Making Some Changes
I have been extremely frustrated with life and my inability to add value to it. This year I at least wanted to start getting some decent sleep and not be sitting in chairs or at desks for 18 hours a day. I wanted to be somewhat happy. While also seeing projects, and work I’m involved with growing and with them myself.
Endless Bear Market
For a while now I’ve been in maintenance mode both as they say on Steem and in life. Everything has been in an endless bear market for so long I only know moving sideways and not the direction of up. In bear markets, you hold on for dear life what you have and try and build so when you see the end of those tunnels light you come out ahead and it was worth it. Sometimes you realize you just can’t hold on anymore and need to accept the losses that come with it.
Recently I have been staying up past 5 am again and not getting much sleep. With the exception of over the weekend where I crashed and slept most of it away. Along with hating life more than normal. This has left me a very angry person at my inability to think myself out of my current situations and see success in anything anymore. Everything turned into a chore and one I dreaded trying to do on a daily basis.
Franky I been on Steem for 22 months and I see all my efforts as complete failures. I’ve crossed the 8k posts marks and you would not know it. Most of my friends like my real life ones are long gone. My interactions I have these days feel like business transactions and nothing more. Enjar the brand makes just cents an hour at best.
Curation
I was very blessed to earn the privilege of becoming a curator for a few months in a number of communities. There is just something about finding content that had heart and soul poured into it and being able to reward it with more than further pocket lint.
It has also become the bane of my existence as I no longer enjoy the content. It has all become “is this worth me further looking into for curation purpose or do I move on?” There so much content there is no way to sift through it all without being jaded, heartless, and a few other things. I rarely found what I was truly looking for. I know it’s out there I just could not find it.
I’ve also seen the sadder side of Steem. The endless dead accounts piling up on this platform that got missed or forgotten that were creating content better than I ever will. The people who repost their old content but tried to avoid getting caught by shifting and word upscaling. Then you just had the content thieves who will steal anything to try and make a quick buck and cheat those who put in all the hard work. I have discovered curators really get ticked off when they find stolen content.
I’ve recently stepped down on all of my curation roles and efforts. I just don’t have it in me anymore. Manual curation is very time consuming and I was never very efficient at it. I’ve needed more time for myself and this is a major area of time. This includes all communities associated with them as well. While communities are great they become so time-consuming in themselves.
Content Creation
There is a lot of content I want to create that I just have not been doing. I’ve been trying to move in a new direction that I hope will help further my ability in creating content in the long run. I’ve been trying to juggle changes, learn a bunch of new stuff, and everything else life tosses at you and something had to give.
Many people who take up leadership and/or curation roles on this platform more or less stop posting personal content outside of a very occasion post. While there are a couple of expectations to that. Many times they are just creating community posts and stuff along that line. Which my own blog has sure been full of that stuff as well.
Creating content was always my line in the sand. I was not willing to give it up and while I’ve tried to make some compromises I’ve been very disappointed in a lot of the content I’ve created due to that result.
There is a post I wanted to create over the past two months and in total I’ve only created a title for it-- Complexity Of Betrayal League. Frankly, I can’t recall enough to write it anymore and they'res not enough time. That league is ending soon. While I certainly had grand dilutions of it becoming something it was not going be which I was fully aware of as well. It’s just one of an endless amount of things I pushed off to the side in purist of other stuff.
Final Thoughts
This platform is in need of two things the most-- leaders and curators. Leaders are taking the charge to make the next dapp, community, platform, the whatever. Curators making sure efforts are getting some kind of reward other than 2 cents. These roles are full-time jobs for many who are also having to still keep working their day jobs, and everything else life demands of them.
Mixed in with these groups you just have the poor bastards trying to do too much because their skill set is needed everywhere. I found myself saying NO a lot more then I was saying YES. I still could not make the time for everything I ended getting involved in. I lost track how many times my discord count was so high I had to go in and remove them by the dozens just to feel not overwhelmed. I am a nobody and thankful I am to be one.
I shared a little last night with some folks that have put up with me over the years. No one dared to click the link to the discord and told me “BULL FUCKING SHIT.” I got a much needed laugh as reality stop making sense for a moment to them.
I’m at least glad I gave quite a few things that were so far out of my comfort zone a try. It was an interesting past few months.
Information
Content created by @enjar.
Catching up on my Steem stuff and feel like I needed to make a comment here. I feel like there are certain leaders in this community that are making living off the backs of others free work. I've inquired into helping some larger communities when I was first starting out and asked if there was any compensation. Most just laughed and said it's an honor to be chose for such a role.
Part of while I do my monthly recap post because it is nice to see that my hard work does pay off a little.
