Motivational Monday: You are building a legacy
I have been reflecting on Steemit a lot recently. Thanks to the #steemstory contest and some conversations with friends and family, I have started to pin down exactly why I am on this platform and why I plan to remain for the foreseeable future. I’d like to share one of those reasons with you here, in case you haven’t thought about your posts the same way I have. I find the idea to be incredibly inspiring, and my hope is that you agree and it makes you smile and “Steem on” with a renewed sense of purpose and value.
One of the first things I noticed about Steemit was that there is no “delete” button. Once a week passes, your work is committed to the blockchain forever. This has all kinds of implications, but for today I want to focus on the idea of permanent public accessibility. The words you write today will, in theory, be easily retrievable, readable, and available decades from now. To me, this is extraordinarily exciting.
The biggest source of anxiety that I struggle with is the fear that something might happen to me. That I may get sick or hurt and die. My fear is not about death itself, but about the fact that this would mean my children would be fatherless. When my wife was pregnant with our first child, the anxiety got so bad that I decided I needed to do something constructive to deal with it. I purchased a life insurance policy for myself, and now I live reassured that my family will be taken care of financially if something tragic were to happen to me. However, money really isn’t everything, and so I still have anxiety about the many other unmet needs I may leave one day. Enter Steemit.
If something happens to me, my words here will live on. My hope is that one day, my children would be able to read these words and get a glimpse into who their father was, what he believed, and how he thought. Maybe I can still have a kind of “relationship” with them through my posts and comments here. Maybe they will glean some valuable advice or insight into life. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking. But the content will be here for them, regardless of if or how they interact with it. That gives me a sense of comfort and relief to know that a part of me will remain even after I’m gone.
This isn’t just about kids, though. I know there are many fellow fathers on here (and I do so enjoy reading your fatherhood-related content, please keep it coming!), but my idea of Steemit as a legacy applies to everyone.
I promise you that one day, you will die. Hopefully not for a long while, but one day, it is guaranteed to happen. What will you leave behind? An inheritance, perhaps with some going to charity? Your art? An invention or contribution to science? Some other kind of achievement? Even if you leave none of that behind, you will leave behind your words on this platform. People can “know” you through this record. People who haven’t even been born yet will be able to read what you had to say decades before them. This is a privilege that used to be afforded only to the most prominent authors and thinkers in history.
I have often passed graveyards marked with fading gravestones. I have done some genealogy research into my own family tree. One of the saddest observations I have made is that there are people who are dead today where everyone who ever knew them is also dead. Aside from a newspaper clipping or two and some census records, it is impossible to “know” these people unless you are able to locate a diary or a journal, and good luck with that. The vast majority of our ancestor’s tales are lost to history.
But Steemit is your journal. Thanks to this platform, you will never be lost to history, for at least as long as the blockchain survives. Your children, your relatives, your descendants, a history student, a researcher, a total stranger… all of these people will be able to learn about you and get to know you even long after you’re gone. To me, that’s incredible. Steem on.
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Animation By @zord189
I've alluded to this in some of my posts along the way... my Steemit experience is really a return to a format I really enjoyed in the early days of the web: Personal Social Blogging.
What many of us are doing here — including what you're describing — is very much like what we were doing on Diary-X, Xanga, LiveJournal and others, back from about 1999 on.
These sites (although long forgotten) where revolutionary in the sense that they were the first kinds of multi-user interaction outside message boards... "commenting" had been invented. And people talked about their lives, their hobbies, their fears and beliefs and everyone interacted... often at great length... on that.
I'm just glad to see some kind of return to that format; Facebook and MySpace killed it, for a while... "social" became little snippets, and "blogging" suddenly became all serious and about building a niche.
I'm excited about the "permanent record" idea, too.
Very interesting that we have sort of come full circle in a way!
This is pretty much my first experience with anything beside Facebook. I was fairly late to the internet game (a product of my age and the dial-up internet connection we had growing up). I have thoroughly enjoyed my three months here, and that's without even stopping to think of any kind of financial reward.
