hi farcasters! 

i'm doing a brave and scary thing — stepping away from tech and social media to go all-in on trees and IRL connections.

but i've got this roc.camera/ pre-order that i won't need in my new life.

so before i go, i'd like to give it away. (details in thread)

creating and destroying; flying cars, roc.camera, july.rocks

no kings. only working on impossible things.

p.s. if you already have a Roc pre-order, you can still send me your stories as encouragement for my own journey. i'd love to hear them. ♥️

caveats and stipulations: 

- it has to be your own story — nothing secondhand. 
- tell me what it meant to you, how you felt, how you feel about it now, even. 
- no AI help, obviously. 
- and what you did is less important than how you did it. i want to hear about your courage, not your prowess.

🫶

While we managed to catch him and search his pockets, the phone was nowhere to be found. That’s when I realized the man had a partner that he handed the phone to. My friend decided to chase this other man down, while I stayed with our thief. Now, I don’t know how to fight, but if push comes to shove, I’ll scrap when I have to. Thankfully, I knew the thief had no knife or gun on him. If anything, the thief looked like he was tweaking on drugs, but I was drunk and so was my friend. I held him tight, but he threw a sucker punch as a means of escape and ran off. I’m not a fighter, but I sure as shit am a runner, so I go after him.   We must’ve ran two blocks before I caught up to him. This is when a group of men approached us because they noticed the commotion. I don’t know Spanish, they didn’t know English. Using Google translate, I told them this man stole my friend’s phone, to which the group of men respond by slapping the shit outta him, but this is where it gets sketchy.

There was a time in Colombia where I faced fear and uncertainty, roughly same time last year. I was travelling with a group of friends. It was our second night in Medellín. We had just exited from a club called Pero Negro. My friend and I must’ve had about 9 shots of Aguardiente. Keep in mind one South America shot is double North American shots. It was just my friend and I walking back to our airbnb (the rest of the group were already there). Certain Colombian streets are sketchy with pickpockets and prostitutes. We were by the pickpocket area. There was a man that approached us, displaying a restaurant menu to my friend while we waited to cross the street. This was a distraction. The man was creating a blind spot to cover my friend’s view of his lower body. Five seconds later, as we cross the street, my friend notices his phone is missing. We knew immediately the man was a thief, who used the menu to create a blind spot and pickpocket my friend’s phone. Needless to say, we chased him down the street.

the contest is easy: tell me about a time when you had to face fear and uncertainty in order to do something you knew was important to you. that's it.

the winner will be chosen subjectively by me based on the story that makes me cry the most (or is at least the most vulnerable and authentic).

you can reply in this thread, or message me directly if you'd prefer. 

the deadline is Sunday night (June 15) and the winner will be chosen sometime on Monday (June 16). i'll message you directly and connect you with @july to transfer my pre-order (already paid for) into your name. 

and that will be that. 

🙂

faust

head of design & research @base @coinbasewallet

build updates in /faust :)

share your story and mine could be yours!

omg we dreamed about a blockchain camera for this exact purpose in a design sprint 8 years ago. You have no idea how excited I am to realize it’s real now

Founder of @VerifiedCreators 
verifiedcreators.io

Designer | Innovator🎨👩‍💻

here, i'll comment so it lands in your notifs :)

Bed time. Will share tomorrow. Gotta bookmark this.

In the heat of it all, I remembered that I was supposed to enter a vehicle, and the driver had asked for my bags, which I handed to them. But I wasn’t sure if the small purse where I kept my passport was still there when I took my bags back, as I didn’t board the vehicle.

I was caught between staying back in my home country to do another passport or going back—without purpose—to the current one.

But the thought of the previous incident with the car I almost boarded couldn’t escape my mind. What if I had left my purse in that boot when I was taking back my bags?

The driver seemed to have left a long time ago, too, but the possibility of "what if" compelled me to board a bike and see if I could find them.

Just about some distance within the ride, I saw the driver’s car stopped by border control, being searched...

I had a citizen sponsorship, my application was rejected twice, and I had to remonstrate it.

With enough evidence and documents backing my purpose for the visa, I was reconsidered, but only if I forfeited the sponsorship letter and paid a blocked account fee of up to 13K+ in less than a week.

At this stage, it seemed like this money was the only thing stopping me from my goal.

So, for the second time, I packed up my account and contacted everyone I knew who could assist in raising the funds.

But I had to go back to my home country to wire this payment, as it wasn’t possible in my current one.

After the hustle and making the payment, while I was coming back to the country of application, just at the land border, I lost my passport.

My whole world went blank for hours thinking about what had happened to me. Getting a new passport, considering the deadline, was impossible...

In 2022, I hit rock bottom, but that’s a story for another day.

Going through 2022, I only had one thing on my mind: I needed a fresh start.

So I started plotting to relocate from my continent of birth to a new one. Turns out the best option for me was to go back to school after eight years to pursue this new start.

In the bid, I scraped my account and moved to a new city without picking up anything from my house in preparation for my travel documents.

By the time I had enough information about my location, I learned it would take a minimum of two years from my home country to make it to my destination due to visa restrictions.

Two years seemed like forever for a builder who needed a fresh start, but I was determined to find a way. So I relocated from my home country to another country with the potential to reduce that two years to one. I moved to this nearby country and lived there for almost a year.

My papers were ready after 10 months or so, and I applied for a visa.

Even though..