WOX: My Experience of the World Of Xpilar Community

Hi, my name is Dave Kavanagh and I'm a photographer from Ireland. Today I seen a really interesting post from @stef1 which both inspired this post and really made me think about my Steemit journey.

I originally joined Steemit just over 5 years ago based on a friends recommendation. I was a bit reluctant as I knew it was something related to crypto, and that was something I didn't fully understand and was a bit intimidated by. To be honest I'm still a bit that way when it comes to most cryptocurrencies.

I stuck with it for a good few months, eventually getting enough of an understanding to use the platform reasonably well. I didn't fully understanding how it all worked but I knew that I was able to share my photography work and discover other peoples work and in doing we were all generating payments for each other. At the time it certainly felt like crypto's were the main focus of content on Steemit but there were small groups of users who shared interests in other areas like art, music, cooking and other creative interests. These are my kind of people, the one's I always gravitate towards 😀

Fast forward a few months and a lot of things were changing, and changing quite quickly. All of a sudden the value of Steem and SBD dropped dramatically to a small fraction of its previous value. As a result it seemed most people on the platform were posting less and slowly losing enthusiasm. Also around this time myself and my wife were in the midst planning our wedding and trying to make make plans for our future. It was also during this time my grandmother who I was very close to had become very ill and passed away. I remember I even withdrew a lot from social media less around this time too as I just didn't have the head space to maintain an online presence as much as I had done while balancing all the real life things that were happening around me.

So that's a whole lot of talk about the past, but where are we now. It seems while I had been away from Steemit a whole ton of things had changed. The first thing I noticed was the big split with Steemit and Hive. I still don't fully understand what happened there, but it certainly meant a lot of people I previously knew on Steemit had now moved over to Hive and were only posting there. The second thing I noticed was the massive shift towards the Community feature on Steemit and how much more welcoming this felt. This was HUGE for me!!

Honestly me returning to Steemit felt like I was beginning to use the platform again for the first time. I had to re-learn how everything worked, and I knew nobody on here. Within a short time I discovered the World Of Xpilar community and instantly felt at home with so many creative artists sharing their work, with constant inspiring posts, fun competitions and amazing community support.

Previously it felt like Steemit was primarily for crypto related content and creative arts were a niche distraction. However now with the World Of Xpilar community it really does feel like supporting creative content is the core of what this community is all about. From the incredibly supportive and inspiring moderators, to the wide range of talented contributors, this community has truly given me a new spark of enthusiasm for Steemit, and one which deserves every bit of support from the Steemit team. It's a community where you really do feel supported when sharing the work you care about, and that's a beautiful thing.

That leads me to the picture I wanted to share today...

If I'm going to end the post talking about the things I care about, I have to mention my beautiful daughter Lily. Over the past year there's been a lot of changes and uncertainty for everyone with all the crazy things happening around the world. Theres a few things in my life these past few months that have been very welcome distractions. One of those things was the arrival of my daughter just over a year ago and has given the best reason to smile ever since. Another of those wonderful and very welcome distractions from the madness of the outside world, has been this beautiful World Of Xpilar community.