After writing the title of this post a quote from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy came to mind, "Don't Panic".

Barring some form of health scare or accident, I don't see myself leaving Steemit anytime soon.

The recent prices have given me the opportunity to re-evaluate the way I think about Steemit though.

Let me give you a run down:

I know I already told the story about a guy I used to work with coming in one day and telling us hey there is this new thing called Bitcoin and it is going to change everything!

I think most of us ignored him, I am not even sure if he bought in himself or mined at that time. Fast forward to November of 2017 and I am sitting at Thanksgiving having a conversation with my @mrsbozz's cousin about Bitcoin. I had seen some headlines about it and I knew it was starting to make a comeback.

He had some really good information and points of view about what was currently going on. A couple days after Thanksgiving I opened a Coinbase account and after doing some research decided to purchase some Ethereum and Litecoin.

It wasn't a huge purchase, but it got my foot in the door. I think like a lot of people I was drawn to Litecoin because by that time the price of Bitcoin was pretty high. Even though you can buy fractions of a coin, the barrier to entry seemed to high.

I also liked what I was reading about the speed and cost of transactions on Litecoin. I wasn't fazed by the idea of LTC being the silver to BTC's gold. If anything that made me like it even more. I saw my wife's cousin again at Christmas and he helped me purchase my first portion of Bitcoin. He also talked about EOS and Steemit.

I had been doing my own research over the past month and I was really interested in what he was saying. I was surprised I was able to follow along to some degree. Meanwhile a lot of the other members of the family's eyes were glazing over...

I moved a decent portion of what I held over to EOS, by then the price was pretty high though, so I didn't get to buy in where most others did. He also helped me get setup with a Steemit account.

I had been looking around Steemit and I was pretty impressed with what I saw. The payouts were really what drew my attention much like most beginners on Steemit. My wife and I camp a lot and the truck we use to pull our camper is getting older. For safety reasons I have been considering purchasing an updated but still used truck.

The reason I mention that is because that was my goal when I joined Steemit. My vision was within a year I would have made enough money blogging on Steemit to put towards a down payment on a new to us truck. Based on the trending and hot pages, that seemed totally feasible and I didn't really see any reason why I wouldn't succeed.

As many of us know, that isn't the reality of Steemit. Over the past year, I have learned more about the platform and I have formed relationships with people and groups here that I never would have imagined a year ago.

I know people from all over the world now and it isn't uncommon to hear me telling someone "my friend in Belgium said", or "I was talking to my friend in the UK the other day and..."

My idea of rewards has changed as well. I used to buy upvotes and try to maximize my payouts as much as possible. I also used to say I would never invest in Steemit because I wanted to grow my account "organically".

Nothing against buying votes, but I now realize how foolish that was for me personally. I am also more invested than ever in Steemit and part of that is because I did the thing I said I was never going to do. In the past couple of months I have purchased quite a bit of SP. Partially because I wanted to grow my account and in effect hopefully grow my followers. I figure the bigger I can make myself the more visible I will be. I also knew that I wanted to start giving back to people and groups and with the SP I had, delegation wasn't much of an option. After my SP purchases delegation became a more attainable possibility.

The recent downturn in the prices of Steem was the final straw that flipped my thinking of Steemit. Does that mean I am going anywhere? Absolutely not! I am still going to be here blogging five times a week or so on Esteem, commenting on the posts I enjoy reading, replying to those that comment on my posts, playing Steem Monsters, answering questions on musing.io, commenting on dlike.io, reviewing restaurants on tasteem.io, maybe posting a Steepshot or two on the weekend.

I am not going to be putting a down payment on a truck though, I know that now. Steemit is more of a long term investment than I originally thought. "I already have a lot of long term investments" I thought, I didn't need any more, Steemit was a means to an end.

Now Steemit is more of a hobby to me. Like I said, it isn't going to buy me a new truck, that is just the reality. For people outside the US though, Steemit can be a game changer and the idea that by continuing to grow my account and giving them an upvote I can make their life better is awesome to me.

I used to stress about not posting for a day or not getting big rewards, the prices have proven that everything is arbitrary and we really have no control over any of it, so why stress about it.

No, it's not about the truck anymore, it is about the people, and that is what is going to keep me around.

With all of that in mind, I have been considering changing my rewards from 50%/50% to 100% SP. I usually powerup or convert all of my SBD to SP anyway, so why wouldn't I just take 100% SP. Anyone have any thoughts on this? What are the benefits? Drawbacks? I look forward to hearing your comments and opinions!

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