Steemit Experience Day #60 - Stats Updates & Lessons Learned

It is exactly my 60th day now in Steemit. I want to start by saying thanks to the community. It's been two months filled with learning, friendship, personal development, and really trying hard to give back. Here is a heart shaped word cloud saying thanks in many languages.

Stats Update September 16, 2017

707 Followers, 789 Posts + Comments, 54.4 Reputation Level, 410 Steem Power all in 60 days. I've always wanted to share my thoughts through writing, but haven't really got around doing that until I got to Steemit. There are many who've done better than this, and to me they all serve as an inspiration to keep trying harder. When I first got to Steemit, I thought this is like Facebook that pays for posting. I am quite sure that many had that impression when they were just starting.

Below I will show you how my older post looked like in comparison to my more recent post, and hopefully I am not being delusional to think that I am somewhat improving.

An Old Post 2 Months Ago

Bitcoin Explained in 5 Minutes

Oversimplified, but what newbies needs to know at the most basic level.

Credit to: CuriousInvestor

A Newer Post 5 Days Ago

Steemit Core Value - Kindness is as Important as Greatness

I wish to start by saying that this is not an official stand of Steemit Inc., and is merely based on my humble opinion from my short experience in the platform. In this series, I will try to present a value system I observed from steemians who do really well here.

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We always tell our kids that being kind is as Important as being great. We hope that we are setting good examples to them in our daily dealings with humanity. I wouldn't dare say that we are perfect, we are far from it. We also do not have some unrealistic expectations that our kids will be all good. We believe after all that humans are not born naturally good, and because of that belief we try our hardest to try and keep a conscious effort do good.

We always try to make acts of kindness a big deal around the kids. We do this in such a way that helping an elderly, or being nice to another kid will be celebrated no less than being a top student in a grading period. Winning a declamation contest for example is just as big as a deal being courteous in day to day conversations.

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@dandalion and I did not always belong to the same school of thought when it comes to this subject. Years ago, we were at each extreme of the spectrum. @dandalion believed that generally speaking, humanity is bad, and that people who believe otherwise becomes vulnerable to abuse. I on the otherhand believed that people are good unless you give them a reason to do you bad. Through our journey in life as employees, members of the community, later on spouses, and then parents to our kids; our beliefs evolved to this: People are not born naturally good, but everyone have a real potential to do good. This video we saw last year reaffirms that belief. Not that we needed confirmation, it's just beautiful to see your own belief in another person's perspective.

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Now how do I say that this is a Steemit core value?

The System is Built on Give and Take

I quote this from the whitepaper "Steem is designed around a relatively simple concept: ​ everyone’s meaningful contribution to the community should be recognized for the value it adds​ . When people are recognized for their meaningful contributions, they continue contributing and the community grows. Any imbalance in the give and take within a community is unsustainable. Eventually the givers grow tired of supporting the takers and disengage​ from​ the​ community."

The very system is built in such a way that people will give and take, and an imbalance between giving and taking results to failure in the long run. This is why it is no surprise that we have project like @minnowsupport from Peace, Abundance, Liberty, or our very own @bayanihan curration project from Steemit Philippines through efforts from the Filipino curators and the love from @donkeypong, @acidyo, @surpassinggoogle, @jrcornel, and @hanshotfirst. It is in everybody's interest to make deserving minnows who really contribute to the system stay.

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Abusive Behavior do not Get Rewarded and Eventually Lead to Failure

I quoted this from the whitepaper "Eliminating “abuse” is not possible and shouldn’t be the goal. Even those who are attempting to “abuse” the system are still doing work. Any compensation they get for their successful attempts at abuse or collusion is at least as valuable for the purpose of distributing the currency as the make-work system employed by traditional Bitcoin mining or the collusive mining done via mining pools. All that is necessary is to ensure that abuse isn’t so rampant that it undermines the incentive to do real work in support​ of​ the​ community​ and​ its​ currency."

