If you hate it here, it's your fault

What if Steem came down to only cents? Would you still be creating? Would you keep going down with it or take the next train and leave right away? To my understanding activity goes down when the price dips low, even though the rewarding amounts of Steem stay the same.

Many of us came into this platform with the promise of rewards at the end of the rainbow. But if you've been here for a while, you know the money won't start flowing to you just because you are participating in this social experiment.

We go to our (sometimes unpleasant) jobs because living costs. Steemit on the other hand doesn't pay the living expenses for most of us so there's no reason to treat it as such – some shitty job you have to tolerate. No, why would you go through such only for mere bucks? If you go on but keep hating it, it's on you. And forget the reward pool rape and unfairness of the system, those are out of your power.

It's a cliché already at this point but, the rewards don't matter (unless you rack dozens of dollars per post consistently having a chance to make it into a living, but if that's not the case, forget it).

You should have additional reasons for what you're doing here, otherwise the only one will be gone if/when the market plummets. If you have some purpose other than dollars in your eyes, if you enjoy what you're doing here – it'll show on your work, hence, it will also lead to bigger rewards more likely. It sounds like a paradox scam: money (and Steem Power) matters, but act as if it didn't and you start getting more rewards.

You'd think that thinking about money would get you some, law of attraction and so forth. Well, I guess it depends. If you stress about the fact you don't have money, your energy will go towards that stress, instead of focusing on the means of improving your situation – vicious cycle of poverty.

Let's look at my wallet: recently I reached 1000SP (I've had an idea how to celebrate it, not sure if I'm ever going to make it though) and it took me 10 months, not all of it even being earnings from Steem(it) but some from "real money" (fiat) being invested in it. I'm not too sure how much SP is of my dirty euros but I think it's somewhere around 300-400 Steem. So, about $1500 in 10 months is from my own work, barely a month worth of salary in where I live. Sure, laid out like this it seems little – if I had to live off of it. Gladly, I don't. I treat it more like an investment. That's why you shouldn't compare the amounts of your (little) long term investments to your salary. Investments aren't there to live off, except in emergency cases. They are there to secure you a better future in years down the line, not the present.

So, not raking rewards that won't be enough to support your life shouldn't let you down because ideally your going to invest all the rewards back to Steem anyway, for the future when Steem is, at least expected, to become a scarce resource and harder to accumulate when more and more people drift to Steem. We only have 1 million users (not really because bots and multiple accounts by same people) but if there are going to be millions of real users here, I'm sure this day will seem like a gold mine after couple of years. Also, SMT's and communities are expected to change things drastically. Now, I'm not an expert on this field, I only know what I have read from other users such as @tarazkp (who also is not an expert by his own words) and @taskmaster4450.

Maybe it's just me being a minnow, but the money really has "decreased in value" when I have established real relationships by meeting other Steemians in real life. Of course I still greatly care about how much I earn because I'd like to have more influence here believing I could make it just a bit more better place giving to small and potential users that bring value – they are entertaining, helpful and make bonds with other people. The latter being the most valuable by my evaluation in the era of big cities yet increasing loneliness leading to depression and suicides, just because there were no other people to connect with despite thousands of them around us and hundreds of millions of them in our "reach" on the Internet.

My total blockfolio is about 66% Steem, I think (I don't keep track on the exact numbers), so one could say that I'm heavily invested in this place. But I rarely talk about Steem itself because I don't really want to, there are already enough people doing that, I rarely feel like I could add any value to topics surrounding it. I do what I enjoy doing here, you should too, especially if your life doesn't depend on it. And even if it did, it's probably a better long term strategy to have a path that doesn't "suck ass" like a regular job you may have wanted to escape in the first place.