Hello friends! 😊

How are you doing?

I hope you had a great Christmas and relaxing holidays so far! 🎄🎉🎁

I was ill and laying in bed for 12 days. But finally since the weekend, it´s much better. I think I need some more days to fully recover but it´s alright. 😊 Christmas has been nice for me but I wasn´t able to celebrate with my family because my parents had Covid. 😔 That was the first Christmas without celebrating with my parents. It was a bit sad. But we will make up for it and celebrate again on thursday. 😊

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WOW what a year! 😱

As the year 2022 is almost over, I wanted to make a little recap.
This year was very special for me.

To be honest, I have been working very hard for my music and for getting the name Raven out there. It has been 8 years of working non stop and barely having free time. It was exhausting and also sometimes full of frustration. And it brought me to a point of wanting to give up on Raven during the last years, because everywhere I sent my music to, people just said: "It´s not mainstream enough". Or they just never responded.

Being successful as Raven is like my lifetime dream so I put all my heart into it and sacrificed alot during the last years.

I didn´t earn much money cause I only work parttime to have time for my music, I was never able to afford holidays, I was never able to afford the things my friends did in their freetime. Lot´s of events where my friends went to I just missed.
And at some point it was frustrating to basically sacrifice almost my whole life for my music and nothing worked out, nothing payed off, only people who tell me: "You need to be more like this and you need to be more like that in order to be successful."

Last year in October or November I had a little videochat with a friend @musicuniversity where we talked about Hive, Rising Star and new crypto games. And I actually felt that I am still so excited about the whole crypto world and I really want to come back and be active here on Hive again.

So I started posting again, went into Discord communities or streams and it was crazy...

People were actually very excited and hyped when I entered their stream and some couldn´t even believe that I talked to them. Lol. This was very weird. But during my absence here, my music and name started to spread and people actually knew me. And it was a very weird and at the same time great feeling to see that here on chain, people actually liked and valued what I did. And they saw me as a serious artist.

This really changed alot for me.

I still need my normal job, I still don´t really have money, but for the first time, what I do is valued and I feel as if it does make sense to sacrifice so much for this dream. It is starting to pay off. And it does make a difference. It motivated me to go on. I met so many awesome people here, so many project partners, and so many loyal fans that support everything I do. This feeling is just priceless and I am so thankful for this! 💜💛

I feel that this is only just the start, and there is much more to come on my way here on Hive.

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My Goals 🎯

I didn´t really make exact goals for this year. Because I just wanted to see how everything develops this year. And to be honest, I was still not really believing that this would last long. I thought no one might be interested anymore in me and my art after a few months. But we have the end of the year and people are still around, so... 😄

I launched my own Token on my birthday in march and I am pretty happy with the result so far! I sold 227 $RAVEN which is awesome! Thank you so much guys for supporting my art! I know I can´t offer much yet, I wish I could give you guys more drops and a page for staking my NFTs and get valuable rewards, but doing all this besides work takes alot of effort. I wish I could contribute more time, and I wish I had a bigger team behind me to provide you with more stuff. But I just have to be patient and constantly work on my ideas and then everything will come to life sooner or later. I should not be too hard on myself for being so slow. To be honest I am still very happy that I get so much stuff done, although I suffer of so many chronic diseases. I should be proud of myself. I will give my best to give you guys further value for your $RAVEN and to bring even more usecases in the future.

I started my own Discord server at the beginning of the year because @efastromberg94 encouraged me to do. I was a little anxious about this in the beginning, as it is alot of work and I don´t have any experience with this. And I was also very afraid that no one might be interested in joining. But I am very happy that I opened up this Discord server because I love talking to the great people in my community! And currently I have more than 150 members in my Discord server, which is awesome!! Thank you so much guys for being there with me and for always supporting! 💖 And thanks so much Efa for encouraging me to start it!

My main focus this year has been my Hive blog. I tried to make this the center of my activities and let you guys know about everything I do here. My goal was to collect 1000 Hive Power through my posts until the end of the year. And I actually made it!! 🎉 I collected 1,085.250 Hive Power so far without powering up any Hive, which is great!

Lot´s of other stuff also happened that I didn´t think in the beginning of the year that they could happen!

