Steemit helps my mind evolve... I can feel it... thank you friends...

I've always been a thinker and a debater. I've waded into debates on BBSes, forums, Facebook (which I stopped using years ago), and reddit. I would choose the times I did it knowing I was likely to get bruised and battered.

This is especially true of reddit. I've often described reddit as trench warfare. I did learn on reddit and I did get positive things from it, but it was at a cost of substantial time, and a very significant amount of mental bruising and battering.

Steemit. I've been using steemit since July. I stumbled upon it purely by accident. I was teaching myself to use bittrex as I was considering mining some ETH. I happened to sort the many currencies by increase %. On that day steem was listed at 220% or something like that. I was thinking "What in the world is that?" I ended up visiting the website and reading and thinking "Hey this is a cool idea if it really works..." Then I got my first currency. I watched people making currency, and I started getting currency.

I also noticed people were largely civil. It has its blemishes as any idea does, but it is promising and it is something no other place is like.

I've been very active on steemit since that time. I've interacted with many people. I've only had what I'd consider a few uncivil and bad interactions with people on steemit. I've had more disagreements than that by far on steemit but most of the time they remain civil. There are exceptions where people ad hominem attacked me or lobbed a verbal insult my way, but those have been extremely rare. They also tended to backfire on their intent. That doesn't make the person look so impressive if I remain civil and other people are not joining in on the dogpile (like reddit).

So one thing I realized today. I can feel my mind actually growing in deeper thoughts faster than it has anywhere else. I was getting to exercise my mind on reddit too, but so much of that effort had to be focused on self defense. This means I couldn't always dedicate my mind towards thinking particularly deep.

I also remember early on with steemit posting some rather personal posts that I thought people might bash me or react in disfavor to only to have them encourage me and mentally embrace me. That too was freeing.

So while there are some issues (mostly flag related) with the community I want all of you to consider how truly wonderful this environment is. I also want you to stop and consider what I just began thinking when I started to write this.

On steemit my efforts are primarily in the positive direction without a need to shield and worry about the attacks that I have to expect if I were to say anything on reddit. (never know if someone or many someones will jump you there)

This atmosphere I believe is allowing me to flex my mental muscles and keep improving them and take truly deep and deepening philosophical journeys.

This is extremely valuable, and very empowering.

Am I alone in feeling this way?

Steem On!