First, let me tell you the number of moons I earned this month. 200 months. Frankly, I felt a sharp pang of disappointment because I had earned more upvotes, including one that garnered 600 upvotes, compared to last month. However, I received one hundred less moons. I did think that I was getting better at crafting fun snarky remarks, but my improvement was not reflected in the reward.

Then, I asked myself if I had fun shitposting at r/cryptocurrency. The answer was an affirmative yes, so I realised that the monetary loss didn’t take away the fun I had already derived. That helped me to pull myself together and shake off my disappointment.

This month, I actually learnt something important. Stay true to myself and show my authentic side to others. Why do I say this? Since thinking of something funny on the spot didn’t come intuitively, I found myself relying on my professional identity as an English teacher.

Once, I wrote something about how I liked another user’s use of alliteration. That surprisingly generated quite a bit of feedback, and I learnt the difference between alliteration and assonance as a result. Who would have thought that Reddit would contribute to my professional development? Another time, I wrote a comment about how I always preach to my students not to fear failure, especially if they fail better than others. Maybe it was the tongue-in-cheek remark but I also received quite a few upvotes for this comment.

For both times, I started off my comment with the sentence starter “As an English teacher, I…”. I think my shitposting efforts last month impressed upon me how I had something unique to say by virtue of my profession, so I could be mindful about how I can capitalise on that.

This indirectly made me want to learn more about the English language and all its intricacies and idiosyncrasies so that I can could pen similarly well-received comments on Reddit in future. I can’t wait to see where my shitposting efforts next month will lead me to!