RE: PushBook Gift : Win 300 Liquid STEEM Today [Finished, Please Wait for the next PushBook Gift]
I've gotta be honest, I watched the whole video, and I think I watched it before actually, but what hit me the most watching this... is how little it has to do with my goals and creative endeavours in life. I can take one thing away from it, which is an overriding truth about most things in life; if you want to succeed you have to work hard and never give up.
But I'm a writer.
I'm not an entrepreneur, and more importantly, I don't want to be one. It neither aligns with my skills, or my world view.
I will serve both my ambition and talent better at this point, to put 8+ hours/day into formulating, planning and writing a novel.
I've been struggling for a while with this insane social conditioning that pervades steem where we should all be trying to make projects etc. It's a damaging thing for a creative writer to be pushed away from creating toward project work that stifles creative expression, or at the very least pushes that creative expression away from what I think is important; creating new and entertaining characters and worlds of imagination.
Some people may be able to do both, good for them.
For me, I've found myself writing less and less high quality stories and poems. This is a direct effect of the culture on steem and I've had enough of it!
I will continue to promote on twitter with Seven77 to make it to 77 days, as this is not something that particularly takes much time or energy. Also I believe in what you're doing and want to help where I can. But after that I don't know what my future on steem will be if I'm honest. If this isn't a place that rewards high quality content highly, then it's not a place I want to be. It's not just me this effects, I read a serielised story today by someone who's been here a long time, and they're getting pennies for fiction which is amazing!
I've been at this 2 years on steem, and the reality is that I have worked myself sicker than I was before, and into more than £2000 of debt, and I'm earning considerably less on posts now than I did 14 months ago.
I've kept all this bottled up for far too long. It's not aimed at you Nathan, or at anyone promoting steem for Seven77, but sometimes people need a reality check (I'm talking about myself here). I've realised that I need to seriously consider what I'm doing here and the time I'm spending.
I wanna say thank you, as it was only watching this video that this realisation hit me so powerfully.
Being an entrepreneur isn’t really about starting a business. It’s a way of looking at the world: seeing opportunity where others see obstacles, taking risks when others take refuge and I would recommend this book for you to read Rowan. "The Startup of You" describes how to take a start-up approach to building a life
I completely understand your frustration as well as your health situation. I can relate my own STEEM journey when I was playing victim mindset and complaining about STEEM & blaming Dlive & etc. And these things really started to affect my own mental health and once I stopped playing Blaming game everything is getting better
Ultimately only you can make decision
I do appreciate the suggestion mate, it's just that this is another example of the many distractions that happen on steem.
If I had time to read books about how to take myself to where I want to be, I'd be reading books about certain aspects of how to pitch manuscripts, and reading books about story writing techniques to brush up on what I learned at university.
Beyond that, I'd be sitting down and just getting on with writing my first novel. The problem with steem from my perspective is that it takes a huge amount of time and energy even to be partially successful. Add to that, that it's a changing platform in regards to how it values high quality writing, and it's extremely demoralising if you came here to write!
I'm not playing any type of victim mentality! My sickness is real and it limits my capacity, that is a simple fact which only I know the truth of. Although my mental health is being adversely effected by my physical sickness, it's the chronic physical condition which limits my capacity severely. All of this is compounded when I'm spending so much of that time on something (steem) which seems so misaligned with what I want to achieve with my life.
What I'm talking about in these comments is both about how I spend this limited time, and if steem is ever going to help me fulfill my goals, and honestly I think in both instances the reality is that I need to start spending that limited time in ways that are positive. Unfortunately, steem is not currently a positive environment for creative writing.
Straight up... I'm not playing any blame game here! I'm talking about truths that are pretty self evident from my perspective (wanting to write stories and poems of high quality and having them read and rewarded). Steem at the moment is fulfilling neither. Nearly all the creative writers have left, and the vast majority of the support on my posts is automated. It's entirely possible that steem will change/improve as it develops and I don't think I'm going to throw in the towel completely, but at the moment it's distracting me from actually having a go at becoming what I planned and worked toward being for most of my adult life; a successful author.
Anyway, I see that this comment probably seems a little combative. Sorry man, honestly I didn't mean it to be when I started writing. I'm kind of thinking out loud here.
I appreciate that you're trying to help but I've already taken many risks getting involved with crypto. The biggest risk being putting a huge amount (over 100 poems and 30 short stories) of creative works on steem which I now can't submit to various publishing houses. I see the opportunity in crypto for sure but at the moment I don't see anything but negative feedback loops in regards to creative writing on steem. It is pretty exhausting being so emotionally invested in steem, and seeing what I hoped it could be for quality writers when I first landed here crumble to dust.
Writing is a very serious business to me. I'm literally selling my talent and time short and I'm not gonna do it anymore.
Lol, but maybe I can still put up shorter photography posts on steem while focusing on writing a novel. It's not all doom and gloom, I think that reassessing what I do on steem and how much time and energy I put in is a positive step forward in building my life towards achieving my goals.
I appreciate you Nathan, and all our conversations. Again, sorry if these comments may seem a little over the top, or negative, but I speak my truth always and am pretty confident about my analysis of the realities of steem, in regards to creative writing at least.
Appreciate for speaking the truth mate
let me try to explain in a example why STEEM is the vehicle and we're the driver and power is within us
I lived in Japan for few months 2 years ago, And I wasn't internally happy and yes Japan wasn't giving me what I was expecting and I wasn't able to adopt easily. I blamed Japan & my girl friend for everything. And left to discover a happy country & a happy girlfriend.
within few months I started surfing and fall in love with surfing, got into crypto full time and started to change my life inside out.
Once I've become happier internally, I got back to Japan, Married with my same girlfriend and living extremely happy life in same Japan
Yes leaving Japan & my girlfriend for few months helped me to get my life back on track. But I knew deep down that there was nothing wrong with Japan
I'm not sure I explained myself but at least I tried and I strongly believe that you'll be back to being the best version of yourself with or without STEEM