Musings of a SAHM: maintaining positivity and perspective about Steemit

The other night I went exploring outside my comfort zone on Steemit because I was trying to educate myself about "powering up," and wandered into a foreign land onto the trending page of the Steemit tag. That was interesting. According to one rather jeering article, we are all fools wasting our time; Steemit is nothing but a big illusion where the people supposedly making money are really just upvoting themselves and buying votes from bots; it will never amount to anything more than beer money at most.

Well then.

I won't lie: the prospect of making a few bucks off of something I enjoy (writing) certainly is one lure for me, so to have cold water thrown so copiously over the hope of having it amount to something more in the future was rather discouraging.

Right up front, I should mention I came to Steemit only 2.5 months ago at the recommendation of @libertylol, an awesome and very smart friend from my Navy days. I was completely fed up with Facebook, but not ready to completely dump all social media because let's face it, being a stay at home mom is really darn lonely at times.

(source: someecards.com)

I'm proud to be a stay at home mom. I love my job, at some times more than others. The positives: I get to soak up my children's entire childhood, I get to witness and celebrate all the "firsts", I get to mold and teach and love on them to my heart's content; I get to be in control the CEO of the household and there's joy in being the constantly present and consistently beating heart of the home. I get to cook, play with pets, color with crayons, and romp around outside on a daily basis. But you sometimes have to consciously make your own joy in it, because as for negatives: you live at your workplace 24/7, it's usually thankless, your work is never ever ever done and there is no vacation. In fact, vacations can be even more work than just staying home, because guess whose job it is to keep track of everything on the go for multiple people?

See "Puppy" on the nose? My life (well, my sleep at night) depended on keeping track of him at all times. It was like having a third kid.

The often frustrating aspect of the SAHM job is that you have to carve out time, sometimes creatively, usually in bits and pieces or too often by staying up long after everyone else is asleep at night, in order to do the things that make you still feel like you. And if you worked outside the home previously, it can be really hard to let go of earning a paycheck.

Hello Steemit! Goodbye to Facebook manipulation: bombarded by ads, aggravated by propaganda, and picking through a slew of "suggested friends" and "recommended" videos and memes. The prospect of a social media site where I actually could read great articles and practice my own writing and learn new things with a cherry on top of I might even earn some money for having fun doing all those things was thrilling to me. (It still is!)

Circling back to that negative article I read the other night, plus the "wars and rumors of wars" among the whales, I felt a little down. I wondered, Am I making a mistake sinking so much time into this?

IN SHORT: NO!

Positivity

• The first and most important general principle to keep in mind: Nobody can make you feel a certain way. It is in your power to choose or not choose to let them make you feel a certain way.

Therefore, I choose to not let cynical naysayers affect the way I feel about Steemit.

• The second thing to keep in mind regarding Steemit in particular: Why am I here? The money isn't the draw (though it does suck you in); the social interaction and exercising my brain is the draw for me.

I love the way writing articles is challenging me to think differently.
I love the way writing articles is honing my rusty and long unused English skills.
I love the way I'm learning to be more observant.
I love the way I'm learning so many new and useful things from others.
I really love the people I'm "meeting," especially among the #homesteadersonline group.
Heck, I even love how week after week I'm demonstrating "how not to win a photography contest" and at this point I ought to take wagers on how many whacks I have to take at it before either I break into the winning circle at last, or I give up. LOL.
But hey, I love photography, and the contests challenge me to try to be more creative with it.

• I feel like I'm a happier mom these days because I'm getting to "be me" and earn a little money, even if my Steeming is in distracted bits and pieces throughout the day.

Perspective

I'm actually glad I read that article, because it shed light to me on how much like gambling Steemit can be--and therefore addicting--thanks to the uncertainty of the payout prospect.

When I was in Navy supply school, a group of us would go over to someone's house and play poker one night every week. I was a total novice (usually one of the guys ended up coaching me), so I always bought in for $20 and generally hung in there for a few hours before I was out. I never gambled more than I was willing to lose, and I didn't care about making money at those games; rather, I considered that $20 invested in an entire fun evening of talking, laughing, and eating pizza with friends was money well spent, and if I happened to go home with extra money, that was just a bonus.

One guy, on the contrary, was dead seriously set on making money at those games. He played with intent focus, totally ignored the conversation and jokes, and if things didn't go well for him, he radiated negativity. And he typically threw in more and more money in his efforts to hit that big payout.

I don't want to be that guy by focusing too much on the money to be made in Steemit, gambling more and more time simply to hopefully "win" that dolphin vote or "whale hug", and missing out on the social and fun side. Rather, I'll keep investing my time conscientiously in the original reasons I came here, and if it pays off in the long run, that'll be a wonderful bonus. Would it be delightful to make a living out of blogging? Of course! Do I want to stress myself out with trying to get rich quick with it? No! So while I'm still going to invest time in Steemit, realistically, "the more you put into it, the more you get out of it" seems to be the rule here, and I simply don't have the time to devote to making Steemit pay the way that others do. I already have a Very Important Job and that's where my main focus belongs. And I'm okay with that.

So thank you, sneering trending article writer, for reminding me to focus on the fun and remember why I came here, rather than on getting consumed by chasing the money. Maybe you meant to make us all feel like fools, but you made me choose to feel a whole lot happier.

Have a great evening everyone, I'm off to cook dinner for my peeps :)