While Steemit do not take a very stern stance against abuse for the reason tackled in the white paper, the community understands that such behavior leads to failure soon enough. Even the whales with huge Steem Power restrain themselves from abuse, minnows just don't get a shot at success with abusive behavior.

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Steemit Makes it Rather Easy to be Kind

Here you've got nothing to loose for being kind, in fact you have everything to gain from it. Have you ever seen a whale who is unkind or abusive? Do you think they got to that level from being abusive then transformed themselves when they became whales? I think they all understood that kindness is the way to go. If you haven't figured that out, I wish you do soon enough.

Kindness is shown here by appreciating ones work with your upvotes, engagement through your meaningful comments, occasional support for someone in dire need, encouragement through sharing a well written content, and participating on enjoyable contests or challenges.

What have you got to loose from being kind?

• The inability to upvote your own comments because of depleted voting power that will recharge the next day
• The time you'd rather spend gaming the system or figuring out how to

What have you got to gain from being kind

• The support from the community who will soon enough notice your good behavior
• Leading to better reputation score and bigger rewards from upvotes
• Friends
• Helping hands when you really need them
• Engagement from your post or your comments

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Thank you for reading this post. I hope I am making sense to you and did not waste your time. Please let me know your thoughts by commenting. If you like what I wrote and you feel it is worthy of your upvotes, I would really appreciate it if you do actually upvote it. It will encourage me to continue writing and sharing my thoughts to the community. As mentioned above this is going to be a series that'll talk about observed value system in Steemit. In the next post in this same series I will write about

Steemit Core Value - Stop Trying to be Interesting; Be Interested

Credits
Give and Take Photo: Source
Abuse Photo: Source
Reward for Kindness Photo: Source

Things I Learned Because of Steemit

• 2 Months Ago - How to Add Steemit Logo in Pictures: Steemit Tutorial #1 - Add Steemit Logo In Picture The Easy Way
• Last Month - Basic Post Formatting: Format Your Steemit Articles And Gain Steem Power!
• 23 Days Ago - Powering Up with Blocktrades: POWER UP!!! How to do it, Why I did, and Why You Should Too!
• 19 Days Ago - Building a Bigger Filipino Steemit Community and Friendship through Discord: An Invitation to the Steemit Philippines Discord Channel
• 15 Days Ago - Reading & Understanding the White Paper: Redlining the Updated Steem Whitepaper Part 1 of 2
• 8 Days Ago - How to Align Images: How to Align Images in Steemit Posts - Left, Right and Center
• 3 Days Ago - How to Make a Video (with typing effect) from PowerPoint: Philippine Fifty-Word Story Writing Contest, "Gilingang Bato"

Giving Back

I am excited about the first @steemph organized event that I'd be joining. This is an Art and Music Therapy on September 23. SteemPH goes to Barangays - Arts and Music Therapy for Special Education Center.

Before that, @dandalion and I got to meet @cryptopie our fellow Filipino Steemnian with a rare medical condition. We thought a simple visit offering some verification might help. I posted about it and so far have sent 50 SBD, will continue sending more as I get them: The Human Behind @cryptopie | A First Personal Encounter with Another Steemian

I was also sending some small amount to followers whose reputation is between 25-40, with a simple message to encourage them to keep going. I need to make time and catch up on doing that. I will make time today or tomorrow to go through some 100 of my followers. The last post have now been 20 days ago: Steemit Giving Back 18-08-2017 (Free 0.005 SBD)

Really am pleased with this progress so far. Though I still think I have too much to learn. I will take it one day at a time. How's your Steemit story so far? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

If you are a Filipino or an expat in the Philippines please join us in the Steemit Philippines discord channel here: Steemit Philippines. There's a growing Filipino community who are very supportive of each other. We will wait for you in the channel!

I also want to take this opportunity to campaign for witnesses that are Philippine based or close to Filipinos. These are individuals who dedicate their time to support the growth and stability of the platform.

How to vote?
• Use the witness page https://steemit.com/~witnesses
• scroll down the page until you see the vote box below and enter

Credits
Thanks Word Cloud Picture: Source