Why a post with so much text?

Because I can - no just kidding. Just some minutes ago I received a message from @blocktrades, notifying me about the ending of the >7k delegation by my friend @nathanmars within the next 48 hours. Thanks buddy for your trust and the power you gave me with this! I never forget that. I knew this moment will come but I was not really prepared for this. I already have some doubts when thinking about the time after the 7k delegation. My upvote value will be markable lower than right now but everything has an end. I knew it from the first day on, that this moment and thi kind of post will come in near future. So get ready for my personal recap of the last 3 months and what I learned from this time. Of course, I will include automatically some sidenotes about my almost 1-year journey here with all of you. In 7 days will be my first steem birthday - what is as well a good reason for writing the following text.

My expiring delegation over 7,819 SP

I received this huge delegation by nathan in some problematic times here on the blockchain and especially on @dtube. There wheere some more highly engaging users he trusted this time and delegated some power over the Steem Power delegation feature of blocktrades.

3 months ago he was not the only user asking for more moves and more engagement here. Today I can say, that we all together made these little and big changes by commenting, resteeming, manual upvoting more and through constructive feedback, kindness and supportive acts here on steem. You were able to feel that wind of change even in the smallest communities and this felt really uplifting. But this big switch was not directly related to his delegations - it was because of you all - sharing the message to your friends and creating your own content about that topic. I think his delegation was a good motivation for me personally to keep doing these posts and to keep writing >100 characters long comments under dtube videos. I did it because I got comfortable with it and I continued that habit because of the same reason. The delegation ehlped to stay on track and it has motivated me even more to give back something to the community by upvoting and delegating much more SP to my favorite channels. In the last 90 days I had the unique chance to delegate all of my own SP to my favorite dapps, communities and services while having >7k SP in the backhand. From time to time I shifted these delegations a bit around and used all the delegated SP to upvote valueable content and comments manually. It was and is a really crazy time for me because steem became a big part in my life and I feel really well with this.

Normally I would say:
Stay away from social media if you use it personally and not in a financial aspect - you can easily can become antisocial, addicted and lazy. But with steem, it is different - at least regarding the "antosocial" and "lazy" - part. I just can talk for myself but I enjoy this social media blockchain a lot.

Additional to the delegations and manual curation, I turned up almost every of my curation trail votes to 100%. With this setting I had some big problems with my voting power of course and I reached 30% voting power in the worst days/weeks. I am smart enough to know, that this is absolutely not effective and I lost a lot of reasonable voting power with this but I wanted to upvote, what I like.(dot) and when I saw the content. Also I felt the need to support all of my curation trails with everything I had, because they deserve it. I think everyone who is engaging and networking on this blockchain is valuable in any kind of way and joining a curation trail is networking in my opinion - minimal but it is technically networking.

The big price drop

Then we had the falling steem price some weeks ago and if you follow my channel, you will already know: I see the positive aspects of such a situation on the market. I felt the need to invest some fiat into this cryptocurrency I am trusting the most what is resposible for such an awesome community. So I leveled up and became a dolphin. I am still proud that I took this step and I will invest more from time to time because I highly believe that this blockchain is the future. Even if I am the last guy here and run my own witness server ;)

With the price drop came also jealously and some actings I was not able to understand. I learned really really much about several communities, former friends here on the blockchain and I finally left some communities because of this "beef". We didn't took that public and I am pretty happy about this. Thank you to the one who knows who I am talking about.

The change

I changed my mind about different things and most important - I reevaluated my own whole steem journey within the last weeks. You need to know, that I loose my focus from time to time. I feel like I got distracted by influences here and from the outside world. I stopped questioning my actions before doing them and I was not present anymore. Fortunately I norlally recognize this habit before it is too late. I mostly take a steem-break for some days, write down everything I want to achieve / don't want to achieve, I want to keep doing / don't want to do anymore and so on. This list and the act of writing about it helps me a lot to recognize my needs, friends/partners and also to see the already achieved goals. I missed to recognize so many milestones on the road, what leads me to the next section.

