Celebrating My 6th HackerNoon B-Day With "Ozaki 6" Challenge

On October 14th, it’s going to be six years since I published my first story on HackerNoon.

Now, I could wait and write something cheesy about that special day in my life, but that’s just not me. I wanted something special, so I found inspiration in the “Point Break” remake from 2015. Honestly, I think that the original from 1991 with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze stood the test of time, and it’s still my favorite one. However, in the remake, there’s the third “character,” a fictional one that caught my eye.

The Ozaki eight extreme sports “ordeals” are intended to honor the elements and forces of nature while testing the abilities of “poly-athletes”. Ono Ozaki, the creator of the ordeals dubbed “The Ozaki 8”, is a fictional extreme athlete and eco-warrior that wanted to bring public attention to environmental issues in the movie Point Break.

Extreme sports ain’t my thing, but extreme writing is. I proved it with my controversial and edgy writing, which was rewarded with the Noonies.

So, I’m going to do my own version of the “Ozaki 6” writing challenge. Here are the rules, six rules for each writing candle on my HackerNoon birthday cake:

1. To successfully accomplish all “Ozaki 6” writing “ordeals,” I need to publish six top stories in a row.

   
   

2. All top stories have to be in the different HackerNoon writing contest categories. So, two stories in one category don’t count. The good news is that HackerNoon did an amazing job of making a long list of available writing contests. The bad news is that for some of them I simply…

3. As I already wrote, it has to be in a row, so if I get published, but it’s not the top story, I have to start all over again.

4. Although I’m a proud verified HackerNoon contributor, I’ve never used this superpower.

Why? Because it’s just ain’t my thing, and more importantly Hacker Noon Editors are Superheroes without Capes. So, no green verified checkmark shortcut.

5. The deadline is October 14th.

   
   

6. I will write a follow-up article whether I succeed or fail.

My starting advantage is that I’m already halfway through with three top stories in a row. You may say, you’re already there, what’s the challenge then? The trouble is that in order to succeed I have to go into extremely technical territory for me where my reputation would be at stake. When you publish 100+ stories, it’s normal to have a few “blockbusters,” and a few flops which made some readers leave legit comments like “WTF is this story about?” That’s OK. I don’t take it personally.

It goes without saying that you’re all invited to my HackerNoon birthday party, and…