The face (and part of the body) behind the name (... and the hands ... and the ...)

Hello steemians,

I know, I know, I'm a bit late in introducing myself. After spending just about all my time in the cryptocurrency rabbithole, daily life caught up with me with a vengeance and I simply had no more spare time.

So first things first, here I am, with photographic evidence of my existence and at the same time proof of houseboat. Sorry for the squint, but not only is it one of the incredibly rare sunny days today in the Netherlands, but I'm looking at the very bright and very very white side of my houseboat. So bright in fact that even though I shot the picture facing the sun, I'm still properly lit, albeit from a strange angle.

Here's a little of my background and short bio.

So I'm JoeyD on bitcointalk, bitsharestalk, mumble and quite a few communication channels that I've most likely forgotten my login credentials for. I've been part of the bitshares community since a little after the launch of the angelshares "donation" and I've been trying to help Fuzzy or @officialfuzzy behind the scenes, mostly with his mumble server for beyondbitcoin hangouts.

For me the meaning of life is life itself. So just about every waking moment I try to dedicate to improving life for future generations. I sincerely hope that by me backing and helping things like bitshares and steemit, we are building the foundation for a better future. My interest in blockchain is primarily to open up possibilities and remove roadblocks and gatekeepers for the next generations. Most likely very much influenced by the things that happened to me.

In case you'd like to know those details I'll write my little bio further down below. For those not interested feel free to skip it, nice to meet you anyway and hope to see you around.

As I've promised a couple of the mumble-hangout regulars and especially the ever tenacious Fuzzy, I'll try to post more here on steemit. What's the worst that could happen, I accidentally write something someone finds useful or entertaining?

Greetings all,

JoeyD

My little bio.

Not knowing what to do with my life, apart from enjoying teaching people and being involved with a small library and specialized centre of study, I ended up going to university. However, I went to university completely unprepared for the cesspool of egos, reputations and politics, that apparently trumps things like actual knowledge and the betterment of mankind. Oh how naive I was back then. Anyway, after I unknowingly made a number of my teachers feel publicly shamed, they did not choose to deflate their shall we say exaggerated views of self worth, nor did they jump on the new ideas. Instead they chose the wholesome path of sabotaging my academic career, with delaying tactics and endless bureaucratic procedures which resulted in me no longer being able to afford studying and actually stacking up a debt. That's how the scholarship system worked in the Netherlands, as long as you got enough "studypoints" within a certain time frame, you won't have to pay back all of it, otherwise you have to pay it all back in full.

My professor informed me that if I wanted to continue studying he recommended doing so in a different country, out of reach and sight of the cabal in the Netherlands and keep my head down. Apparently the exact same thing happened to him in Germany, after which he fled to the Netherlands, keeping his head low ever since. Unfortunately keeping a low profile or disappearing in the crowd was never something I was capable of doing even if I wanted to. So I did what all freedom loving people do who don't believe in hierarchies and authorities, I joined the army.

Counter to what a lot of people seem to think, in my experience the army was not entirely filled with nothing but Murder Hobos. The majority of my colleagues were genuinely interested in helping out people in need, like building schools and infrastructure and things like water purification installations to provide drinking water in war torn areas. Not to say there weren't hobos, quite a few where misfits and outcast of society like me, who joined the army as a last resort.

As a complete surprise to myself, I had the time of my life in the army. It had just about everything I wanted, from teaching and helping people, to always changing and challenging problems to solve and people you could trust with your life. Although they had me occasionally standing on a tight rope, it really helped me get a new perspective on life and regain some faith in people. I had kinda lost hope after the university thing and the massive power struggle amongst the members and organisation of the library.

Although I have to admit that the reason I liked it so much, was that I was allowed free reign when procedures and red tape ceased to function. Managing to solve problems that were deemed impossible or doing the work that usually cost a department of 20 people a year and a half almost single-handedly within two months, was exhilarating. But on the other side I never was able to learn to live with all the OCD stuff going on while on the base. It drove me up the wall, quite literally as you can see.

Alas all good things must come to an end. During a sports event outside in the freezing cold, I got blind-sided by one or more overeager rugby players and slammed my head hard on the solidly frozen ground, right on the temple and knocking me out instantly. It also resulted in some minor brain damage, with massive effects on my life ever since. Once I got injured I got introduced to the dark side of the army and nasty creatures who called themselves psychologists and their weird voodoo and curses. One positive thing about it all was, that it did prevent me from being sent abroad and having to do things that would haunt me afterwards. I've been spared a guilty conscience, eventhough it did not come cheap.

Anyway this is all stuff for later posts maybe. Suffice to say that my bad experiences with gatekeepers and people with power over the lives of others, either through authority, finances or withholding access to things like information and resources is what made me experience dark times and desperately seek out solutions. Only things like the unstoppable opensource movement around GNU-Linux, effectively beating the behemoth monopolies and slowly changing peoples point of view, kept me going. And then came along bitcoin, bitshares and now steemit. While I'm not yet ready to believe that things can't go from bad to worse, at the very least I can see some little stars of hope. Who knows, it might yet turn into a sunny day.