A lot of Steemians like to celebrate their Steemit anniversaries; however I prefer to mark Steem-independence day, which of course is today.

For those of you who aren't aware, on 4th July 2016 the Steemit website paid out its very first rewards, up until that moment the money building up on our posts was purely theoretical.

There was plenty of speculation in those days, mainly on sites such as Reddit, words like scam and ponzi were often associated with Steemit, with many people believing that the site would never live up to its promise and pay people the money on their posts.

However most of us who were here before the fourth of July simply held the faith and stuck with it . . . Still though, I can remember my absolute joy and disbelief as I transferred my very first bit of Steem to Bittrex and sold it for Bitcoin.

Essentially I had my dear friend @bleepcoin and my own willingness to keep on writing for over two months without so much as a penny, and it ultimately came down to another dear old friend curiosity.

Curiosity May Have Killed The Cat But It Got The Mouse The Biggest Piece Of Cheese!

I remember back in May 2016 I had quit my job, I had had enough of working 9-5. It had been almost two years since I'd gone back into that world having spent the previous seven years working for myself as a corporate video producer.

My business had failed mainly due to lack of ambition and enthusiasm, combined with a changing industry that I wasn't prepared to change with. So I bit the bullet and got a paying job, then another, and another, and yet another.

Two years later I had managed to save some money from the jobs and also some affiliate marketing I had been doing and decided that I needed to plunge once more into the unknown. (I simply am not built to take orders from someone else, and I tend to take so much before telling whatever boss I have where to go.)

I remember reading at around the time that one of the best qualities an entrepreneur can have is curiosity. This got me thinking about how curious I was, I found it hard to gauge, but at the end of the day didn't rate myself particularly curious.

Though I may have wondered how stuff worked, I had never taken apart anything to actually check, unless you count my motorbike, which I don't for two reasons. Firstly I needed to because it was broken and I was broke, secondly I didn't succeed in putting it back together very well. There were an annoying amount of nuts and washers left over when I'd finished.

Anyway I felt that curiosity was something that could be cultivated , so I went about doing just that, I got curious and I discovered a lot of new things one of them being of course, Steemit.

Ask Questions And Seek Answers

The key to being curious I found out was to simply ask questions and/or seek out answers. So when @bleepcoin said to me; 'check out this site, I just got a few hundred dollars for posting a meme', my first response was to ask if it was real money, and my second was to say; 'Cool, well show me how it works then, I'm curious.'

It was as simple as that, I realised that just a few months earlier before reading that article saying that entrepreneurs are curious, I might never had checked Steemit out.

I would have probably thought; ugh, bloody crypto, I don't get it and I can't be bothered to find out, seems too complicated.

I'm glad that I didn't have that attitude, and I'm glad that curiousity is the easiest entrepreneurial skill to develop.

Little Things

If you're the kind of person who shuns updates to your favourite sites, or always walks home a certain route or talks to the same people everyday.

Then I suggest you cultivate your curiosity by taking that gmail update and saying hello to random strangers on an entirely new route you've never taken before.

Do odd things that you might never, not all of your experiences will be great because of your shift in attitude, but that's kind of the point, you're being curious just to see what happens!

Happy Steem-independence Day Stay Curious!

So I'll leave you thinking of ways you can cultivate your curiosity and discover new things. When you do, embrace those things and throw yourself headlong into a new set of experiences.

Oh, and Happy (original) Independence Day to all my American Steemian cousins; wishing you happiness, love and prosperity!!

HAVE YOU BEEN CURIOUS LATELY? HOW DID YOU DISCOVER STEEMIT, OR PERHAPS YOU MET SOMEBODY OR DID SOMETHING BECAUSE YOU WANTED TO SATISFY YOUR CURIOSITY?

AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!

Cryptogee