It was an automatic decision, I didn't even thought about it. I took my cellphone because it seems like every spare moment and all of my free time goes to checking up on Steem, other communities, posts, to-do-list regarding OCD and Steem Onboarding, keeping up with discord and it's politics, my own post ideas and brainstorming and defining future steps.

I visited my family a few months ago and their honest feedback was that I spend too much time online, I was supposed to interact with them while visiting them but all the time I was pegged to my cellphone or my PC. I know for a fact that next time I go visit, I will take a few hours off from Steem every day; a while back I tried to make it work with a Turkish girl and my complete addiction to checking my cellphone mid-conversation and sometimes even completely ignoring her sent that relationship attempt into the toilet.

Before Steem, every bus riden, subway and tram taken, meant a new opportunity to check out the landscape, admire the city, observe other people, have a conversation with a stranger and sometimes even read a book but now, that time is spent on something Steem related; before Discord, walking to a place, sitting on a bench in a park, drinking a coffee on a table on the outside part of a shop, eating a sandwich at subway or those minutes before sleeping meant time for Eric to think, meditate or relax, now they are for checking discord messages.

Sometimes I get posts out of these moments. If you know about me, you know that I publish a lot of Thoughts from a... kind of posts. The only reason I do it is because somehow I feel the drive, the need to express what is happening on my mind at that exact moment and at the same time, get some Steem out of all these hours and hours spent daily thinking and doing Steem related stuff.

All of these thoughts are being thought of on a bathtub while I´m supposed to be relaxing and not thinking about anything.

I just finished a conversation with @acidyo exactly about this topic, because I mentioned him that I stupidly brought my phone to the bath. Before ending the conversation and trying (unsuccesfully) to not think about Steem, it went down to a simple idea:

I really hope Steem moons. Can you imagine all the hours and hours spent by hundreds of people, trying to make Steem Blockchain a better place?

It doesn't matter if they are developers, community focused people, content creators, curators, game consumers or any other Steemian type out there. I know at least 200 people who have spent countless hours trying to make a reality what theorically is Steem.

_{What if Steem never moons?}

_{What if all this effort, passion, hours spent, blood shed, sweat and long nights in the end mean nothing and Steem never breaks the $1 barrier again?}

_{Shit, what if the price goes down to $.08 and those 25k Steem I bought at $.82 are worthless?}

With all the FUD around crypto in general, the trash talk towards Steem from within that same steem community, the public opinion of Steem among other variables, it´s easy to become desperate when you see the price is not moving.

Hell, it´s even hard to not get disappointed or maybe even believe you are investing yourself into something that will never pay off, especially when this meme is accurate as fuck:

In the past year and a half I saw OG and highly rewarded Steemians hype ONO who left Steem or even used our interface to shill EOS and ONO and then come back once it didn´t work out (and stupidly, they are still getting rewards on Steem, God, how easily people forget).

I have heard of Smoke, Whaleshares, Veku and who the fuck knows how many other Steem clones are out there. I know a lot of people turned their back on Steem for one of these blockchains/platforms. I even opened an account on Smoke and posted a bit, but I never neglected my Steem performance nor my Steem committment went down. All those people who left will come back, believe me. And I won´t be there to support them, I hope you do the same.

There are some concerns about the new social media based on a "Steem competitor Blockchain* coming out next month and probably some Steemians will try it out, some others will completely leave Steem, some will come back, some maybe won´t.

I don´t care about those people and I don´t care about those other platforms

I´m in for the long run. I have a complete trust on Steem and the eventual moon. I will continue to keep building on the Steem Blockchain as much as my abilities and knowledge allow me to. I´m not selling in the near future. I´m now holding almost 60k Steem and the goal is 100k by June 2020. I don´t mind all those hours invested, all those potential relationships lost and I don´t care about the FUD out there, I will keep doing what I´m doing.

I don´t say HODL, I say HOLD, because for me it´s easy to hold it. I don´t need to hold on for dear life because despite everything that I mentioned above...

Steem is a lifetime committment and I am all in for Steem.

And you know what? If you are a bit intelligent, you should do the same

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This post was originally posted in May 2019 and it's part of my initiative called showcase April, where I'll post the best content I've done over the past three years.