- I have been interviewed for a few times for various podcasts and radioshows during the year

- I started my own show in the PIZZA Discord - Raven´s Court - and so far have made more than 20 shows

- I started my own weekly music show on cryptoradio.fm which is a project of the awesome SlothBuzz community @slothbuzz

- I was lucky to be one of the founder members of the Hive Music Video Foundation, which will bring the Hive music scene to the next level

- I was asked to make the music and sound effects for a new game that is currently being developed on Hive: CraftInk

- I worked together with the ZOLiD community to get my music into the wax game Nifty Kicks and I hope many more games will follow

- I released 2 big NFT drops on WAX in cooperation with awesome artists

- I distributed my music to all major platforms with the first crypto distribution service there is: BlockTunes @blocktunes

I believe this will be a gamechanger for the music industry at some point! The concept is great, as you can also buy the music there as NFTs and I am really looking forward for great ideas BlockTunes has and is working on that will be even more awesome. The future of music on Hive is big!

And I believe I forgot to mention alot of other great stuff here. But it´s hard to keep track of everything, as sooo much happened. 😅

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Further Steps 📈

I am working on alot of different projects at the same time. Some are small, some are big. Some mean I need to learn alot of new skills. But all give me the opportunity to release my creativity and to bring my ideas to life, which have been inside of me for a long time but I never knew how I could create them. But now Hive and crypto gave me the possibility. It´s too much for working on all this alone and I am fully aware that some of these ideas will take a long time to develop them. So I am very happy that slowly my team starts to grow. I also want to thank my girlfriend @creepyarts and my friend @nane-qts to support me and help me in all that I do. That they trust my ideas and encourage me to go on. Thank you so much! 💜
To give you an overview of the upcoming stuff, these are some of the things I currently work on:

- Preparing the first physical merch drop for my Diamond Holders 🎉

- Preparing a very special song NFT drop for my birthday

- Working on other more NFT drops together with Hive artists

- Make the music and sound effects for CraftInk

- Working on making more live shows on cryptoradio.fm and in my own Discord server

- Working on a song for my very first professional music video with the HMVF

- Preparing everything to be able to start streaming on Twitch

I am a gamer ever since, so I really want to start streaming crypto and normal games to connect my love for games with with my love for content creation

- Working on creating tutorial content to onboard more musicians to Hive

- Saving up funds for being to grow my team and work on a bigger project that has always been my dream

That is alot of stuff. So as you can already see, it will take time. Further I realized this year, that I definitely need to slow down a bit. Working 60-70 hours a week is not for my chronical ill body. It also makes my mental diseases worse if I work too much. And I was very ill for the last 2 weeks. So I feel, my body tells me to slow down. That is not an easy task for me, as I love working on all this, and I am very impatient when it comes to my creative ideas. But health always comes first and I need to take this serious. I started going to the gym again as this really helps my body feel better and it also helps my mental problems. So I do my best to continue that. Changes already show and this is very motivating and gives me alot of power!

Furthermore I need to move to a new apartment in January, so this will also be a challenge and take up some time. But I am sure I will feel much better when I am finally out of this shitty apartment with the mental landlord. So it´s a necessary step.
I also need to work a bit more at my normal work for a few months to be able to pay the renovation of my music studio. My computer is very very old, and soon I won´t be able to make music anymore. Further the room is old and needs to be renovated so I finally feel comfortable in it again. So this is very urgent. But like you all know, this kind of equipment costs alot of money, and it will not be an easy task for me to collect this money with a parttime job. I wish music and crypto would already pay me enough to be able to afford these things, but it´s not like this yet. I am very confident though, that if I keep going like this, I will get to this point in maybe 2-3 years. 😊

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Wow ok guys, you see this is quite a long recap and this year was full of many many more cool things. But I think it´s enough to give you an overview of the current state. And I feel as if I owe you this overview, so you can estimate what to expect during the next year. 😃

To celebrate the year 2022 and to say thank you to all you guys, there will be a little party on

Friday the 30th at 5pm CET

in my own Discord server. I am looking forward to seeing you there! 🎉

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I thank you so much for always being here for me and support me!! Thank you for giving me the faith and power to go on! 💜❤️💛

I hope we will see each other in the new year and experience great things together! May the year 2023 continue as 2022 started!

Best regards,

RAVEN 🐦

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I am very thankful for everyone who supports me on my journey!!