Where have you been?

Hi there, some of you might remember me. Most of you probably won’t. Those that do, might have noticed that I have been absent from steemit for quite some time. Well let me tell you a little story of why and what I have been up to.

Once upon a time

there was a guy (that would be me) let’s call him wolv just to keep things easy.
Wolv was quite the silent introverted guy, but for some reason always quite reckless and spontaneous (more about this in a later post).
At a certain point in life wolv felt bored and stuck in life. Life was an endless loop on repeat.
Don’t get me wrong he didn’t have it bad: steady job, company car, nice apartment and a lovely pair of cacti called Bob and Fat Albert.

But still wolv felt stuck…

The opportunity

However one day an ex-colleague, who we’ll call Ed (mostly because I can’t remember his real name… and partly to keep him anonymous) that had left the company with some serious bad blood, started trying to poach others from the company to join his new one. Eventually he ended up calling wolv.

What Ed did not know was that wolv had no love for him, they just had never clicked on an intellectual level or any other level for that matter…. But kind hearted as wolv was he did not want to hurt Ed’s feelings so to bring it to Ed gently wolv told him

“I’m sorry mate, I be looking for foreign treasure to plunder. I not be looking for no harbor in these parts, arr”
(yes wolv sounds like a pirate now. Sue him… ).

Ed was clearly disappointed, but decided to throw wolv a bone (see what I did there?), he told wolv

“you know what, I actually might be in a position to help you dear chap. I might know some gentleman in South Africa that might be keen on a little parley, please be so kind on letting me set this up for you my dear chap”

Well wolv was not going to say no to such an opportunity and he let Ed do his thing not expecting to much of it.

South Africa

Wolv got proven wrong… three days later he was having skype calls with South Africa, who's initial thought was

“Ok you little shit. We’ll find you a spot with some company and ditch your ass there and be done with it”

but after the first two skype calls they told wolv

“ok you little shit, we got some options for you you dig? But we aint giving dam to you. As we keeping yo ass to ourselves. Deal with it.”

So from there the conversation steered into more detailwhat the job would be and all the negotiations started.
Wolv asked:

1. First things first, I currently make ****** what salary can I expect?
2. Will I get a company car again?
3. How about job security?
4. How safe is it there?
5. What are the secondary benefits?

To what wolv got the answers:

1. Waaaaaaay less….
2. ….. yeah…. No…
3. LOL
4. Well… not everyone dies… Not right away at least...
5. Secondary what?

After that wolv asked a couple other questions but I will spare you those as that might make this story more lengthy than it already turns out to be… Just to sum it up, everything he asked was worse than what wolv had build up in his home place.

So it is not more than logical that wolv told them:
“yeah…. That sounds terrible… I asked myself why not… but the list on why not is endless…”

Followed by the the expected:
“Fuck it I’m coming”

so that ended that pa… WAIT WHAT YOU ARE GOING??
“yeah I’m going”
Dude… did you miss all that was said just now?
“nope”
getting paid a fraction of what you get paid now is bad right?
“yes it is”
Having no job security in a foreign country…. Heck… a foreign continent… is a terrible idea correct?
“true”
Remember that you are a socially awkward introvert that knows nothing and noone there?
"I do recall yes"
You know turning the wrong corner gets you killed there right?
“yeah”
You know… EVERY SINGLE THING there is worse right?
“indeed...”
You agree that this is a terrible Idea right?
“Actually.. you are absolutely right….”
So….
“I’m going”
DUDE!
“yes?”
HOW DENSE ARE YOU? You will fucking die there…. Poor in a fucking corner… you are introverted AF! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?
“I’m bored…”
ah… yeah ok. Point made.

The move

So wolv went on and a month later he had ditched his life and moved to South Africa. Full of naive hopes and dreams wolv got into the plane expecting the worst wonderfulness ever.
He expected some wonderful greetings at the airport by his new boss, being taken to the most luxurious restaurant to have a lovely meet and greet/welcome dinner….

Instead he was welcomed by a son of the boss that dropped him off at some crappy shared housing… Well wolv thought...
"maybe they just want me to settle after such a long flight and the meet and greet will happen this weekend..."
Well... no... he was left to his own devices for a week before starting work… Wolv finnaly met his boss the first workday when the boss told him
“Nice to have you here, that’s your spot. Have fun working”…. and left

Well that is one way to welcome an employee you flew in from overseas wolv guessed…
He did his work and he did it well. He spend months there making sure he delivered everything he promised and he delivered it all on time (which wasn’t hard as the requirements and the skill levels of his colleagues were extremely low…).
But while working he noticed that the promised work visa process had not been started yet… while inquiring about it wolv was told
“yeah we are handling it now worries, we are just waiting for some documents”.
Well Wolv believed them and carried on with his work, asking once in a while what was up with the visa, which each time was met with the same response, they were handling it. During this process he was leaving the country each 3 months due to restrictions of the tourist visa he was there with.