One of the reasons OCDB was created was because OCD couldn't find any delegations to continue to grow and pay more currators to look through posts. That tied in with the bear market and OCDB was created as a way to help encourage people to stay consistent with lack of Steem Power and low prices.
Keep up the great work. I know these words don't mean much, but you will gain traction eventually as your quality of work is great and I'm going to keep sharing and building with you. Hopefully, one day, one of us will get rich enough to at least buy the other one a hotwheels lambo.
Nice plan. Good luck on putting the work in!!
As a cynic, and as someone who has been here no small amount of time as well, I think I can put my finger on the problem.
It's not that it's a bear market. Markets go up and markets go down. Cryptocurrency was never going to be the golden child forever because that's not how markets work.
The problem is that you care that it's a bear market. You have turned the platform into a job – and let's be fair, it's a shitty job. From a time/reward ratio point of view, digging ditches would be both better for you and better paying per hour. From a pleasure/investment point of view, doing almost anything else is going to give you a better ratio on enjoyment. Both of those are made worse by putting the platform ahead of your life.
The technical deficiencies of the platform, in particular the difficulty in finding actual content that interests you on any particular topic, just aggravates the situation.
The only sensible response is to stop. "Doctor, it hurts when I do this thing." We both know what the next line is. There's no shame in making the healthy choice.
Make a list of things you enjoy, not just on the steem blockchain but in your life. Sit down and focus on those for a while. Set reasonable, short-term, deliberately focused goals, execute on them, finish them, and check them off – and let the feeling of gratification that comes as a result really be savored.
For myself, grocery shopping – weird as it is – is one of the tasks that keeps me focused. Sit down, make the list. Talk to your roommates or family and think about the things that they might want, find out the things that they do want, make the list airtight. Think about the things that you might want to go with the things that are on the list and add them. Go to the grocery store, walk the aisles, play the game of "is this the best price that I can get for this quality?" Fill up the cart, go to check out, pay a real human being in exchange for your goods, and take them home. Unpack them, put them in the right places, parcel out any meats are such that need to go to the freezer or fridge, tuck them away in dated, sealed bags, clean up the grocery bags, then sit down for a moment and look around.
Then check it off the to do list.
It sounds ridiculous. So much over elaborated focus on one relatively simple task. But do that once in a while and it becomes much easier to focus on tasks which are not quite so immediate. It's a reminder that you can gets things done from beginning to end.
Scale creep happens to us all. We tried to take on more than we can really affect. You start caring about bear markets, which have nothing to do with you in the sense of anything that you can affect, instead of "I want to and enjoy doing this thing," or even "I need to do this thing," which is just as important. It stops being personal. And when it stops being personal, it stops being motivational.
Go do the things that are personal and motivating to you, that give you pleasure and joy for the effort you put in, or at least a sense of satisfied gratification, and step away from the unrewarding things. When you let the unrewarding things pile up, the pile falls on you.
Posted using Steeve, an AI-powered Steem interface
Bear market is testing everyone, but as always there is a light at the end of every tunnel. It just seems this is a helluva long tunnel, also Steem was never easy, it's a long grind with no clear end goal. Who knows where we are heading, we are just here for the ride it seems, let's see where this crypto road will take us. I just hope not in bankrupcy :)
there are everyday changings so why it would be okay to do some by yourself ;) i love your post... its more straight as maybe some thinking about it!!
Don't let the pessimist view of things weigh you down. Sounds like you just needed to vent a bit, as all these ongoing problems are stacking up one by one.
My problem is that I tend not to worry about the problems I don't know how to solve, so I ignore it. People shake their head at me, when they know they could solve my problem in five minutes with their talents and resources, at something that I have spent a lifetime having no luck at dealing with, with great effort and more failures than they have probably ever faced. For years, I would look for mentors and friends to help teach or rescue me, and I would come up empty-handed. Only I could rescue myself.
Hope you don't actually let your circumstances control your inner mind too much. This chaotic world can really wreak havoc on the emotions, making our attitudes explosive.
Remember why you started these hobby groups, and decide if you're really on target with the spirit of your original intentions. Often I feel like the need for financial rewards for the work we donate, becomes a re-arrangement of our true values. It's like expecting a pet chicken to suddenly lay enough eggs to sustain a family egg business, while the love for the chicken and fellow egg lovers becomes a thing of the past, along with the failed business.
The real world is in a bear market too. :)
New Path of Exile season soon.
It is important to get some sunlight into you at the same time as being endlessly creative.
We have plenty of curators on the platform - they just need more stake.
Posted using Partiko Android
Glad to hear it, man. You should focus on what you need to do to get yourself to a better place.
Good luck for the future mate. I think it goes without saying that you were an immense contributor to Archdruid gaming community. Your leadership drove it to new levels!
I hope you do great on your new path :-D! Hopefully we can still talk on discord from time to time!