I had a beautiful engine that was meant to run off inspiration and I was feeding it motivation.

Motivation is pushing yourself to achieve. It’s the hard work. Inspiration is that same work except that it no longer feels like work, it feels damn good.

**Inspiration is the flow state, when your job no longer feels like a job and you want to work harder at it. Inspiration is doing things because you want to, not because you have to, but to be able to live a life based on inspiration, you have to want to do the things you have to do.

I’m lucky enough to have learned this whole process well enough that I can teach it to others but by segmenting my life I’m making it a whole lot harder for myself.

That’s why I changed my account name and I might end up with multiple active accounts, though unlike in the past, I’ll do that for people who are interested in one aspect of my work and not another, rather than trying to be a different person in front of my family or when I’m working.

This plan is still evolving. My parents discovered my YouTube channel the other day, and while I was expecting them to say “you look awful” they said “we are so proud of the things you are trying to share”. That was incredibly powerful to me because they were always my biggest reason for self censorship and compartmentalizing my presence online. It’s very strange to now feel simultaneously “Thanks for supporting me, I love you guys” and “I no longer care if you agree or disagree, I’m done censoring myself to please you. If you have any complaints, well I’ve heard them already, so not interested in hearing them again.” Thankfully they seem to get it!

I’m now toying with how to ease my students in to some of the things I share online, both art and commentary. I think discord will be the way i ease them in. I’m going to have to start targeting a very specific kind of student if I want this to work, and chances are I’ll lose a few along the way because my approach to life and teaching and art is not for everyone. That’s ok.

Last month three different friends reached out to me and asked me how to start a blog at Hive. This is after years of not much success with onboarding. None of them have shared their username with me yet but I feel this is a sign that things are moving in the right direction.

When it comes down to it, I know too many great people. Some are online, some are friends and some are students and clients and strangers familiar with my work. I need to help them all connect, and it’s selfish for me to do anything that prevents it. At the same time, I don’t need to push them either. If I’m just more transparent in all aspects of my life, it’ll all come together naturally.

That’s what this account is about. I love the name @whatamidoing, but I don’t want it to define me. @selfhelp4trolls is kind of a tricky one too but at least it is related to the energy that I share. I am very much into self improvement and self understanding, and at the same time, I don’t want to take it all so seriously. I’ve been a guru. It wasn’t all that fun, and I was poor as fuck. I think I’d rather be a teacher who uses bad language and cares about people.

I have many plans for how I want to do all this. I’ve set aside June for fixing my back. After 6 years of not being able to sit in a chair for an hour without getting all tight. I’ve been making real progress too. I recently discovered that it was an unstable QL muscle that would cause my situation to deteriorate despite all kinds of treatment and exercise and since focusing more on this, I feel my overall condition improving dramatically, though I still have down days.

I’ll be spending the next few weeks easing into new routines and activities and slowly getting used to heavier work loads and more active days. As I get better at integrating everything, you’ll be seeing a lot more of me. 😃

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Confessions of the Damaged - Out Now!

🎬Self Help For Trolls

🎸I + Everything

📕 Confessions of the Damaged OUT NOW :-)

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