Sometimes, I feel like I have to excuse the amount of time I spend on Steemit by putting it down. I make the time spent away from my computer "bigger" somehow with the IRL label... but what am I doing in real life?

• Grocery shopping, in which I do interact with the attendants and staff kindly, but rarely on a deeper level than "How is your day going?"
• Driving from place to place, typically alone or with my partner.
• Speaking to my partner.
• Walking alone in the woods.
• Occasionally attending a social event like Knit Night or climbing at the rock gym

Very few of those events, even the ones where I'm connecting with people IRL result in the deep conversations about topics I'm interested in: Feminism, the state of world politics and crisis, arts & culture, gender and racial inclusion/diversity, the development of innovative technologies and companies, cryptocurrency, quality content curation.

But, when I bring up what I do on Steemit to folks outside my network, they look at me like I'm crazy because I've developed seemingly deep relationships "on the internet." What about pen pals? What about relationships before technology? They were different and they were, more often than they are now, much deeper.

The internet is the tool that helps me create deep relationships that are unhampered by time zones, geography, language barrier, cultural difference, and even opinion difference. It'll take a personal effort on my part to not shrink my life on Steemit but I'm going to start doing it. Just because people don't understand cryptocurrency, doesn't mean they can't appreciate a community of creative, open, and like-minded individuals gathering in one place. 💓