My milestones within the last 90 days

Within the last 3 months, I achieved tons of personal milestones. I worked up from REP 61 to REP 65 today with the help of @dtube, you all and some bots from time to time. I am honest here and I am saying: I use bots from time to time and I have no problem with that. They provide an easy way to promote your post with the use of the rewards of the last one. I am not thinking about the ecological consequences and I am sorry for that. I know I will in future but for now - I use @ocdb and I can highly recommend this service. But back to topic: More important than my reputation is my big jump from 915 SP up to 5758 SP. I think the hard work (on steem itself and in the real world) was absolutely worth it. As well as my follower count raised a lot within the last weeks. I am very thankful for this.

What I learned are basically 5 things

• Don't trust anyone - even not yourself

To have an opinion about the habits of others should start with judging your own habits, goals and believes. No one is perfect and we often fade ourselves out of focus when judging other people. This is a good way to fade away problems and guilt. Humans in common are not able to easily avoid this because it is a basic human mindset, but we can work on it and more important work around that. I often meditate what helps me to see things and people out of an different perspective. I accept that people are different and not everybody can see the world out of my eyes. If this wouldn't help me with a conflict, I tend to exit it or quit the relationship to people I don't trust anymore. This helps me to avoid judging them because I have no confrontation with tem and their not relatable habits anymore. Everyone has his / her own reasons for their own actions and in the others eyes, a situation can be absolutely opposite than you expected.
I am not able to look into everyone's mind - and I don't want to because I have my own mind to observe and to change.

• Swim up & take a breath, if you are too long underwater

Within the last 3 or more months I recognized a stressful feeling when I thought about the projects I am working on, my own content and the communities I am / was into here on steem. It is just like in the real world - if you always say "yes I can" you will burn pretty soon and to not burn out you need some breaks and a natural distance of that specific situation. Every month I feel the need of a break with steem. And like in the real world - I listen to my mind/body and take this break - as long as it needs. Most of the times this stressy feeling is over after 2 days abstinence from steem and I get back to "work" refreshed and recalibrated.

• Time is the only real universal value

We have the blockchain here, several crypto tokens there and we have upvote value/weights, curation trails/rewards/services and so on but no one is talking about the actual time to read a post. If you are still here, reading this text floating out of my mind - then "thank you for your time!". How long did it take to read until here? What would you receive in the common hourly wage in your country in form of real money for that time? The second question is a trap because you can not compare learning and social interaction with work. From pure reading a steem post you don't earn money - you earn knowledge and perspective. And these will lead to less time to waste when you have the next difficult situation or something to organize, where you can use that achieved knowledge.
Within the last weeks, I recognized a change in my upvote addictive thinking from the beginning. I spend a lot of time, reading posts / watching videos here on steem and I earned so much knowledge no one ever can afford in money. With every comment under a post of mine I receive so much motivation/feedback/kind words or just attention - no one can pay with money. And the last but not least part: The friendships I have found here on the blockchain are also never comparable with money. Please dont get me wrong: Your favorite posts deserve a good upvote with the biggest possible financial reward but also they deserve your interaction. So please share your time to write down your thoughts on posts you consumed. Because this is what life (offline and online world) is all about. Shared time.

• Community worths more than my personal success

Since my first day here on steem, I am involved in many communities because I like to share feedback and ideas and because I love to cooperate with others in projects, initiatives and on events. I learned so much about humans, about organization and communication within the last months. I never imagined this would impact so deeply on my personal life by "just" being active on the steem blockchain. I think it is obvious that engagement also will lead to more personal success (audience, upvotes, interactions on your channel) but much more important: It helps the people you are engaging with. I don't want to name any of these communities here because I will automatically not mention one or another and that would be pretty unfair but I can recommend you to organize, engage and network with others to share your knowledge and perspective with them. It is one of the best feelings to help others and on a social network - like the steem blockchain is one - it is easier than ever before.

What will come in future?

I tend to set new milestones and to challenge myself over and over again but if I have learned something within the last year, I can not promise anything. Not to you and not to myself. I failed in almost every long or mid term challenge. So here will not come a list of things I want to achive within the next 3 months. But I can promise one thing: I will continue my journey here with the energy and time I can afford and you will read me in your comment section pretty sure someday :) I will stay excited about the things coming up tomorrow and also a lot about the @dtube.forum. I will tread everyone with the necessary respect and I will change my mind over and over again :P