I just realized that it's actually been quite a long time of being here; by New Year's it will be over 500 days.

500 days...

^{Something to extrapolate the concept of 'long'.}

I am not a very consistent person, with most of the things; Sitting at school made me go "blaaaaaah" with even the hair growth pattern of a student sitting before me being more interesting than what the teacher had to say about... I'm not sure what, because I missed it. And reading on exams... well, I did that every now and then. I sware, because I actually got my degree.
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high school degree

*mic drop*

^{"Hell yeah..."}

But you know what? I actually got a stipend for the essay that I wrote as part of the marticulation exams of mother tongue (Finnish), chosen based on the liking of the teachers of our school. I thought it was shit, but in actuality I was among the best performing students in Finnish from our high school. Not sure if I was just that good, or others were just that bad...

But like I was saying, managing to do something more or less consistently over a period of 500 days is a miracle (because sometimes I struggle to keep even a single post consistent). And try guess what's the secret to this inconsistent consistency?
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Steeeeeeeeeemmmm

[insert "Aliens Meme Guy" picture]

^{"Well, duh, no shit! That's where you're writing this!"}

Sorry, what I meant specifically is the nature of Steem.

You see, this place is a mess work in progress. A distributed ledger ran in a decentralized manner across several nodes, utilized – but not being limited – to sharing rewards for content contributions. Something along those lines. In its basic form it is a content delivery system, but with cryptocurrency as an internal part of it. Now, Youtube gives money, but only through adds, and only the small minority is entitled to monetize their content, if Youtube and advertisers are ok with that.

Here though, it [money] is part of the blockchain itself, so not only do we have a content managing and delivering system – whose backbone is the immutable blockchain accessible by various front-ends – but it is also an economy model. A model where, in theory, everybody has an access to the pie of newly created Steem which, when powered up, gives them more influence where the rewards of the reward pool are distributed.

One might ask "where does the value come from?" Well, to understand this better, let's think about our regular fiat currency we mostly use; it's value comes from the fact that we collectively attach value to it. The value exists only in the collective narrative. It is an illusion, but it's a useful one, because it allows a convenient trading of goods.

Now, in the case of Steem: why would people attach value to it? Well, it has 3 second transaction times (way faster than banks) – that in itself is a big deal. Second point is, that it cannot be manipulated by a single central authority: it's value cannot be diluted with hyperinflation, without the community and witnesses agreeing to it, but that of course makes zero sense because we are the ones actually in control of it. How about Steemmonsters? Steem could have value just because there is an application on top of it that has something that people want: digital goods, purchased with Steem.

It is such a different environment from anything else, that to be able to create a somewhat cohesive picture of it, you need to grasp all, economics, psychology and technology.

While I'm not the one who has been writing a lot about Steem – I'm mostly the "random life-rambling guy (with a lot of dried fruit)" (I struggled to tell others at Steemfest what I do if they didn't yet know me) – but with time I've gotten more and more sucked into this place: I have found great people, made friendships and genuine connections with others who are part of this – a tight community of people who all are committed to make this place work, all with the best to their ability, be it creating content – photography, videos, writing – or curating that content or, developing actual apps where this content can be created and shared or validating blocks as a witness.

I mean, Steem is such an anomaly, not yet fully ready to support a big amount of niche creators, that I feel like there's absolutely zero reason to limit myself into a box. The advice of "pick a niche" is suited for already well refined social medias where you have to nudge your way between competing content creators with established audience to get some of their attention. However, here things work a bit different at the moment, because you don't need to be a stellar content creator, though it helps, but what I think counts almost as much, if not more, is being community oriented. And what that means, is that a user is committed to help make Steem better and has shown this through his actions – a track record which shows that an individual isn't here to extract the maximum value only to cash out immediately.

It is really interesting and enjoyable, because I have the ability to express myself through many different outlets in many different ways here – not limited to a niche – but also strengthen the various relationships I have created. It's not just making content to be consumed, but it's also for people to get to know me better which will strengthen and establish relationships in real life as well.