This is the 26th day of my 30 days writing challenge, and, despite the fact that I was able to write every day (relatively) easy, I have a feeling that this one will be the most diverse and, yes, "challenging" writing challenges (pun intended) I ever got in.

The "challenging" part comes from the context.

Let me explain.

If you follow me closely on Steemit, you may safely skip this paragraph, but if you're not, keep reading: 26 days ago I left the city I was living in for (more or less) 28 years, and I moved to another one, in Spain. Just with my better half, @raluca, and 2 trolleys. That was it. I knew there will be bumps ahead, so I planned this challenge in advance, as a safety net for any unpredictable thing that may come up. I just wanted to stay accountable and to document the change. Luckily, most of the move went incredibly smooth. But there are still some tiny lose ends.

They are so subtle, that I can hardly explain them, but I'll try nevertheless.

We tend to define value in absolute terms. For instance, wealth: we think at people being wealthy if they are "worth a certain amount of money" (usually US dollars). Mark Zuckerberg is worth $50 billions (I don't know the exact number, I just made that up) so we know Mark is richer than a person who is worth only a bag of potatoes.

But, and here's where it gets interesting: this type of value is tied to a certain context. The "$50 billions worth" thing is related to a relatively civilized context, in which US dollars can be used to buy goods and services. On a desert island, without anything on it, Mark Zuckerberg will worth nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. But if on the same island there will be another man with just one bag of potatoes, he will be the king of the world. Mark will probably do whatever he can only to get some potatoes from that man.

Strange, isn't it?

I mean, the example was a bit forced, but the core of it is real: there is no intrinsic value out there, everything that we consider "valuable" is tied to a specific context.

And here is where I go back to my current situation. There were a few skills that were quite valuable in my former city, like knowing the best coffee shops to work, knowing all the places to eat, knowing how to get to any part of the city without even thinking about, and so on and so forth. Those skills are useless here. I have to readjust everything I knew to this new context. I have to re-evaluate all the coffee shops around, I have to learn my way around the city from scratch and so on and so forth.

And there is also the language. I understand 95% of Spanish (it's relatively similar to Romanian) but I barely speak it. Most of the time I resort to English (which seems to be spoken in the places I frequent, so that's ok).

It's also the social context. We knew nobody when we arrived. As lucky as we are, we literally bumped into a friend from Romania living here for about 2 months, but that was it. Apart from this connection, we're absolutely alone here.

And I didn't even touch on the social and legal insertion points, like residence status, tax paying and so on and so forth. I'm just dipping my toes in this part, for now.

So, I guess the main point of this article in the challenge is to understand that everything that we consider valuable, is valuable only in a certain context.

Like STEEM. It may seem that it's not very useful now, because in the current context, there's not too much adoption of it. There is a huge community, the project is solid, but still, compared with countries and continents which are using paper money, we're just a very tiny context.

But when that context will enlarge, when more and more people will get into this new form of payment (which I strongly believe will happen, sooner or later), I just want to be prepared.

I'm already adjusting to this future context.

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Previous posts in the challenge:

• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day One: All Ultramarathons Start With Just One Small Step
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Two: How Much Garbage Do You Carry With You?
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Three: Pushing Things To Happen Versus Letting Them Happen "Through" You
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Four: The Rain In Spain Stays Mainly On The Plain
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Five: Books, Coffee And The Smell Of A Gentle Autumn
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Six: Revisiting The Harry Potter Trees In Turia
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Seven: Sand Castles
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Eight: Be Careful Of New Beginnings
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Nine: Tuesday's Free Writing
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Ten: The Power And Toxicity Of Lists
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Eleven: Unblocking Writer's Block - A Primer
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twelve: Riding The Wave Of Change
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Thirteen: When All You Have Is A Hammer, Everything Looks Like A Nail
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Fourteen: Sunday Stillness
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Fifteen: The Next Major Social Disruption Will Be Technological
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Sixteen: The Difference Between Sound And Light
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Seventeen: Ten Years Of Bitcoin
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Eighteen: How Long Is Long Enough? Spoiler: Until It's Done...
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Nineteen: The Surprising Benefits Of Gratitude
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twenty: Just A Photo Journal For Today
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twenty One: 5 Things I Noticed So Far In Spain
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twenty Two: Things I Look For In A Coffee Shop, From A Digital Nomad Perspective
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twenty Three: The Inertia Of Our Identities
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twenty Four: Adjusting To Change
• 30 Days Challenge Fall 2018 - Day Twenty Five: Discipline

Steem on!

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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