My Nostr origin story isn’t unusual. I followed the Bitcoin Twitter (Now X? TWIX?) crowd over here when everyone was talking about it. I listened to the podcasts about it. I started reading about how it works despite most of the terminology being completely foreign to me. I got the basics. That’s what mattered. Before that, I wasn’t a serious user of any social media despite having a few profiles set up. I’m one of those Gen X who didn’t see the point in broadcasting everything about myself. But I did see value in using them to find information. I would either like or bookmark things I wanted to go back and read or research later. I mainly use IG for shopping because of the visuals. I bookmark something I like and go back and shop for it later when I have free time. I would bookmark posts on Twitter that had articles or links I wanted to watch later. I deleted my Facebook account back in 2011 and stayed away except for an occasional event invite that had to be viewed there. So, the point is that I didn’t come to Nostr hoping to improve my social media experience. Because I had nothing significant to compare it to. The thing that clicked for me was the way the accounts worked, the fact that it was permissionless and decentralized and essentially portable. Why? Because, like my fellow middle-aged folks, the disco children of the 1970s, I hate passwords. I’ve lived just long enough for me to realize that I’ve used the same password since I was a teenager on half of my accounts because I don’t have the bandwidth in my mind to remember another one. And “Ilovegeorgemichael” doesn’t age well. (Just joking, of course, I was over George by high school) Anyway, the mere idea of being able to generate an ID and password, key pair, that didn’t require effort from me was heavenly. And, it was anonymous so you could control how much of your identity you would reveal. And, and, and…. the frosting, sprinkles and cherry on top was that the single key pair could be used with different clients that have different functions. Yes, please! I felt like someone read my mind when I was commenting on my favorite old people blog and saying to myself that I thought it would be great if I could have a single ID and password combination for all these apps that I use every day. And here it is. In the beginning phases, yes. But expanding more every day. I’m amazed by the ideas that the developer community on Nostr come up with. All within a collaborative, open-source space. I try to keep up with what they’re doing because I want to be a part of this. I want to see this succeed. And I like to learn new things. This whole experience of learning about the technology behind Nostr has been fun. Even if I only understand the surface level topics. My personal challenge is to set up a relay to use as a personal group chat. Maybe I’ll get to do that now that I’m not working a 9 to 5 anymore. And that’s my Nostr story. --Annie