Road to Steemfest Choices: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Choices, wow I don't know where to start. Let's start with the good 😉 Just over a year ago I signed up to steemit and after a few weeks of mooching about, not writing much I discovered the creative writing communities on discord. For anyone who doesn't already know, I'm an imaginative writing graduate. Maybe that could go in the bad choices section as it didn't really help me with any employment opportunities, but I am a big believer in reaching for a dream, striving for it and making it reality. This is what I tried to do with my degree in writing, as I managed to get a large portion of a novel written after I finished university and before I got sick. Anyway, I'm going off point, the steemit creative writers communities helped me start writing again after a 3 year period of producing nothing other than the odd poem, which when I look back on them were all pretty bad. This is what lack of practice will do. Through various health struggles this year, various people on steemit, have always been there for me. Encouraging, rewarding and pushing me to continue honing my craft. I can't express how much this means to me. This whole community is such a positive thing for a writer.

Steemfest has also inspired another positive choice in my life, which is to do with my health. I have been suffering a long term chronic condition for over 6 years now which doctors have been unable to help me with, despite undergoing a huge amount of treatments. I don't want to go too much into that here, if you want to get the whole story check out this dtube video. The upshot of all of it is that I am in the middle of a 10 day juice fast to see if that will help at all and I have other plans for after the fast, including a much stricter/healthier diet and maybe experimenting with some other natural medicines, just in case the fast has no effect.

This decision and these plans, were inspired by my desire to visit steemfest 3. I was sat at my computer a few weeks ago, having a particularly bad flare-up with fatigue, unable to write or do anything much. Suddenly it hit me, that I didn't want to feel this way at the biggest party of steemians in the universe. As I sat there I imagined being at Milliways 'the restaurant at the end of the universe' from Doug Adam's hitchhickers guide series, everyone sitting there drinking and laughing, while I was wrestling with a dodgy stomach and fighting to think through brain fog. Not gonna happen, so I decided to get proactive. This is just what I'm like, a little reactive sometimes, but generally in a positive direction.

Finally, one of the best choices I have made is to enter two of the four contest to win tickets to the steemfest conference. I have major financial stresses which may prevent me from attending, although I will do everything I can, short of selling my kidneys, to make it regardless. The contests represent a hope for me, and also the need to hope. Whether I win a ticket or not, I'm glad I've entered them. After all, life would be pretty shity without a bit of hope to pull you through.

I have also made some bad decisions for sure, but most of them have been partly driven by desperation, part by belief. I guess this is the way sometimes, and when it pans out it is awesome because you have gone out on a limb and it has paid off. Ha ha, but my financial decisions haven't followed the 'out on a limb paying off' scenario. The severity of the symptoms of my illness have left me unable to work full-time and I have ended up in pretty massive debt to utility suppliers (Electricity etc). This completely shows what I'm like in regards to single-mindedly going for the things I believe in. I didn't have a choice in the matter of getting into debt, rather in who to not pay. I have spent the last year putting all of my energy into my plans to travel as a digital nomad, hoping to fund this partly through steemit and crypto, while working through various treatments for my illness. Then boom the market crashed, wiping out those dreams, for the time being at least. I didn't loose tones of money, but my inital investment quickly dropped well below what I had put in.

If my grandfather were still alive, he would be going nuts at these decisions, claiming that I've made a stupid mistake and generally deriding them. C'est la vie, he was just that type of guy, but I'd argue that my decision was right in the circumstance I'm in, as I've been working toward the goal that I want to achieve in my life rather than bowing to others expectations. I'm getting a little philosophical here but that's how I feel big-picture-wise. My decision to scrimp and scrabble for any spare money I can find to make it to steemfest, rather than trying to start paying off some of my debts may turn out to be another 'bad decision', but it may not. There is only one way to find out and sometimes the risks we take in life can be the making of us!

For me, it is the ability to make the choices in life that are authentic to yourself that is most important. Whether those choices lead to success or not is sometimes a matter of fate but often you can maximize your chances. Following my dreams and ambitions is the underlying core of me as a person and I'm still dreaming the steemfest dreams.