What brought me here?

So this is my first ever blog post, my intro to the steemit community, and a forced new beginning in life.

I would like to start with introducing myself, my name is Richard Stewart. I have two boys, a 4 year old and 2 year old and a beautiful wife to be. A big black lab and two cats. Spend most of my time at home with the kids, researching random ways to make an online income.

It wasn't always like this, me being at home. You see I have always had very active jobs, and my main line of work was industrial sandblasting and painting, I liked it, was really good at it and had been in the industry around 10 years, its extremely physical work but somehow eerily peaceful, throw your helmet on and go, no one can bother you. It's always been easy finding new work in this field as not many will travel the road, also having 10 years experience lands you up near the top for pay. I had a plan to start my own mobile sandblasting unit just didn't have the money, however that is another story to be shared another time.

We are going to go back to 2015, I had recently been up in Northern Alberta working, took a job for a few months in the town we were living as my fiance was pregnant, brushing up on my industrial painting skills before going back up north, work slowed down quite a bit and I had to take a layoff. I really didn't mind, we were sitting good. We had money saved up, pregnancy was going well, was going back up north to get together the rest of the money needed to pay for my mobile sandblasting/painting unit, I decided to wait a few months until the baby was born. So I opened a TFSA put a few Gs into the stock market, I had never invested before seemed like a good time to start. We were good, we had a solid plan moving forward.

I have to say life has a funny way of pointing you in your direction, we had a good plan moving forward and then out of nowhere A totally unexpected turn of events, heading home from A friends house just before midnight, I had an over whelming feeling that something was on the highway, I was able to shrug it off after a few minutes, looked down at the speedometer, speed up to the speed limit 100 km/h, look up at the highway and there it is... a cow in the middle of the highway, worst experience thus far... and the circumstances as to why it was on the highway are completely unacceptable, however like I said life has a funny way. I have since been disabled due to back, shoulder, and neck soft tissue injuries which takes me right out of industrial work. I had accidental insurance in place, guess what they don't cover "soft tissue injuries" which somehow includes disc extrusions. The last two years have been hell getting through financially and in general and we will figure it out in time, however I could write a book about this subject!

So on to the next chapter, which brings me to the world of trying to catch up to computers, starting to learn about programming, making apps, coin faucets, cryptos and so on. Very interesting and confusing to a guy who's spent his life in trades and oilfield, good thing for open source networks.

I stumbled onto the GRC faucet, took a bit to figure out but started mining Gridcoin shortly after. Having a hard time getting my network going but I am working on it, have a few more towers and laptops for fixing and setting up on the Boinc/Gridcoin system and some other interested parties in the area wanting to get on board, I really like the idea behind all this, mass computing for universities, open source networks, cryptomining. It will take time but my network will take flight. Moving forward I will diversify into other PoS/PoR setups in time, I have a few plans to try to expand awareness of Gridcoin in my area, along with providing computers for free to low income families within the next little bit.

Once the ball is rolling I can share more about this and brainstorm with the community, Glad to be a part of the Steemit community. Thank you @Drakos and @timcliff for getting me in.