This is a post I have wanted to write for a long time and figured I should finally write it down (put pen to paper as they say). I am not going to KYC myself, this is not that kind of post. I do want to explain my journey in the web3 space and how I ended up here and what makes me different than other people who write on various web3 blogging websites. Are they good things that set me apart? Well that is for you to decide.

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My History (Cliffnotes version)

I got my first PC when I was roughly 10-12 years old. It was on school computer that was being replaced and I was gifted it and the first thing I did was turn it on and be amazed that I owned my own PC that could play games (and by game I mean Solitaire and Pinball, those crappy games back in the day). The 2nd thing I did was shut it off and proceed to take the computer apart piece by piece. I wanted to see all the components and how they all connected to each other.

You can see why I turned out to be a engineer then huh?

Because of that I started to type a lot. I started to write things on my computer. That only progressed. I always had a dream to write my own book (and that is still there, I am just fine tuning the overall story line before I really dive head first into that adventure). But writing was always my forte' so to speak. I could write essays papers with my eyes closed. I could add fluff to a paragraph to fill the paper requirements. Writing/Typing was freeing.

So I started to work with computers professionally and haven't looked back!

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Where did my journey begin

My Crypto Journey is an interesting one. It was around 2012 where my neighbor (tech nerd like me but older at the time) had all these 'computers' in his garage running full tilt like a Server Room. We started to talk about it and turns out he had a few ASCI BTC miners running. I remember him telling me that it would be worth millions one day and all he had to figure out down the line was how to cash it out and pay the taxes and he will retire early.

Well that peaked my interest but I never got into 'crypto' then. It was still semi niche at that time or so I thought but I always kept an eye on the crypto-verse in a way.

Fast Forward to Summer of 2016 and I was sick and tired of Google Chrome. Chrome is notorious for eating up RAM and just in a stupid silly way. So I was searching for a new browser to use. I didn't like Firefox, Opera, IE, etc so I wanted something new. I came across this browser called "Brave". I saw it was built on Chrominium and their claim to fame was that they block all ads natively and it didn't require as much resources as Chrome because it didn't add all that bloat into it.

Needless to say Brave was installed that same day and I haven't looked back since. I still use it as my daily driver to this day. Brave also slowly introduced me into the Crypto world. You could earn $BAT for enabling their own curated ads. Well one of the first ads I got was for this blogging website called Publish0x. I clicked on it and lurked there for a while.

Publish0x is a blogging website where you can post articles (like on Hive) but the tips that you can give out come from a community pool that the site gives out. You can tip about 5 times per day and each tip amount is a static amount (in whatever tipping tokens they offer at the time).

After a few weeks/months of lurking on Publish0x I decided to create my own account and start posting articles. So I did and on January 6th, 2020 I posted my first article!

I was hooked at this point. Sliver.tv (was the Theta website that was like Twitch but you could earn TFUEL for watching and streaming) was a immediate obsession of mine. I amassed quite a bit of TFUEL from there over the years but that is another longer story for another day.

I must have been feeling Brave (pun intended) on January 6th, 2020 because I posted a 2nd article that day. This time I wrote up my own review of Brave Browser because I was seeing so many "reviews" that were, honestly just terrible and not reviews at all.

Ironically or maybe it was a blessing, this was when I first encountered a troll posting to something I wrote.

TrocProcLock is me

You can read the article here if you want but its about 5 years out of date at this point haha.

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I was still new to crypto and thankfully I had the wherewithal to know that the US regulations and such on crypto was the Wild West and I didn't want to mess with any of that. So I never spent fiat purchasing Crypto of any kind. I can honestly say I have invested nothing in my crypto finances (if you can call it that). Everything "I have" is pure profit from my either writing articles, playing games, doing faucets, etc etc.

I do not chase the alt coins or day trade crypto or any of that stuff. I don't have the time or mental capacity to keep up with it. I get into project and blockchains I like and invest my time into that. If I get rewards from it, then so be it. I will re-invest that back into whatever game I am playing or whatever site I am using. I have not cashed out any crypto to fiat either. All my crypto is just 1's and 0's in ledgers somewhere.

The reason for that is because if I get hacked tomorrow and someone drains all my accounts I won't be as mad as I would be if it was my money I invested that I lost. I am not trying to build up some fortune in crypto so I can retire 20 years early. If I end up having a nice nest egg from all my crypto adventures down the road, cool. If not, cool. I will still have enjoyed my time in the crypto space and the things I have learned carry over to all areas of my life. So it's a win win no matter what.

But I am getting ahead of myself here. Back to my Story!

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Baby Steps

The first blockchain technically that I got into was Theta. But again... another story for another day. The 2nd blockchain I got into was the WAX blockchain. I think I gravitated towards it because it was a gaming focused blockchain that had zero gas fees and back then I didn't have hundreds of dollars of crypto to spend on games and fees, so WAX seemed perfect for me.

And man I fell into the Rabbit Hole with WAX. I started to play every game I could. Prospectors, Alien Worlds, EVERYTHING I could play I played.

Here is a old bookmark folder titled "old games I don't play"

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Over time I realized a lot were either not fun or just not worth the time investment so I stopped playing them. But I was all in on WAX and I loved it.

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The Big Leap

Then I discovered the Hive blockchain. Well more accurately I discovered the game Splinterlands. My memory is a little fuzzy but I think I was able to create a account on their website and then send over like LTC or something to pay for the spellbook back then. I even wrote a article about it on Publish0x in late January 2020.

