I have been really busy since the weekend before last...I mean really busy! After a long weekend away in the English Lake District, where I had no access to the Hive, I've then spent way too much time on the Hive in the last week, if that is even possible 😂. I don't say this because I feel any imbalance in my life, other than a distinct lack of sleep 🙄, but I have been focussed on doing a lot of curation. I was blessed to be gifted a temporary delegation of HP (significant by my standards) by @dreemsteem in order to improve author and curation rewards on the articles and comments that I read and upvote and I want to make sure that I do the delegation justice and have been curating for hours on end every late evening/early morning since last Tuesday. It's actually quite addictive; everyone should try it at least once ha ha! I do need to find a better balance though.
In conjunction with @dreemsteem 's very generous delegation, I was introduced to @wil.metcalfe through @dreemsteem and came across Wil's amazing initiative called comet week curated by @comet.ranker. which promotes and drives curation efforts across the HIVE. Honestly, I am so grateful to have found them both and the amazing community of people that already follow them and live the Curation values on the Hive to it's full.
If you haven't seen anything around comet week yet, you can find it here Biggest Hive reward ever 2000 Hive for a friendlier more fun blockchain cometweek and the links to the White paper are included in the article. Highly recommend getting involved in the next one as this one ends tonight. Wil has an interesting approach to curation.
I always paid careful attention to my comments on other people's posts beforehand and have tried to make meaningful connections and engage at a deeper level beyond mere superficiality, otherwise what's the point, right? But this comet week initiative and the comet ranker approach have really driven me to strive towards new heights in curation. There is always room for improvement! I'm not going to go into it all as Wil explains it really well himself and anything less would be doing a disservice to his efforts, so do yourself a favour and click on the link to comet week and get involved. You won't regret it!
The thing I have noticed as a result is that my curation efforts have increased substantially this past week, as in I have curated more articles at a deeper level, leaving little to no time for my own creative works to be formulated or published. Decent curation and engagement takes time; and lots of it. But it is a pure joy to do, as the feedback loop through engagement is so meaningful and provides so many opportunities for learning and growth, and forging and nurturing new connections and relationships across the HIVE. When we think outside the box of traditional blogging, take off the blinkers of self-interest, and we engage actively and meaningfully with other people's lives and interests, the intrinsic rewards flow and enhance our own lives. I have discovered a host of diversity and new people to follow through my efforts this week. Effort truly is rewarded 👨👨👦👦👨👨👦👦
So, the issue now is that I need to find that balance I mentioned at the outset of this post, as I haven't published a "proper" article myself in 7 days, with only the publication of the results of my contest, finding itself sandwiched between my weekend away and my curation focus this week, and I have a short list of "To do's" relating to articles I want to write, as I love pursuing my own creativity too, some of which have a deadline attached to them such as WOTW or the Pizza contest.... Eish ... time is running out. I'm thinking I'd better start getting myself together soon and start allocating out my HIVE/Proof of Brain time a bit more evenly between my own authorial works and curation (probably AFTER comet week lol), although I will focus on getting my WOTW submission in before the deadline.
EDIT to original article: I managed to squeeze in my entry for Proof of Brain word of the week contest in the nick of time on Saturday just past, and was fortunate to take 1st place for the first time ever!
You can read that entry here:
https://www.proofofbrain.blog/proofofbrain/@samsmith1971/home-before-the-leaves-fall
Photo credit: Kaboompics
Photo credit: Ahmed Zayan
I think new terminologies scare me off a new platform. For POB or HIVE, it's "curation". The internet hillbilly in me would say, "What in tarnation is that?" LOL. That's something new and it sounds complicated to the initiated like me. I'm sure it's something really simple. I'll probably find out tomorrow.