Steemfest Krakow

For those of you who are just here to see what I'll be up to during this Steemfest -> scroll down to the bottom of this post.

October 2017

I am slumping. It's been two months since I've gotten the news my latest business venture failed. The tuktuk I imported from China is collecting dust in front of my house. The inflatable boats are stacked up in the cellar, they haven't seen the sunlight once. I am over 4.000 Euros in debt and summer is over - pretty much the only time of year you can rent out inflatable boats in Belgium -, yet a part of me is still not willing to let go even though I know it's over.

With no motivation to do much, I decide to write again and explore other avenues. The blogging platform Steemit has caught my attention. Writing has always been my way of processing - well that and traveling - but being 4.000 Euros in debt the latter becomes infeasible. Heck, on this platform I might even earn a buck or two if I put some focus on it. A location feature for my travel posts is missing though.

Wait a minute... wait a minute... a map for Steemit posts, a steemitworldmap.

Little did I know the impact this would have on my year to come.

_{I hitchhiked to the harbor of Antwerp to pick up my tuktuk and drive it all the way back to Ghent, using small local roads}

November 2017

"I won! I won! I won! What?! A ticket to Steemfest in Lisbon!"
"A ticket to what now?"
"You know the blogging platform - on a blockchain I told you about! Yeah, they have like a big meet up / conference and I won a ticket!!!! All I got to do is hitchhike there!"
"You're crazy dude"
_{- A fictional, but likely pretty accurate conversation (blame my shitty memory)}

And so @anomadsoul - a steemian I had never met - and I set out hitchhiking after crashing at @roxane and @oroger's place - two other steemians I had never met either! After a pretty wild trip we made it into Lisbon, and were attending Steemfest. @anomadsoul and I were both tiny plankton at the time, but he definitely was better educated on Steemit than I was. "Dudeee, you do know who you were just talking to right?" "Eeeeehhh, not really?" is a conversation we had more often than I care to admit, haha!

On day one, there was the hackathon and together with @oroger I decided to put Steemitworldmap on the map once and for all. Just being able to present the idea to the people tuning in, was what I was going for, reach a bigger audience. With so many amazing projects, there was no way we'd win, but at least we could get the word out, right?
"FIRST PLACE: STEEMITWORLDMAP". Wait, what?!

It's something strange in human nature, but when people start believing in you and what you are trying to do. And you get that support, it sends a spike of crazy feelings through you. Suddenly in my own head, I no longer was the guy who failed his business. I was the guy who failed his business, but wants to keep going, wants to find a way to come out of it stronger!

Over the course of Steemfest I've been lucky to meet so many incredible people, a bunch of them who I am still in touch with and looking forward to seeing again at Steemfest in Krakow!

December 2017

It's time to move on. I sell the tuktuk to the highest bidder, I return my inflatable boats to the supplier. It stings - there is no way in denying it. This is going to be the last month I was in debt, and for me it meant the last month of skimping - on well - pretty much everything.

Being in debt felt like I automatically had to force myself to be limited - even if I didn't want to. I knew I could've taken more time and lived a bit more liberally. But I felt like every cup of coffee, or everytime a friend asked me to go for a beer, or every whatever amount of spending, was money I couldn't put towards escaping this prison of debt.

What I could not anticipate was the incredible surge in crypto prices -, all of a sudden I was able to pay of the remainder of my debt in one month and even have some leftover to enjoy the small pleasantries of life. To noones surprise I left Belgium to go travel. I ended up on the tiny island of Malta.

I started to combine working and traveling for the first time there, and while it's definitely a balancing act, I decided this was the kind of life for me.

_{I guess the context above, makes it easier to understand why I was so hyped to be there with my coffee and my bagel, haha!}

January - February - March 2018

I am just not a winter person. Consider me hibernating here, haha!

On a more serious note, during this time I mainly focused on working on some internal tools for the Steemitworldmap team. Which helped us out with curating, we were getting over a 100 posts a day on the map, so we had to make it easier to get through all of them!

I guess this is also an opportune point in the post to give a shout out to the incredible Steemitworldmap curators @livinguktaiwan, @choogirl and @itchyfeetdonica without whom it's very likely there would be no daily #traveldigest anymore!

They've been there when the road was smooth, but more importantly they stuck around when it got bumpy too!

April 2018

I need to hit the road again. I can have this feeling with such a sense of urgency, that it's very hard to resist if I have the opportunity too. I decided to pay a visit to a close friend in Berlin, before hitchhiking my way out to Prague.

Honestly, if you want to get more of an insight on my Prague experience, you should read the post I've written when I was over there.

May 2018

This where I stopped writing my personal blog, shame on me for only getting to it now! I was bitten by the travel bug once again and so I decided to wing it and just go for it once more. I booked a flight to Plovdiv, Bulgaria and hitchhiked my way down to Athens where I would finally meet @choogirl. We've been working together on Steemitworldmap since day one but had never seen one another in real life! I know I should really write my own proper post, from my point of view... but well. If you do want to learn more about our epic trip, you can definitely check out the two following posts by @choogirl.

