The True Value of Community Support.

It feels like it's been a week of everything happening at once and I'm looking forward to a day off. Things must have been catching up with me because most of Tuesday seemed to go AWOL. I overslept by an hour and a half and was four hours late with lunch because two more hours seemed to evaporate from my day!

I have a dozen things I've started writing about, but so far nothing finished. What has been keeping me going has been the communities on the Steem blockchain. Amazingly, after a week where I haven't gotten around to publishing a single blog post, today my SP ticked over the 1000 mark and I couldn't have done that without the support of so many people here.

Last Thursday was the monthly meetup for the Mallsballers; our local Adelaide Steem community group. @mattclarke was saying just a day or so before what an amazingly kind group of people we've gotten together and he's not wrong. There are so many big hearts in this group, yet many of them are such quiet, understated people. They are all so supportive and I can't imagine Steem without them now. This is my core community because it's not just here in the virtual space of the internet, it's a tangible community too.

photo courtesy of @izzydawn

Another recent community I've had the privilege of being welcomed into is the @m-sargon part of @tcpolymath's @themesopotamians project. Tim's goal here is to assist in the growth of accounts which he feels will continue to help support the Steem community. Included in my group are some people working really hard to get promising minnow accounts noticed. They are an inspiration in paying it forward and @thedarkhorse’s project, @pifc, does just that.

@davemccoy is so busy trying to get promising minnows noticed he rarely has time to post on his own blog! Through him I've come across @hitmeasap's force feed a minnow project which was unwittingly started as a brainstorming suggestion which others took him up on. It successfully pushed @davemccoy over the 500 SP threshold into minnowhood and two more Steemians have been helped up since. A fourth has just been forced up as I write.

As each Steemian reaches out to help another they give them the strength to help others in turn. We may not be able to reach everyone individually, but helping one or two others has the knock on effect of helping others anyway.

Another community close to my heart is the homesteading community. Sadly the initial banner we came together under has gone, but a new one, @ghscollective, has stood up to allow us all to touch base. It is a community that had expanded beyond the ability for everyone to keep up with everyone else regularly (although possibly @goldendawne manages!), but I feel a door is always open. The @teamaustralia community has grown immensely too since I arrived, but again it's always there for us to touch base.

Then there are the individual connections I've made with some amazing people in distant parts of the world.

I know there is a lot of negative behaviour going on and a lot of complaints about said behaviour and about the Steemit site, but life is what you make it and the Steem blockchain is no different. My experience here has been a good one. One which has shown me that there are a lot of wonderful people out there. I choose to veer away from the negative here, because I can. In my life I have to learn to deal with it, so why add to it here?

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