This is for the #DC1000 "hype week" (I'm not sure whether this type of post and the hashtag actually work for this, we'll see...) My story with NightCafe changed with daily challenge 307: "Inspired by Flowers", around 2 years ago. I posted the following image of a rose jewel and was extremely surprised to actually win! It sparked many more positive comments than I ever received before on any of my creations and gave me a boost of confidence. It encouraged me to make more effort every time I created something, until I really liked the result. Shortly after that I hit the daily bronze for DC 328 "Impressionism", with an image that still is a favorite of mine (I also really like the rose jewel for its emotional value, but objectively you can do much better now with newer models than what was possible at the time with SDXL 0.9, whereas the impressionist "painting" aged not too bad). Not long after that it felt only natural for me to move on to a pro subscription, to support this great platform and to have more credits and more models to play with. Sure, since then I haven't had as much success with following DCs. But it's no big deal. Now I participate rarely, maybe once a week with the Monday masterpiece challenge. I favor community challenges, and most of the time the "no theme challenges". I find that I don't need any more the spark that was the DC theme to figure out what I want to make. But I'll never forget that DCs are what made me create every day at the beginning of my NightCafe journey, helping me feel better in my life in general. So thanks for this great initiative, and looking forward to #DC1000!