Falling Back On The Horse :: Returning After a Week Away
I took almost exactly a week off from Steemit. Mostly because I was on a vacation of sorts to Denver, Colorado.
For the most part, the timing of this vacation was good. There were things I was glad to be taken away from for a week while I enjoyed the beauty and heat and lack of oxygen in the Rocky Mountains.
That said, like anything that changes your routine, it also gives you a chance to objectively look at certain things in your life and what you're doing and why. It doesn't mean you'll make any changes while you look, but at least you become more aware of them.
I'm sure we've all been there. You go on vacation for a length of time and when you return you find that everything is more or less the same as how you left it. Nothing really changed while you're gone. Sure, life goes on for everyone, but sometimes when you return from the fun and excitement of a vacation you want to carry that back to your daily life. You want to see that cool stuff happened while you were gone, and awesome things are there waiting for you when you return.
But nothing ever really changes.
Leaving steemit for a week is a microcosm of this. For long-term steemit veterans (I'm a 1 year 'veteran') that make this little social media site part of their daily lives, walking away is disturbingly easy. Steemit doesn't really have any hooks to keep you playing the game other than the tease of the price of steem. I didn't feel 'compelled' to post while I was on vacation (in the same way that I've long felt uncompelled to post on Facebook).
Nobody really notices if you're gone. You could disappear from steemit and your little bits and blocks would be absorbed into the blockchain with nary a backwards glance from anyone. It's too easy. If you know people outside of steemit, it's a different story, but steemit doesn't create quality connections (for the most part; there are always exceptions).
Plus, it's mildly depressing to come back and see crypto prices still in the basement, our steem piles still small and inconsequential, and my desire to make an eloquent or insightful or valuable content post teetering on the edge of indifference.
So, for now, I will see if I can fall back onto the horse that is steemit posting, and regain what had been an almost-daily habit in exchange for tiny piles of invisible money.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://negativerealm.com/falling-back-on-the-horse-returning-after-a-week-away/
I knew you were back... I could smell the bacon. How'd the upgraded commode perform?
We had to fly. Not enough time to RV out to Colorado and back (although it's a road trip I wouldn't mind making in the future should I have a couple weeks to spare for lazy driving).
Et tu, Brute?
Ah, Neg... I am deeply wounded! :O
And to think, I had imagined that you and I had something special... );
Seriously, though, you've touched on something here. There is a deep and abiding value to "getting away," one that makes me wonder why I don't do it more often. Something about breaking up the routine of daily life that is both restful and inspiring.
Getting away helps us to step outside of ourselves and see life and its baggage from a refreshing perspective.
Good article!
On the crypto front, fear not... I fully expect it to soon either take off and soar to dizzying heights, or to completely tank when the FedCoin is introduced one fine and surprising morning...
Steem on, my friend!
😄😇😄
Hey now, good sir; you cannot just pick and choose which words to be offended by :)
there are always exceptions
Since I know you (at least a little bit) from outside of steemit on Discord, you've managed to avoid the wide brush I was painting with that covers most steemit-only relationships :)
As always, thanks for your support. In the event of a blockchain implosion or something similar, you would be one of the people I would certainly miss.
I am now both appropriately chastened and simultaneously reassured of your good will... ;)
I was, of course, deliberately teasing and taking your statement clearly out of context... for fun...
Maybe it was a tiny bit of jealousy because I was not the one who had recently enjoyed a week in the Rockies??? :D
Ha, I speak with humor as well; if there's anyone who properly reads for context and meaning, it'd be you.
For future reference if you make a trip to the Rockies: apparently it takes about 4-5 days for the body to become accustomed to the altitude.
So, I was finally starting to feel less like a zombie right exactly at the time we had to leave.
Note to future self: Two week trip next time
BTW, what altitude were you at, anyway? :O
The place we were staying at was about 7200'. We spent a lot of time up higher though, with Vail Mountain being around 10,350.
Let's just say there was a lot of heavy breathing in our group most of the time, myself included.
Hahahahahaha!
Yes, pilots of private aircraft are required to use supplemental oxygen above 10K feet...
Sounds a lot like jet-lag...
Just as you finish adapting to a new time zone, zap, back to reality.
I can relate to this, on many fronts. Although coming back after a two month hiatus is different, it is also eerily the same, in that the habits of those you 'left' behind are still very much the same. It takes some time to get back into it, or not. Perhaps you are changed enough to change the environment. Although not all change is good.