• Delphi—hangovers, high priestesses, and Greece's best dog!
• Meteora—it's not for flip flops! _{Don't believe @choogirl here, it's totaaaaally fine on flip flops, haha!}

After meeting up with @choogirl, an important change happened for me. I decided to travel together with my dad. You might be right in wondering, what the hell is so special about that? Well here is the thing, my dad and I we're not great at sharing things, let alone do things together. In a way, this was a moment where we both kind of said, alright, let's give it a shot. My dad is from Bangladesh, and for the first time in my life, I finally got a part of the story of how he ended up coming from Bangladesh to Belgium and some of the hardships he went through during that journey.

In general I'd say my dad comes of as a rather serious man. But when he's happy, you can see the kid with all his dreams is still living in there. We checked out a lot of places together, but I think one of the memories that will stick is where we went parasailing together. Enjoy this video!

June 2018

Crypto plummets even further. Up until this point I was able to sustain my life from my crypto income, it's not like I was living it up or anything, but life wasn't bad either. For a while now I had been thinking on where I wanted to take Steemitworldmap. There are so many possible avenues to explore here! Some of the groundwork for HaveYouBeenHere - a new social media app for travelers I'm currently developing - was done during this month. No reveals for you guys just yet though!

Meanwhile I would also have to start looking for a more sustainable form of income. But being the ever long procrastinator, I just made sure to stretch my current budget as far as possible.

July 2018

Making choices. I could either keep surviving on a tiny budget, and go back to locking myself up at home, living cheap and developing. But a part of me just wasn't feeling it, HaveYouBeenHere would still take months to be anywhere near a finished product and I am slowly re-learning that the way towards a destination should be fun as well, else you won't stick with it anyways.

I felt that maybe I should try a full time job. For most people a given, for me perhaps one of the biggest challenges in my life. From a very young age, I've seen so many adults doing their 9 to 5s, ending up in the couch watching TV after that and repeat that each and every day of their lives. With around 9 to 10 hours (including commute) spend on a job you don't really like, spending another 8 sleeping, and perhaps 3 doing stuff you have to do, it feels like most of your time is just... well... wasted. And I get it right, responsibilities, and there is happiness to be found in smaller things. But for me, it just feels like being lived instead of actually living.

I decided that if I were to do this, I had two paths to explore, either go for a job that sounds like a lot of fun, where I could learn a lot in a challenging environment - or I would go with the complete opposite. A brainless job - punching the clock - earning money and make the time outside of the job count more!

After browsing around LinkedIn I applied for a few jobs. Two stuck out for me, frontend developer at a startup - this definitely falls into the challenging / fun / learning category or sales agent at an electronics store, I've been in sales since a very young age and am quite knowledgeable on consumer electronics. Nine to five - punch the clock, good commission.

I was honestly halfway expecting the start up to not work out. I have no degree in frontend development, and I'm far from an experienced developer. But hey, if you don't try, you'll never know.

August - October 2018

Aaaaaand I got the job at the start up. My frontend development skills have improved a lot in this short period. It's just different when you're working in an environment where you have to learn how to work together as a team. To be completely fair to myself, I was pushing my limits too far.

I was working around 10 to 14 hours each day: the job, learning and juggling my own projects! Eventually I took a step back from @steemitworldmap and left it to the team, who have kept doing an incredible job on curating and writing the #traveldigest posts!

When I started the job, I had in mind of doing this for a year. But I was going straight direction burn-out and got lucky that some of my friends decided to give me some warning calls. At the end of October 2018 I quit the job, with the agreement that I could work remotely if needed!

It was time to bring to fruition one of my more fun side projects, The Random Party. The whole concept is that a bunch of friends and I, look for people that we don't know, and that don't know each other, then we all come together and throw an epic party where all income goes straight to charity! This was the third edition, and damn, it was a blast!

The aftermovie of the third edition is not live yet, but I'll throw the one from the second edition in here for you guys. For more about this, check out the site!

November 2018

And we are full circle! I'm currently sitting in a neat place here called Avenue, in the Kazimierz district in Krakow. If you're around, I do highly recommend it.

The reason I am here is of course to attend Steemfest, where this time around I am not only an attendee, but a speaker myself. Who would've guessed?

You'll be able to see me during the state of the apps (08/11 - 14h25 - main stage) where I will be giving all of you a little more insight in Steemitworldmap in its current state and give you guys an idea on where we want to take the project with the standalone app HaveYouBeenHere.

I am very much looking forward to seeing all of you there. If you are attending Steemfest, feel free to just walk up to me as well! I am seriously looking forward to meeting and talking with you.

We're still looking for a backend developer and extra funding, so if you like what you see at the talk and you think we can collaborate, don't think twice and hit me up!

To not leave you guys hanging with nothing, here is a little screenshot of the mapview in the new app, enjoy and see you soon!