Hi guys, introductory post, better late than never...

Hey all, so I'm new here...trying to figure it out haha I absolutely love the idea of Steem as a consumer of social media. I feel like popular social media sites are terrible in some ways but I think a decentralized community where the users are in charge has some insane potential. Not to mention being rewarded value for creating value. I think many good things are going to come out of this platform. I think it Steem/Steemit is going to be a force to be reckoned with. Anyway...

About me:

My name is Mike. I'm from Scranton, PA. Home of The Office. There is a either a bar, church or pizza shop on almost every block. Not really much else. There aren't many good career paths around here. We have one of the worst opioid epidemics in the country. As for me I started out programming as a hobby in high school. My school offered no programming classes sadly so I learned as much on my own as I could and then started towards a B.S. in Computer Science. Little did I know life would throw a lot of things at me at once and I let school go by the wayside. This was sometime around 2011...when my uncle, who worked in finance, told me about this thing....uhh bitcoin? It sounded awesome, I was interested, as I am in many things. I'm the type of person who spends hours every day reading and learning about random things that interest me on the internet. But alas....I did not buy any even though that was my intention. (sigh).

During college I found online poker. I'm not really sure if that was a good or a bad thing. It definitely took away from my studies as I was studying poker instead. It allowed me to have spending money though college, which was nice, but I think it would have been better for me to finish school as to actually have a real career. Maybe its not too late.

April 2011 Black Friday as they call it happened. This was the day the major 3 poker sites serving the U.S. were shut down. Unfortunately during the time I was able to play I had really only played enough to make spending money and never really worked that hard to get that much better and move up in stakes. So I would need to get a job. I started working at Target, which interfered with my schooling much more than poker ever did. This is one of the things that led to me dropping out. The absolute love of my life, the girl I dated through high school into college and I also broke up that summer. It was my fault, I was lost and unsure of my direction. Struggling to understand myself and my needs never mind the needs and wants of another. So yea between breaking off a fantastic relationship, dropping out of school, and not buying bitcoin when my very smart uncle had introduced me to it....2011 was a bad year.

Fast forward, I work at Target for a while, develop some social skills as I had never been a social person what so ever. I'd say that was good for me. I get a little too comfortable and speak my mind to my bosses. They don't like that. I get fired. I also get arrested with $20 worth of weed about 2 weeks after getting fired. That is a misdemeanor here. I have to do a year of probation and pay nearly $3000. 2013 was also a bad year....

How will I come up with money for the fines and probation....wait...I used to make money playing poker. I get a temporary job at Best Buy near the casino. I'm not sure why I didn't think of this while I was working at Target. Life happens and so much time flies by ugh. I start playing at the casino with my paychecks from Best Buy. I do reasonably well from the beginning. I make a lot of friends. I'm doing well doing this so why would I stop. I've been supporting myself with poker the past 4.5 years. I've still got a long way to go, but I feel like I've somewhat succeeded. I went to Vegas last year for the WSOP and plan on going this year again. Maybe I can make a nice score. I'm considering moving away from Scranton as the poker scene actually sucks here. Not really sure where. I've always wanted to move to California. We went on a trip there last year and I really liked it out there. Here are some palm trees from our trip. (I suck at taking pictures)

Last year at the WSOP, allllll the professional poker players were talking crypto....Bitcoin or Ethereum? was the question. What's Ethereum? I have no idea. I'm in Las Vegas! Poker! Women! Alcohol! The desert...its so hot! Who cares about crypto what?? I'm too caught up to really pay attention. Me and my friends get 17th in the tag team event for a very small score. You need to get top 5 to get anything serious. We come home. September comes. A player in our local game is talking about crypto. I'm starting to pay attention now. I want to talk about it with my peers but nobody is interested. I finally start looking into it myself. I can't believe the growth. At this point I'm astounded....my friends are still not interested.

I meet up with an old friend and mention it to him. He is intrigued. We both invest sometime in November and talk nothing but crypto. I'm happy to have found someone that shares an interest in this. I'm not sure how my poker friends can be so uninterested. I've come to learn this year maybe they aren't as good of friends as I thought they were. We traveled together. We played together. But myself being an upstanding person, who cares about my friends thoughts, interest and well being... I've learned that they don't necessarily feel the same, and how they were dismissive of crypto is just part of the bigger picture that they don't really care about any of my interests or even me at all. They are both very selfish I've come to learn. I have a few genuine friends in my life and that's all I need. I want to start focusing on myself more anyway. Sorry for rant...

The beautiful Bellagio. Where's Terry Benedict?

Chips from my biggest winning session ever:

New friends in Vegas

I'm a dork but my best friend from home

So I find Steem. Here we are! 2018! Things are good.

Here is my wonderful cat Bella. (He's a boy, he's my boy, it means 'beautiful in Italian okay!) He's 13 or 14 but seems healthy and happy.

I consider myself a person of high moral standards. I feel strongly about a lot of things. I believe all people should have access to an education and to healthcare. I don't know how we go about doing that but I know there are countries where these things are provided. In the U.S. we have facilities for these things, yet not all of our people have access to them. That just doesn't seem right to me. I also think people in general should just generally be better to each other. I think America being as dog as dog as it is just makes it worse. A friend of mine said how living in this area makes people hard. It's cold, it's miserable. Not very affluent. In the west were there is generally more wealth and prosperity it seems people are generally more happy as well. I think we need some kind of systemic change where people don't have to slave in order to survive. I'm a fan of a Universal Basic Income and think crypto might be able to play some part in that distribution of wealth.

For now I'm playing poker which honestly is not fulfilling whatsoever. I'd love to be able to help people and offer them something rather than trying to deceive them into giving me their money. I hate poker for that reason. Generally the people I play with understand my character, but I'd still rather be giving something to the world than only be taking from others. Wealth can in fact be created; life isn't a zero sum game. Steem is a wonderful example of this. I look forward to spending time with you guys. Thanks for reading.