Dear Steemit – Sally's Thank You Letter from the Future (Fiction)

Dear Steemit

     My name is Sally and over the last few years I have made many wonderful friends here on Steemit and you have provided me with the means to retire. I am choosing to break my anonymity because I am selling the rights to one of my short stories and if everything goes well (fingers crossed) it might become a movie. I am glad to see so many other former minnows joining the Steemit Millionaires Club and also retiring early. To those of you who are just joining Steemit, here is my story.

     I was a somewhat naive seventeen year old when I first heard of Steemit, back in 2016. A mean girl at school named Judy, was showing me how much money she made over the summer for just posting pictures of her hiking and other random stuff. Judy and I were never that close and I assumed this was one of her attention seeking strategies to make me feel less than.

     Judy was always a bit cruel, but every few months she would pay me a compliment and we would become friends again. Then she would be very friendly and just when I felt a real connection with her, she would do something terrible to me. Like tell all the other girls something, that I knew I shouldn't have told Judy.

     It was hard to take anything that Judy said seriously, but I had to know if there was any truth to her story. Later when I got home I was amazed to see that people were making thousands of dollars per post. I was desperate to get in on this, but I had this nagging feeling of low self worth. What would they think of me, I was not as pretty as Judy and I was even more self conscious than usual because I had just failed in my goal to lose weight over the summer.

     I was not fat, but I was at that awkward size where I didn't want to wear a bathing suit and I was buying slimming clothes, with that haunting suspicion that everyone knew. Then I was overcome with dread when I realized that I might actually fail and Judy would be there to resend all my posts out to her friends to ridicule me.

     In my mind's eye I could see them photoshopping my hiking photos to make me look even more heavy and then sending the hateful images to people that I didn't even know. So I decided to post anonymously and even though being a girl on Steemit in the beginning was much more lucrative, I was just another faceless minnow.

     My first post was a picture of a squirrel that I took behind my house. Then I waited for the thousands to roll in, but after four hours, I only had ten upvotes that were worth about three cents. I went to bed cursing that squirrel, thinking why did I choose the ugly one, why couldn't the cuter one just hold still.

     Then the next morning I woke up with the memory of wonderful dreams of me making thousands, so I raced over to my laptop to find two cents. I was at a loss, how am I losing money and I was concerned that by the end of the day I might be in debt. Little did I know how much 0.03 Steem would be worth someday, if I did I would have rushed out to an acorn shop to make that ugly squirrel's dreams come true.

     Over the next week I posted many random photos with similar results and I knew that I needed to make a change. So I looked at Judy's profile for inspiration and to fulfill a sick fascination, like how my mom's friends would look up their old boyfriends on Facebook to laugh at their guts, but still end up depressed at the end of the night.

     Then I saw that Judy was struggling to break ten dollars a post and was barely posting anymore. By this time there were famous people joining Steemit and most of the low hanging fruit had already been picked, the only way to earn real money was to offer something tangible to the community. So I decided to post some of my poetry, at that time I had twelve poems that I wrote for Literature class and I posted one a day for twelve days to increase my chance of getting noticed.

     I was surprised to see how many people actually enjoyed them, although I wasn't getting much money. Instead I was gaining about five new followers a day, I know that doesn't sound like much today, but in 2016 the CEO of the company was only had around a thousand followers and normal people were lucky to have over a hundred.

     I began reading other people's poems and stories and I wrote my first short story about a girl dealing with an eating disorder, which was partially about me with a little more excitement in her life and an ending that I desperately wanted to come true for me.I was surprised to see so many people respond to it and the upvotes that it received, I even received the coveted whale upvote.

     As you can probably tell I was absolutely floored by this and I immediately started working on my next masterpiece. I was writing every chance that I could, even during lunch at school. But then I heard Judy ask “Why aren't you eating, are you worried that you will have to buy all new clothes again? Don't think we didn't notice.” All the girls began laughing,

     I was devastated and in a fit of rage I yelled “What happened to the thousands of dollars that you were making on Steemit, did they find out that you were pretending to be a girl?” I knew struck I raw nerve by the way she paused before hurling the next fat joke, but I accidentally outed myself as a Steemian and she was out for blood.

     Two days later I noticed that she was posting memes of me, using the most unfaltering pictures that she could find. I was so humiliated that I basically stopped eating and missed a few days of school, but I eventually got out of that depression with a lot of help and support from some of the people I met on Steemitchat.

     Everyone said that I should have reported her for abuse, but I refused. I didn't want to let her know how it affected me and I wanted to remain anonymous, so I could write without the judgment of the kids at school. This anonymity allowed me the freedom to write and talk about issues that I was never able to talk about before and I wasn't willing to part with it.

     Over the next year I began to realize that Steemit was much more than just a place to my writing for money, Steemit could be whatever I wanted it to be and I chose to use it as paid training. I spent the better part of 2017 reading and writing to learn new methods of writing. I could try new things and then take on board all the wonderful criticism that you guys provided. It was amazing to see how helpful and friendly everyone was and how many other people were struggling with an eating disorder too.

     I was making real money, but then the first price spike hit and Steemit became a zoo. My upvote went from pennies to dollars and the site was constantly crashing over heavy traffic from the tens of thousands of new faces that arrived each day hoping to get rich. I saw many regular faces start powering down to sell as much as they could and honestly I was tempted too.

     I had never had real money before and I was sitting on enough Steem to buy house, but I stuck with it even during that first panic.It was tough watching all that money slip through my fingers, but obviously I am glad I stuck with it. I know a lot of people who sold too soon during that first spike and I don't really want to go into this for the same obvious reasons.

     It is easy to sit in judgment over others when you were lucky enough to back the right horse, so all I can say to those that missed out is, don't listen to the trolls. The only reason why they make posts like that is because they sold too soon too. The beauty of Steemit is is that it is never too late, even if you are new.

     There is no point in kicking yourself for not getting in back in the “good ol' days,” because the site is still growing. So if you are lucky enough to receive a pennies worth of Steem, cherish that penny, because you never know what it will be worth tomorrow.

Love
Sally

P.S. Judy sold her Steem way too soon, she could have joined the Steemit Millionaires Club too, but instead she powered down to make payments toward leasing a 2018 BMW.

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This was a fictitious representation of what I think your thank you letter might look like, after you find yourself in the Steemit Millionares Club. I am obviously not Sally from the future, I just wanted to be the first to write a letter like this, years before all of you become so overcome with excitement that you have to immediately grab your keyboard to thank Steemit for your new life. Someday if I become lucky enough to actually join the Steemit Millionaires Club, I will write one for real.