Hard forks are not MEANT to be easy. Let's all take a deep breath when you feel that rising panic and that desire to voice those 'but what the flying chicken balls?' and 'how very dare they stick post it notes on my back and kick me when I'm down'?. Those of us that have been around for previous forks know a few things, even if they don't get all the technical stuff that can read like mumbo jumbo. We know that:

• Witnesses work hard and cop a lot of flack, as if it's all their fault, when really, they're trying their best to make this place better
• It's hard for people to cope with change. It's scary and uncertain.
• Things will settle down
• We can never bring back the past.

Hard forks are about moving through change together. It's also about figuring out why you're here. Seems to me there's two reasons people are here - and they're not mutually exclusive:

• To make money
• To hang out and have fun and support what you care about

For some, this means stealing and scamming as much rewards as they can at the expense of everyone else - like people who consistently use bid bots to up-vote their own shit content.Hence, HF21. That intends to do something about that - what will happen, we still don't really know. Remember Steem is one big experiment.

For some, it means making an honest living through good content and hoping they'll be rewarded for it, because that's fair enough. For some, it's about community - hanging out with friends, having a laugh, supporting each other. For some, it's about the gaining of wisdoms, the sharing of knowledge, without censorship. For some, it's about having a voice in a place that (once you have made some friends) listens. Plus, like, all of that combined?

All this change, though, it's all scary biscuits, right? And it's worse, coz it's all so darn uncertain. I mean, I'm seeing people get really upset about this and want to leave. And I get it. It's hard. It's confusing. It can be downright disheartening. I feel ya. I hear ya. You are most definitely not the only one!

But wee must remember that without change there is NO GROWTH. The whole point of giving curators more rewards is that it encourages people to buy more steem and we NEED that to encourage growth. Curation is hard work and we need people to curate - it brings in more rewards!! So they should absolutely be rewarded for that. So let's curate!

Let's Talk About Curation

A lot of us are worried about getting paid less, and the fact that if no-oone sees them, and no one knows how good they are,

I'm going to include the words of @justineh, who I respect for talking 'normie' talk as well as being positive about Steem. The negatives rarely help us move forward, or look at what we CAN do.

Now as someone who curates low rewarded content often, I don’t look at what will get big votes and place my vote accordingly. I vote on what I think adds value, and many times it’s not been found by the crowd yet.. so then my goal is to make it be seen. This way, I’m not the only vote and the author is rewarded. Essentially this means the community needs to work together, which is a given in a social environment. Lack of tools for content discovery has always made this hard. I know this will be improved in the upcoming communities but until then we can pull together with curation.

As leader - or one of - the leaders of the @naturalmedicine community, this is what I'm encouraging others to do - FOCUS ON GOOD CONTENT DISCOVERY.

• Forget about the high flyers and trending posts.
• Vote on what YOU think is good, worthy content for the Steem YOU want to see
• Help the little guy be seen and heard so others will see and hear them too
• Work with the communities YOU love

In our Discord over the last day or so we've been talking about curation habits and what our personal values and ethics are. From my perspective, and many in Natural Medicine, we write and curate #naturalhealth & #healing content because we believe it MATTERS and deserves a place in the Steemiverse.

Here's what I can't stress enough about our community - this is the message I was trying to give yesterday to the beautiful folk at Natural Medicine:

'We all have the desire to share natural healing wisdoms, and learn about them to help our bodies, minds and souls. The whole point of our community was to unite over that, in the wake of Facebook censorship, and with the importance of being resilient, sustainable, and independent in a world of big Pharma, big Ag, big Media. That's what started us, and that vision continues to sustain me, and I hope most of you here!

Yes, for a while our rewards might suffer. That kinda sucks, I know. But let's not sweat that for now - things will settle down. Don't get sucked into the whirlpools of fear and concern. Let's just work on what we can do, and that's support each other and the content WE WANT TO SEE. The more we do this, the more rewards we get because Steem will decide that this signals value. To make what you vote on and support MATTER.

In @naturalmedicine, we've created the #curation-love channel. If you see a post that aligns with our values, drop in in there. Then we can all go upvote, show Steem it's 'worthy' content, and their rewards will go up - and the same thing will happen if you get dropped in that channel, right? Coz Steemitorg says:

A “vote” is not “worth” anything. A vote is a signal of value and rewards should only be distributed if other people receive that signal and then amplify it by placing more votes on top of it. Under the linear rewards curve used in #OldSteem it didn’t matter what you voted on. That meant that it was easier to predict what a vote would be worth. But the problem was that it didn’t matter what you voted on. This is precisely the problem that the convergent linear reward curve was intended to solve; to make it matter again what you voted on. On #NewSteem it matters what you vote on. That is Proof-of-Brain working.

And YES, it's subjective - talk about triggers! People get triggered by 'worth' - because it's subjective.

But seriously, we here all know what's good, right? So keep rewarding that through curation. And if you wanna use your free downvotes, do. Vote down the shit. You're playing your part in making this very experimental place be what YOU want it to be.

I don't pretend to truly understand the rewards curve, and I'm still waiting for the penny to drop. But what I do get is that we need to vote with a view to supporting what WE think is important for the future of steem.

A Disclaimer: If parts of this post make no sense, if I contradict myself, if I don't know what I'm talking about - forgive me, and correct me. I've been in Discord all morning chatting to people, listening to stuff about reward curves and listening and reading people's panic and concern - and my head's about to explode with it all. Just trying to contribute my two cents, and learn some stuff, and make the Steemiverse a better place.