The tattoo shop

During these months there he befriended some tattoo artists and shop owners and began to be part of the furniture at that shop. Hanging around, helping out slowly learning the tools of the trade. Creating friendships, fun trips to Bali and all that.
Sadly this ended when one of the artists for an unknown reason (wolv nor the others there know exactly what happened...) started tripping and started to cause fights, bad blood and just overall shit. Wolv decided that that just were not the kind of people he wanted in his life and decided to go less and less and eventually not at all anymore

Each proper story has a fight

That all ended when he got into a fight with the boss’s son because wolv kept being friends with the son’s girlfriend after they had broken up (let my put the emphasis on the friends part. Wolv nor the ex had any interest in anything else but friendship so that is all it ever has been)
All off a sudden wolv was told by the boss

“yeah sorry boy, we can’t have you around no more without a working visa… you should have gone after that a bit harder. So we’ll need you to fuck off to your own country until you got yourself a real visa”.

to what wolv thought…
“WELL WTF YOU DIRTY FUCKING MOTHER Fers! YOU TOLD ME YOU SHITHEADS WERE DEALING WITH THIS!”.
But as wolv was thought at an early age “never burn bridges no matter how they treat you, you never know when you might need them”.
So he went back to his own country fixed a visa on his own and returned to the promised land.
As with this new visa he was no longer bound to that company he went on as a freelancer. Thinking everything was set now he started to relax and have a good time, Doing projects getting his life set up that side.
Sigh it pains me to point out the naivety of poor poor wolv.

The backslash

However when he went back for his mothers birthday he was stopped at customs that told him
“yeah this visa ain’t valid son... Some one messed up… you’re not getting back in here for 5years. Now get your ass on that plane and leave” sooo FUCK…..
Defeated he got on the plane and flew back to the homelands and started to find a way to fix things. Sadly enough until the day of today he has not yet succeeded.

Steemit

Luckily Steemit gave him some distractions. Wolv really got into the vibe, learning a lot. Posting more and more. Sharing his thoughts, his art and his love. Talking with great people making new friends. Talking about an amazing idea @calumam proposed which @calumam single handed continued and now has been given form as the great @buddyup innitiative, giving it some form and all that.

FiCoin

But then came in the ICO of FiCoin… Hell! That looked so promising… Whitepaper seemed sound, Concept seemed great so wolv took the plunge.

He immersed himself in the project. So much so that at some point he was asked to be admin for one of their telegram groups. This distracted wolv so much that his presence on steemit (and the help of the start of the great @buddyup initiative) got less and less… as FiCoin was taking most of his time.
All seemed good and well. FiCoin did as promised, FiCoin even started to pay out to the admins that worked as volunteers, life was good! Life was fun! Until… it was not…

FiCoin bailed…

Hard…

This left wolv full of disbelieve… He knew ICOs were risky and he accepted all the risks and consequences. But the way they bailed after what seemed to be a project that was succeeding….

Resurrection

BUT HECK! That was not going to keep wolv down! FUCK FICOIN! He and some other admins decided to take a stand!
Demand the remainder of the fund back! And start a token of our own with the appropriate name “the phoenix foundation” _{rising back from the ashes!}
Lead by the community!
Owned by the community!
Pure Cryptocurrency communism!

Heck we got hyped up!
We got one of the original devs to agree to our plans and give us the money
(after an optional refund to all investors that wished to do so)

So we told the community the plan! They loved it, we loved it!
Life was not as good as before but still good! Fuck! We hijacked an ICO had some amazing plans to make it succeed! Hopefully being able to return the investors their refund at a higher price than current refund! That was balls good! The future looked promising!

until… it didn’t….

Dictatorship

Quite soon within the community a small group of admins decided to take the lead and slowly started to phase out the community's involvement in everything… and making all the decisions them selves, subtly manipulating the community every way they could (animal farm anyone?...)
This pissed wolv off, wolv disagreed with this and he made it heard… He reminded the admins about the original plan! How community should always go first! How the funds they got were of the community not of the group taking the lead!
But sadly… the small group of admins had already made sure they were in control of the funds and told wolv
"no the money was gifted to us. The community has no say, they agreed to this, They should be happy we are trying something"….

This was the point where wolv decided that he would not be a part of this scam and left the project in full disagreement of their actions.
Before he could warn the community that they were being played he was banned from the group.

FiBO SalvAdor the bot

One thing the original FiCoin devs left behind was an early version of their trading bot called FiBO. Wolv decided to focus on getting the code finished and getting the bot up and running trying to recuperate some of his losses this way.
The code being written in a programming language wolv did not yet master, this took most of wolv's time. He redubbed te bot SalvAdor _{the salvaged bot}
Slowly he started to make progress and got it up and running, trading and working fine for the simple bot that it was.

Reconnected with BuddyUp

This was around the same time that he started to speak to @calumam again, slowly being drawn back in into BuddyUp. Where wolv felt like he needed to prove himself from the bottom up again before being anything noteworthy to BuddyUp. A thought that @calumam shared.
So over the last few weeks wolv has slowly been regaining his presence on the BuddyUp discord, being absorbed into the amazing community it is growing into.

Return to steemit

And Finnaly…. He is ready to get back into the steemit thing of things.
Ready to be back on the new and brighter path and future on towards new adventures! Curious about what that adventure might be…

But all is well, the future is good

🐺 @wolv