This post is SO on the money (pun intended, and also not intended.. if that is the right way to indicate that I meant for both meanings to come to the fore!).

i came here interested in the idea that I could turn blogging into some income. I never thought about it being my living, but I thought that having a little skin in the game would make things more interesting and motivate me.

What I have discovered, and perhaps you didn't emphasise this in your 'what Steemit is' section, is that getting strong and immediate audience validation is enough of a reward in of itself. I'm making connections and having conversations pretty much straight away, and I can't tell you how fabulous that feels (although I suspect that you already know!) after years of blogging into the darkness of the internet. The true beauty of Steemit is that if I post something, I am going to find myself engaged with someone before a short time is up. And that is a beautiful thing, at least for me.

The flipside is that although I came here looking to make posts (blog), I have evolved into someone who loves to make comments. I love finding other people's posts and reading about whatever their passion is. I think it truly is a win-win. The fact that I can reward posts with some actual value is like handing arrows to Cupid ;-)

One of the other things about Steemit that I love is that the true value is not what is found in 'Trending'. The true value here is following the snaking network of friends and curators to the honey pots of gold. I like the fact that the friend networks are leading me to great posts, and I'm not sure that things would be the same if 'Trending' actually did try to mirror somebody's idea of 'quality' content.

Thank you for an excellent, considered post on the broader subject of what we are all doing here.