As a cynic, and as someone who has been here no small amount of time as well, I think I can put my finger on the problem.

It's not that it's a bear market. Markets go up and markets go down. Cryptocurrency was never going to be the golden child forever because that's not how markets work.

The problem is that you care that it's a bear market. You have turned the platform into a job – and let's be fair, it's a shitty job. From a time/reward ratio point of view, digging ditches would be both better for you and better paying per hour. From a pleasure/investment point of view, doing almost anything else is going to give you a better ratio on enjoyment. Both of those are made worse by putting the platform ahead of your life.

The technical deficiencies of the platform, in particular the difficulty in finding actual content that interests you on any particular topic, just aggravates the situation.

The only sensible response is to stop. "Doctor, it hurts when I do this thing." We both know what the next line is. There's no shame in making the healthy choice.

Make a list of things you enjoy, not just on the steem blockchain but in your life. Sit down and focus on those for a while. Set reasonable, short-term, deliberately focused goals, execute on them, finish them, and check them off – and let the feeling of gratification that comes as a result really be savored.

For myself, grocery shopping – weird as it is – is one of the tasks that keeps me focused. Sit down, make the list. Talk to your roommates or family and think about the things that they might want, find out the things that they do want, make the list airtight. Think about the things that you might want to go with the things that are on the list and add them. Go to the grocery store, walk the aisles, play the game of "is this the best price that I can get for this quality?" Fill up the cart, go to check out, pay a real human being in exchange for your goods, and take them home. Unpack them, put them in the right places, parcel out any meats are such that need to go to the freezer or fridge, tuck them away in dated, sealed bags, clean up the grocery bags, then sit down for a moment and look around.

Then check it off the to do list.

It sounds ridiculous. So much over elaborated focus on one relatively simple task. But do that once in a while and it becomes much easier to focus on tasks which are not quite so immediate. It's a reminder that you can gets things done from beginning to end.

Scale creep happens to us all. We tried to take on more than we can really affect. You start caring about bear markets, which have nothing to do with you in the sense of anything that you can affect, instead of "I want to and enjoy doing this thing," or even "I need to do this thing," which is just as important. It stops being personal. And when it stops being personal, it stops being motivational.

Go do the things that are personal and motivating to you, that give you pleasure and joy for the effort you put in, or at least a sense of satisfied gratification, and step away from the unrewarding things. When you let the unrewarding things pile up, the pile falls on you.

_{Posted using Steeve, an AI-powered Steem interface}