I hope you'll find what makes you happy. And looking forward to reading more reflections and fiction from you.
Thanks Noby! My own simple 1-week experience is probably a mere shadow of what you saw/felt after your two month vacation from normality.
Totally get where you're coming from but I noticed you were gone. I even checked your blog to see if I'd missed a bunch of posts.
That said, a lot of 'veterens' (including myself) seem to be re-evaluating steemit and not posting as much lately. Although I'm tapped out of ideas anyway and I've said before I won't post rubbish just for the sake of posting.
Thanks for checking in on me and for noticing my absence :) Since I know you off-steemit, you're not part of the giant generalization blanket I covered the rest of steemit with.
I'm tapped out of post ideas too...oh wait...no I'm not. Vacation posts and photos! Gonna post and steemitworldmap the heck out of them.
Don't forget Landwhale posts. I want to see that.
I very much relate to the sentiments on Steem that you've expressed here. I also happen to have just started to try getting back on this horse... although I'm not entirely sure why.
People seem to be commenting less on posts too. Not just my own, but those I follow as well. Perhaps that's tied to the crypto market's current downturn. I've been finding it much more rewarding to continue building on the community I found through Steemit and working on other long-term goal writing projects than trying to figure out what my next Steemit post will be.
I've been seeing less commenting as well, and I'm guilty of being part of that crowd, so I can't judge (or I can, but I'd be a hypocrite).
I agree; I think long-term and 'real life' projects are the better focus and use of time, with toes still dipped in the water of steemit...just in case it moons.
SBD over $10USD? Hahaha, crazy talk! Well... I'll keep my toes in too just in case it happens again.
Another things I've noticed since returning from my hiatus is an increase in automated spam comments and 0.001SBD "DMs". They were there before, but now it seems like a guarantee to get at least one on every post.
First of all... Fake news...
I was wondering where you had gone. So fakenews there... On the rest, you are not fakenews.
Its depressing to see crypto prices not recovering, but the silver lining. We get to power up a lot more Steem.
Yea, but I know you in real life, so you're not just a steemit-only profile with a pretty avatar. Thanks for thinking of me :)
Still holding out on a crypto rise; I'm not getting out of the game, but I'm not betting any more chips at this point. At least not until the twitching corpse shows more signs of life.
I hope this happens soon. I got shit to buy!
well, nice to have you back @negativer ... though i can spot a pessimistic tone in your writing...
...the pic is great...very nice landscape...i'm sure you had a wonderful time
Maybe a little pessimistic, but I'm sure I'll get over it. Humans have a fairly short memory, and I'm sure day to day living will cover up whatever insights I think I'm having right now.
Thoughtful musings...we will be returning after two weeks away and I almost feel like I could make over my life when I get home, like a reboot. Good idea to be realistic in my expectations before I get home.
Indeed. That happens a lot for us on our seasonal migrations. You start out full of idealism and energy, but the reality of life and other demands eat away at it pretty quickly until you're back to 'normal'. It's a hard slog to push yourself to realize the goals and expectations you had back when you were looking at it through rose-colored glasses.
In either case though...it's always nice to get home :)
This is interesting to think about. For me, having only joined last month, steemit seems much more interactive than other places I've tried to post fiction. Writers love to form words when they're talking to a hypothetical audience, but in my experience it's like pulling teeth to get them to talk to each other. I guess that's why when I find exceptions to that rule I take notice. Then again my boyfriend tried streaming and even though he had lots of people watching, the radio silent chat there really got to him. So obviously there are different levels of interactivity within the different microcosms. But personally, I definitely noticed when your comments stopped showing up in the 50-word entries. And I suppose coming in at a time where steem doesn't hold a lot of value, I never really thought of that part of it. I came in wanting to interact with other writers and if a few bucks falls out of the sky from time to time... cool. Definitely helps me understand why some of the people I follow seem a little worn out by it all though.
You have a healthy perspective on it. I think we all get jaded by any given thing if we're doing it long enough, even if it's fun and profitable and productive.
Everyone is at a different point in their 'steemit journey', and some of them are expecting different things than others.
For me, it's been a bit of a rollercoaster over the last 12 months, but in the end I think I've gained more than I've lost.
I guess you had a good time..welcome on board @negativer