January 2018 was just around the corner when people started talking about their New Year's Resolutions and I was feeling thankful for living through December and wanted to set goals for the new year.

So the idea of a Visionboard was created and to make it more engaging I made it into a contest. My First Steemit Contest | A 2018 Vision Board | 8 SBD up for grabs Incidentally it got a curie vote and remains to be the highest post value that I have gotten.

More than the upvote it caused my post to be in the trending section of contests and I had a lot of engagement and entries that really made me happy.

Mave's Visionboard 2018

I will break down each part of the board and stack it up on how I did.

In the center of my aspirations is to reach by end of 2018 a reputation score of 60. Seems farfetch for now but as one ex girlfriend used to say "Aim for the stars and if you fail at least you still aimed high."

Currently, I have reached Reputation 62 so I was able to surpass my target. Looking back I placed too much emphasis on reputation and now know how easy it is to game the system and so reputation looks shiny and awesome is not a true indicator of trust and engagement in the platform.

I want to do this in order to have more weight when curating new people that come into Steemit. Nothing depresses anyone when they put in such a great introduceyourself post and gets absolutely no upvotes. By having a higher voting power it is a huge boost to ego and they would be inspired to make better content.

My Steem Power back then would have been less than 100 SP if I remember because the payout I received from that post was what I used to rent out my first delegation from @blocktrades.

As early as then I knew that Steem Power was important although I used the word Voting power instead.

I have kept to that goal and have steadily increased my Steem Power with regular power-ups, investments and the help of communities that I have been in that contributed to my Steem Power growth.

I am at 827 SP out of the 1,000 SP target that I have set myself and have been growing at the rate of an average of 100 SP per month.

It goes to follow that I would want more followers to spread the advocacy that I have. I belong to a non-government organization called Gift in Kind Foundation who has provided school supplies, books and medicine to a small indigenous tribe of Aetas in Zambales, Philippines. More of their story can he read here

Five months ago I was at around 300-400 followers back then and have now reached 2045 followers! Although lately Steemit has been plagued by those follow and unfollow bot accounts.

I was writing a post in @giftinkindph earlier and was using the Busy.org condenser when I experienced this same account follow and unfollow the account and of course Busy.org kept notifying me about the follow, I tried muting it but it seems that Busy.org does not recognize that action so I had to endure it follow and unfollowing me.

I have finally made the account @giftinkindph and have made its intro post Introducing Gift In Kind PH | Bringing hope to children through education

It was well received and we were able to raise almost $300 USD from all the upvotes and donations. There have been a couple of people like @derangedvisions and @czechglobalhosts who even created posts for it that further exposed our organization and advocacy.

People like @tarekadam, @surpassinggoogle and everyone that supported us, we are very thankful for the opportunity to witness firsthand the power of the gifteconomy of Steem.

I have battled depression for over a year now and this stemmed with a very unfortunate situation that made me hate several people. The therapist I have been seeing has in several instances tried to intervene in this self destructive behavior I have to no avail. The hurt and the anger was just too much and holding to that anger is unhealthy. I have lived far too long to have it on my back and this 2018 I want to be able to move forward and let it go. I want to love myself again and stop blaming myself and those people from what happened. I want to be say again that I matter.

I am still not 100% okay. I still experience anxiety attacks and depressions from time to time. It isn't as bad as I had last year though so that is something to be thankful.

Have I forgiven these people that I hate? I don't think of murdering them anymore or slashing their tires and hope they get into an accident. I might never be able to fully forgive them but I have forgotten them and placed them in the not important quadrant of my life.

I have mostly been able to move forward from that incident and living a full life now.

I think I matter and definitely love myself better and stopped blaming myself.

For three years I have been writing a book of fiction. A meld of fantasy and philosophy that I have started on and off again. I want to be able to sit down and really aspire to finish it by end of 2018.

Oh my! I am guilty here. In the past 5 months, I have only been able to complete 2 chapters and I am not happy with one of them. The book has taken a backseat with the many projects that I have immersed myself in. Communities have also taken a lot of my time but have made it possible to increase the people that I know and expand my network.

A few material stuff like house renovation, upgrade my rig, travel to Maldives which has been in my bucket list and enjoy good food and life. I have been dabbling in some cryptocurrency and I want to be more successful so that I can retire early and live in a beach and just writing. Does not necessarily mean I want to retire by 2018 but if I can why not.

HODL!!! with the market all red lately it is hard to say if I am successful in cryptocurrency or not haha. It is only a paper loss if we keep it and will become a loss if we sell it!

There was a bathroom renovation done but hardly counts as a house renovation. Was not able to upgrade my rig but I did change my keyboard and mouse since being a heavy gamer I go through a lot of PC peripherals.

I have not been able to travel outside of the country this year yet and no immediate plans as well.

So the dream of retiring on a beach, with a cold drink on one hand and watching buxom beauties be my muses has not come true yet!

Overall I have gotten a good year in Steemit and it has made a profound impact on my life. I have done my best to be an engaged Steemian who supported communities, projects and learned to trust and believe in the good of people.

I have motivated, mentored and inspired a lot of people and in a way did a pay-it-forward to everyone that positively influenced me in this platform.

There are still a lot of dreams and hopes that I want to do in the platform as we all continue to grow and move forward.

Inspire on and be the best version of yourself.

^{Footer by @ameliabartlett}

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