Chapter 3: Steemit

This is the final Straw that broke Althea. Steemit.

Althea got on Steemit in August of 2016. She wrote a few dud posts between August 8th and August 14, 2016, but on August 15, 2016, she authored a post that brought in over $500.

https://steemit.com/art/@in2itiveart/in-order-for-there-to-be-any-real-change-we-must-change

It was not just the money, although that did help - a LOT. In 2016, Althea was still working at the Home Despot and she was hoping to get out on her own. Making a living on Steemit seemed a viable option, at that time.

She was creatively stuck back then, too. But the people on Steemit and just having that outlet encouraged her to start working again. She did a shit-ton of work with the help of the Steemit community.

It was the people. The sincerity of the human beings on Steemit back then, and our goals. Althea met amazing people. @fairytalelife took Althea under her wing and helped her show her work properly on Steemit. @dragonslayer109 upvoted her post in his Gems magazine and got her exposure, and then, she started meeting amazing people with whom she had long long conversations in the comments section.

@jphenderson, for example, not only had lived in her home-town but had shared a common love of her favorite band and he helped her discover Sigils and how to make them. That began a whole new line of artwork for her - for 2 years she developed her Sigil Magick practice and shared with many people on Steemit about magick and different ideas and practices that go along with it.

@antonchanning and his wife @dana-varhi were her buddies along with @alchemage who's still on here. We were all doing art together back then - coloring each others work. Doing free work with each other.

Althea did a sigil for a dear friend who had prostate cancer and @professorhobo sent good energy into the sigil and the friend got well - now @professorhobo is gone.

She was able to speak candidly with these people about her fears and interests. Steemit was her Artist's Community that she so desparately needed and still needs.

At some point, maybe a year ago - there was the first Colorado Steemit Meetups - and the potential for real live friends in the crypto community. But a little while after that, it started to fade. Althea's friend @rebelmeow who had introduced her to Steemit left for some reason after making enough money to fill in the gaps and pay her rent for a whole winter with BTC she earned posting on Steemit.

Some people of course, got very rich or fell into favor with the Whales - and got upvoted continuously while others did not. Althea did not, in the long run. Something happened and her communities fell away.

Althea is not a big fan of discord and she also can feel very drained from being online too long so she set her limit at posting. She does not understand all the crypto stuff or a lot of the advanced computing things - At some point someone suggested that she should be "in a community" and that would mean chatting on discord. She just couldn't get into it.

But for the last year, although she has met a few great people recently like @lostgeneration, and @gotmeens and @frot - the community spirit they once had when they were doing the Conspiracy Art Contests, etc dissipated and is pretty much gone.

She feels that she is quite shallow to really need that attention and that cash-flow she sees other people having... Yesterday when Chapter 1 was upvoted to $11, she felt that old inspiration come back to try to fall into favor again and ride the wave, but Chapter 2 only brought in .29 and 108 votes. A good friend of hers commented. Maybe she should just GROW UP. Maybe, as long as she is an artist, she is going to be alone and struggling. Truth is, she is not making art right now. She feels dead inside. Bored.

Back then though in 2016, she was still listening to Mark Passio's podcasts. She listened to them from 2015-2016. There was still hope of change.

Right now, she is watching the Natural World get destroyed by chemtrails, 5G, fracking, big pharma, Big Oil yadda yadda and nobody really cares. No one has cared for a very long time. She thinks about the topics she might want to explore with art - an Agenda 21 Coloring Book, but honestly she can't delve deeply into these subjects because they are too dark and negative to spend time focussed on. If anything, what she has learned from Mark Passio is the same thing Derk requires of her - she has to know the exact nature of what is going on to the best of her ability to weed through the controlled opposition, and then she has to say to herself, "But with God's help, it will all be ok." That doesn't mean that she can continue to live and act that way - No! She has to do her best - but she falls so short every time -

Take Zerowaste - which was the message she recently got from her Nature Spirit guides on what her next artwork should be about:
https://steemit.com/esoteric/@in2itiveart/the-next-phase-of-my-work-part-3

It fell apart. Althea had ironed the plastic bags together into a substrate and glued the drawing onto it with acrylic glue, and then when it dried - it all fell apart. Now, she is just saving her plastic bags in hopes of using them somehow so they don't end up in the ocean, but she's just not that creative or smart. She just doesn't have the right tools... or maybe it's the lack of a group of artists in community.

She thought her artist's block had been answered. But it wasn't. She is also a flake herself. People "went away" but what did she do about it? Was she too focused on herself and getting her needs met?

What Althea has learned from this whole debacle is that she can't depend on human things for inspiration. She is going to have to go back to work because she has to work and it will have nothing to do with anyone else. She can't be attached to making a living as an artist. She has to go back to her inner knowledge that she works for God and He will provide her what she needs. She probably won't ever be much more than average in this world - especially now. This world, as it is, is complete insanity. She can find herself a nice little job that isn't noble and isn't even her own business, but where she can have a nice interchange with others - and call it good.

Copyright 2019 Joanna G Whitney

Previous Posts

https://steemit.com/writing/@in2itiveart/working-title-what-the-fuck
https://steemit.com/writing/@in2itiveart/working-title-what-the-fuck-chapter-2-appendices-and-glossary

https://steemit.com/art/@in2itiveart/i-am-a-misfit-part-6
https://steemit.com/art/@in2itiveart/i-am-a-misfit-part-5
https://steemit.com/art/@in2itiveart/i-am-a-misfit-part-4-charles
https://steemit.com/art/@in2itiveart/i-am-a-total-misfit-part-3
https://steemit.com/art/@in2itiveart/i-am-a-total-misfit-part-2
https://steemit.com/art/@in2itiveart/i-am-a-total-misfit-part-1