I do recall your post about ulogs and this whole "getting back to the roots of blogging" idea, and it's funny because you really are pointing out what is happening, even if people don't call it the same thing.
A post for another day is where this concept finds its limit, though. I love the idea of a "monkeysphere" in your brain (tl;dr - you are genetically capped at the number of relationships you can maintain), so there has to be some limit to the number of people you can legitimately follow or interact with, even online. The niche specialist trades mutually fulfilling relationships for a multitude of one-sided exchanges. I think when it comes to financial rewards, one behavior is certainly more incentivized than the other. Perhaps it is this recent pullback in the crypto markets that everyone seems to be talking about which is making more people realize that one approach is much more socially rewarding than the other. Do you find the comment quality and level of interaction much improved from the days of the $8 highs after you account for the lower number of users?
Something always on my mind. Touching entry, yo.
Talking with you about this was one of my jumping off points, so thanks!
One of the reasons I will try to stay here is because I want to look back on this as I get older and see my progress and my development..like I do now when I find my old books from school and see how childish I was in some aspects of life.
What an excellent and insightful addition to this post! I never thought of it that way, but I agree. It will be fascinating to look back on my own posts one day. Thanks for the interesting thought!
You can find the community announcement on Discord :) and it has also been shared on our #steemitbloggers FB Page and Twitter feeds.
Thank you! Another thing to be grateful for today 😀
So true @dollarsandsense and I'm very glad for it. I know some here who've started an account in their children's names only to 'store' their kid's artwork, photos etc. I thought it was a cool idea and wished for steemit when mine were younger :)
Oh that’s a great idea! I will have to seriously give that some thought!
I thought so too! Better than the boxes of junk I've accumulated; no rhyme or reason to any of it lol
My mom went with brown grocery bags. I am 99% sure they are still there in her office. XD
hahaha that "works" too. Not!
This is something to ponder on. This is my very first journal in social media, to think that it will be read by others as long as the blockchain still exist in the future is mind blowing.
Isn’t it? It’s not like Facebook where you must be friends first or other platforms that could take your content down at anytime. Glad you could see what I was trying to say 🙂
True about the Facebook thing. Yeah, will try to maje good content to be passed on, doesn't matter who's going to read it.😄
You are already off to a great start! Your art and other writings are very good 🙂 I always enjoy seeing your latest creations.
Awww... that's so sweet of you @dollarsandsense!! Thank you for the encouragement!
My mum had dementia and I wish I had asked her as many stories as possible.... sigh....
Agree with you @dollarandsense
I am so sorry to hear that. Alzheimer’s has touched my family too, and the search for a cure is one of the couple causes I choose to donate to every so often.
❤️
This post is sponsored by @SteemitBloggers in collaboration with @appreciator. Just keep up the good work.
I've often thought about what I write here in the same way. I also have a big box of all my journals that I wrote while I was growing up. My hope is that it will at least bring some comfort in my absence. As parents we often worry about what will happen when we pass on. Beautiful way to look at it @dollarsandsense.
That’s awesome! I never got into journaling myself, so this right here is pretty much it. That’s really cool that you have those though. Do you ever go back and read them yourself?
At times I have hauled them out and read some of them. It's always fascinating to look back and realise how certain things happened and how it shaped you.
The closest thing I have to that is some old emails. Luckily that was the communication method of choice with my father while I was abroad for a few years as a young adult. I really cherish those and have re-read a few of them myself.
I never see it form this point of view. It sounds very legit and true. Steemit can leave our legacies behind, wow! It reminds me of the movie, Coco when you said that some of the dead were only remembered by those were also dead. Now I am thankful for Steemit being my journal, thanks for helping me to see it that way, @dollarsandsense.
#steemitbloggers
So glad you could take something from this post! Every word you add here has a meaning and a purpose 🙂