So, I'm going to start this off by saying that I am fiendishly addicted to crypto.
I don't even invest anymore (after making some really... enthusiastic investments in early January). But crypto is literally my full-time job now, and I think it's the only one I've ever been really into.
I'm a freelance writer, and I used to write about a whole bunch of stuff. I wrote business plans, people's college essays (I know, I know), proofread and edited eboooks, ghostwrote novels, wrote articles on everything from photosynthesis to meditation. It was a good way of getting paid to learn things I was interested in, but a lot of it was... not so interesting. The photosynthesis thing was about scientific experiments on tomatos.
I was just faffing around, basically, and not treating it like a real job. That said, I liked making money online and after a while I got good at it. Then I kind of zeroed in on e-commerce clients, which actually paid well (really well), and started making a proper living as a writer. I set up my own website, made business cards, started interacting with clients a lot more, raising my rates, and business was booming. I was becoming successful.
And I was really bored.
I was writing web copy on dropshipping sites and putting together articles about marketing software, sales platforms, how to rank high as a seller on Amazon, etc, etc. Money = good. Job satisfaction = not good.
I kept seeing job postings about ICOs, and how people needed white paper writers. The money was OK, and I was booored, so I applied. I had heard of cryptocurrencies, didn't know much about them, and I figured it was a good chance to learn about them. Plus I was really, really bored with my actual work, did I mention that part?
I applied for a few ICOs, and heard back from everyone. Good technical research writers were in short supply, and many of the available writers didn't often have a great way with words. Suddenly I was writing and editing white papers, creating the written content for ICO websites, and drafting cryptocurrency press releases.
Like most new enthusiasts in the space, I went from not knowing what blockchain was to getting into hash rates, TA, smart contracts, PoW/PoS, and everything else in the "newbie crypto starter kit". I was doing so much research for my new projects that I didn't even stop to think "hang on, wasn't I an e-commerce writing consultant like 5 minutes ago? Am I having some kind of crypto-induced seizure or something?"
I took to it way more than any other topic I'd been involved in before (sound familiar?), and decided to make things official by getting myself what freelancers call "social proof" - published articles with a byline (author's name) to prove to clients that you actually work in the space and that you're not just some random weirdo absconding from their burgeoning e-commerce consultancy business.
I figured one or two would be enough, so I got one published on InvestInBlockchain, then another on another site... then another... then anotherthenanotherthenwhyareyoustillreadingthiscomeon
Meanwhile I had totally stopped applying for new work in e-commerce, begrudgingly accepting work that paid literally over three times as much as crypto writing from my existing clients.
Fast forward a few months and my business has been rebranded to deal with ICOs almost exclusively, and even that's just a side business now. I spend most of my time these days writing crypto articles - op ed, breaking news, investigative work - because it's just so damn interesting. I work freelance for a number of different sites, and I'm starting as a managing editor of a startup media outlet soon. The salary isn't even good - I just think it sounds fun, and I also think that I may have gone a little bit insane for saying that.
Did someone tie a weight around my leg and drop it into some sort of blockchain vortex?
Things have moved crazy fast (in true crypto fashion), and I've gone from absentmindedly procrastinating from my work by accepting something a bit different to becoming so involved in the space I don't think I'd know what to do with myself if I got out.
I can honestly say that this is not at all what I expected to be doing with my life, but here I am - and I wouldn't have it any other way.
To all my fellow Crypto Fiends, I salute you.
Whether the market goes up, down, sideways, or anyways, we're all part of a fascinating movement that will change the way human beings live their lives forever, and that's worth something. It's maybe even worth more than the money you've invested, because in years to come when things have settled down and blockchain is the norm, the world looks back on the insane, ridiculous, chaotic early days of this space and laughs at how something so normalized could ever have been such a wild experience, you'll know that you were here, in the thick of it with the rest of us.
But hey, I hope your investments do well too. If we don't get more gains, what are we going to use to buy more crypto, amiright?*
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*Not intended as investment adviceseriouslydonotspendallyourcashoncryptoyouguysnotagoodidea
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