Steemit user @stellabelle just posted a fantastic blog: Money Is Just Stored Energy. You should read that. I did. And I left a comment, and the reply by @stellabelle was so insigtful and genuine that it got me thinking.

check it

I embraced this world because I had basically nothing. I think I had $1000 and I had been struggling for my entire life to solve this problem: how do I turn creative energy into money? Jobs bored the fuck out of my mind, and I had started 4 businesses, all of them failures. Every couple months, my interest shifts because it is learning and knowledge plus creating that is my lifeline. I couldn't really stick with any one idea, when there is an entire universe of interesting ones. So, it appeared to my mind that what defines me is not sticking with one business, but the discovering and sharing of ideas. Ideas are my business. I've already had several different "businesses" on Steemit. With my Secret Writer project, I was able to pay out over $4000 to random strangers who shared their secrets with me. This was like gold. This was true freedom for me as well as them....notice how many people tried to copy me (and failed). I wasn't doing that for the money. The money was a side effect of the service I provided and passion. I was doing it to release people from their self-imposed prisons. Steemit was the perfect vehicle for that while my attention was focused on it. I can't do any one thing for a long time. I get bored and have to move on. So, being involved in like 5 different things/projects is ideal for my mind. It's like a frantic dog that needs to run around outside.
I don't fit into the "entrepreneur" deal either because I don't believe in hiring slave labor. I could never run a big company because I don't believe in centralized control. Decentralization is what I've dreamed about for my entire life, and I don't think any one person is better than another. "Successful" people in our capitalist society just know how to take advantage of nature, other human beings and situations. I know how to operate in decentralized systems, not centralized ones. This is a paradigm shift that will attract other power and money-deprived humans from everywhere, and there ARE A LOT OF US.

After reading this I couldn't stop thinking about my own life. At times where I knew I was devaluing who I really was as a person in order to fit into a social role, either as a child, parent, partner, friend, employee, citizen, etc...

I have been turned down for jobs that I didn't want but needed. That, in many respects, is one of the most crippling emotional blows. It left me with a feeling of being rejected by a society that I was born into but didn't have a place in, yet still needed. Even though I don't relate to most of the people around me, I still live among them and use the same systems as they do, and at some point I need to fit in in order to survive.

Have you ever felt this?

This feeling leaves me with a strong sense of alienation that only deepens the further along time stretches. I think to myself

I know who I am, what I value, the principals I hold, the knowledge I can share -- why don't others value this, as I do in myself and in them?

It's a problem I had struggled with for a long, long time. My first ray of hope and sense of belonging was when I made my first mobile game, Blobfish Evolution. That game was so well received that it got millions of downloads (and counting), was featured by major YouTubers, had thousands of 5 star reviews, and even made it into the Smithsonian Magazine.

In many ways, this game was a reflection of my own perception of myself. And the response to it was, I think, appropriate: equal degrees of repulsion and fascination.

I felt good about the game. I felt validated, as a person. I felt like I had a place in society somewhere, and it was a place I felt comfortable -- a place where I was comfortable being myself and expressing things in an authentic, transparent, creative, interactive way.

Steemit is a valuation of yourself

On this platform, authenticity is rewarded monetarily by a caring and energetic community.

If you present yourself as you are -- raw, disgusting, vulnerable, honest, confused, brazen, and compassionate -- and you work the platform by reaching out to others and connecting with them as people, you are rewarded.

Don't get me wrong -- in no way am I saying that all a person is worth is what they have on Steemit, or that people who have high value on this platform are inherently more valuable than any other. What I'm saying is that Steemit presents us all with the opportunity to be valued as people for exactly who we are.

You can present anything on your Steemit blog. Any interest, passion, fear, worry, knowledge, or idea -- all of it is welcome!

Trust me, you will be recognized

If you are showing us who you are authentically, and you are reaching out and connecting with the rest of the community, you will start to see your followers increase, your reputation grow, your blogs get tons of comments, and before you know it you'll be making some real monetary rewards.

It's been happening to me so quickly that I don't completely believe it.

So keep at it. This is the time. This is the place. You can do it.

I support you!

Follow me @shayne