I really got into Splinterlands back then and just as a little treat to all your Splinterlands players out there. How many of you remember back when you could actually get DEC for winning battles? Cause I do!

Oh those were the days! How I took that DEC for granted now lol.

But Splinterlands wasn't all. I started to branch out. I started to play Rising Star, APE Mining Club and a bunch of others. I was just trying anything and everything I could blockchain wise.

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Regressing

Let's time travel a few years to April 2022. This was a time in my life where I was getting burnt out. My usually gun-ho strategy of trying every game I game across or every faucet or website I could was spreading me too thin. WAX was my OG and my tride and true and where I amassed the most crypto in so it's what I stuck with.

I knew I needed to stop trying to play as many games because playing 20 different games a day doesn't let you put enough time into any 1 game to make any real progress. So for whatever reason in April I decided to basically move all my HIVE bookmarks to a folder and not open them again (at least for a while).

How do I know it was April 2022? Well in Splinterlands I can see April 29th, 2022 was the last day I spent/earned Credits and they sat there until December 27th, 2024.

It was just HIVE that I quit though. I stripped out about 80% of all the crypto things I did in a week. It was good for me. I kept blogging on Publish0x and I kept playing the core WAX games that I already was (I was getting big into TACO at this time). Sadly though I put Hive up on a shelf and never looked at it for 2+ years.

Before I left HIVE though I did sell my Splinterlands Land Plot for a NICE chunk of $WAX and to me that felt like a great send off from Hive because it was a nice profit for the time I spent on Hive.

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Forging a new Path

Time skip again to December 27th, 2024. I can quite honestly say that a lot of my crypto-verse experiences or adventures start with @pvmihalache . He is a true OG Publish0x writer and probably the person I have been following the longest across all blogging sites. I forget what he posted but in late December he had a post on Publish0x about HIVE or Splinterlands or something.

And a light bulb just went off and I remembered that I used to play Splinterlands and Rising Star and I wonder how those accounts where doing. I should check on them. I logged back into Splinterlands and say I had about 1,000 SPS staked (good job me for not selling it off before I left and leaving it staked!)

I figured I would play a few games and see if I still liked Splinterlands, and boy let me tell you... It was HARD getting back into Splinterlands.

When I left HIVE..

• LAND wasn't a released thing yet.
• Glint wasn't a thing yet.
• Chaos Legion was still in it's prime so Rebellion wasn't a thing yet.
• I was confused when I won a battle and didn't get any DEC for winning the battle (still bitter about this).
• There are now Summoners that have no abilities and also have 2 elements they can use.
• There are new Modifiers and Abilities (which seems like a good thing but if all you know is the old stuff its hard to incorporate the new ones when everyone you are fighting knows both)

Yeah so a lot changed at Splinterlands during my 2 year hiatus.

But also I came across Peakd and was HOOKED instantly. I found Crownrend which I love. I found Holozing which I love (or I think I will when it gets released). I started to fall into the rabbit hole again.

But this time it feels different. I know that I am not going to get burnt out like I did before. (This is funny timing because for the last 3 weeks I have posted at least 1 article everyday here on Hive and as of yesterday I decide that was enough and I am going to cool it and not put that pressure on me anymore)

Sure I may end up not playing Rising Star anymore but that is just because the fun for me playing it was accumulating the starbits and now it doesn't seem to be worth the time investment. Crownrend is totally worth the time. Splinterlands... well if you have been following me you will know that I am charging back into Splinterlands without looking where I am going. It is fun to get back into it and try to work my way back up the ranks. And with Conclave Arcana coming out soon I am excited to kind of reset the Modern League to give me a better chance!

So Bring it on HIVE! I am here for it.

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HIVE...

I wish more people knew about Hive and what it can do for you. I wish 3 years ago I knew everything it could do. I wish 3 or 4 or even 5 years ago I started to blog here as well as Publish because A) The rewards are so much better here but also B) the community here is so much better.

I can only imagine how much HP I would have if I was posting on Hive regularly for the past 5 years. I mean in the last 2 months of writing and posting I already have 321 HP which is INSANE to me. And that is 100% pure profit with no investment (well no fiat investment that is, I sent over ETH and LTC to Splinterlands back in the day to buy packs and such)

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That is my story. Or at least the Cliffnotes version.

I love writing and I hope there are people out there who enjoy reading what I write.

I take pride in my articles and what I post. I don't just want to post something to post something. It should have a purpose or a meaning.

I love teaching people new things or at the very least giving my perspective on things that people care about.

I HATE when people post referral links in their articles and try to hide it to not show it's a referral link (it truly is one of my top 3 pet peeves in web3). Which is why you will ALWAYS see me clearly state when a link is a referral link and why I will always also post a non referral link.

Thank you for reading or at least clicking on this article 😁

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HIVE game I play to make $$$$

Game	Referral Link	Non Referral Link
Splinterlands	https://splinterlands.com/register?ref=cherokee4life	https://splinterlands.com
Crownrend	https://crownrend.com/?ref=UJMBLR2CUDRIA	https://crownrend.com/
Rising Star	https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=trocproclock	https://www.risingstargame.com/
Holozing	https://holozing.com?ref=cherokee4life	https://holozing.com/