What Steemit taught me

The professor that got me ready for the University exam, used to tell me while leaning under the lamp over the table I was writing my essays, that a good writer should be patient, organised, communicative and posses a great deal of selfesness. With his grey, pretty long hair, in his late 50's, he used to smoke a lot. I was being trained in his small kitchen, at the 6th floor in the Drumul Taberei neighbourhood in Bucharest and the room was getting filled with the smoke of the cigaretes of both of us.

Little did I know that later in my life, after rejecting traditional journalism, I will get the same lesson from an online ecosystem.

PATIENCE

In human years I'm pretty young on Steemit. In dog years I believe I should be like 10, I don't know. In Steemit years, considering the age of the network I'm, maybe, 20-25 years old. Depends on the perspective from which you look at it.

As a guy who entered here with the open mind of "raping those rewards FAST!" I can tell you "forget about it". You can't just come in like the thunder, waving your "wow! nice article! great pic!" comment, insert 3 unsteady pictures made with your smartphone and send 10 bids to some bots. That's it?! Your set to go. And then you wait for the rewards.

OH THE FUCKING REWARDS!!!!

And they never come, do they? You just refresh that monitor and you hope that those 3 pictures will get more than that worthless vote they did. But they don't.
Look, man... you gotta be patient.

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale...repeat.

You'll get to the rewards but you'll have to work for them. Can you work for them? If yes, continue reading; if no, just one more question: are you willing to invest? If you don't, just get the hell out of here, please! But if you do plan to invest then you can continue reading because you may be interested in what's ahead.

ADMINISTRATION

Yeah, I know. That's a pain in the ass. Always. Administration is that boring, bureaucracy thing where you have to keep your things filed in small cabinets, with tags on the knobs and so on.

But it's useful goddamit. It's useful in all that we do. From the way that we think, to the way that we write, to the way we make photos. Keeping your things organised, both in your head AND in your device, is 25% of making content. Steemit taught me how to use applications I always wanted to use but never got to (see Evernote). Steemit taught me how to keep my pics organised in a whole new way. I'm discovering a new perspective from which I check my archives. And I tend to organise them this way also.

What's more important here though, it's what's in your head. If you're a content maker, as I like to think of myself, I like to entertain people. To get them to read through my post and at the end not to feel tired. Not to struggle to get through my article but at the same time to get and grab that feeling, that look at the man's heart, while the pathway it's open 'cause he's reading my words. And that needs organisation. In your head. Steemit taught me how to look at my blog from this angle. How to juggle with words and photos in order to try and get as much coverage space as I can. That can only be done by doing a little bit of "archiving" inside your little totsy head, dear!

COMMUNICATION

Uh!
Tough one! To be sincere, that's not for everyone. Some of us should just shut up, you know what I'm saying?

This... thing got me way more communicative. And I think that in the right direction, not in that "midnight robot stalker" way. I got to know people. Interesting people that were somehow, in my area of interest and access even before I joined Steemit. I didn't go and just make friends with a Native American from Nebraska. No, I stayed home and I thought from the start that around my people I will grow faster, we will get along better, we will bond with each other. It's natural you know. From there, being communicative should just be a piece of cake if you're into "the game" as they call it. My friend, @lishu , was telling to me the other night on discord that "this is definitely the best place I found on the web 'till now". Once you get to understand it and the machinations behind it, Steemit will tend to get to you. So if this place gets you, go out and explore it. You can find a whole bunch of nice blogs and a whole lot of nice persons behind them. Check them out.

Upvote them sincerely.

They'll check you back at one point because you know... you tend to check who da' fuck just gave you some money.
There's no recipe for making friends but you can make your own strategy if you really want to make this work.

SELFLESSNESS

The majority of us regard the word in the title as something close to the biblical concept of helping the ones less fortunate.
Don't worry, on Steemit you will not find hungry people. This is not the kind of selflessness I was talking about, though feeding the most unfortunates from the power of voting is an ideea.
After we finish with the whole concept of getting rich over the month, after we discover all of the above and we pass from phase 1 of our understanding of Steemit, to phase 3, or even 4 and we manage to see the real environment, the big picture of this new type of organisation, what DO WE WANT TO DO ?
At the end of the day, after finishing with all the "Instagram" type photos and after receiving your share of the rewards pool, how do we REALLY contribute to this ecosystem? We just rape it like a bronze-age human would do, or do we entertain it, help it grow and embody more of our fellows, keep it stable and sustainable in order for the experiment to progress?!
Steemit taught me how to reward content I don't like but in which I see potential. Resteem the article man! That's curating. And I think that not voting yourself in order to be able to curate others is another act of decent selflessness. It's even more rewarding when you see new content from that user, a human being striving to improve and in the end, he does it!

He manages to get the hang out of it and now he can get that constant 2-5$/post. The difference of the quality from the first posts to the new ones is huge. You can take pride in that my friend. And be sure that the user will stick by you even if gets "places". You will always benefit from his appreciation and acces to his vote. It's the pay it forward concept, nothing fancy, just some willingness to do good and good will come back to you multiplied.

Now, I had a great deal of internal talks (with myself I mean) if I should post this today or tomorrow. From tomorrow, being tuesday, my post would qualify for being curated towards one of the 10 weekly value votes we, in @steemromania community, will get starting with 13th of may. In the end, I decided I don't really need that vote and I decided to post this today so I will not go into the contest and run against someone who would really need a valuable vote.

I consider myself lucky because I managed to learn so much, so quicly about Steemit and now I can manage to zoom out, relax and make plans. I don't feel anxiety for not posting, only when I itch to show the network something. Something that I truly like or that I believe in with great power.