You have a great blog

Thank you :) I always like keeping the quality up.

. I honestly have talked of red flags and things and sometimes got very bad feedback and hostility (lack of votes etc.) for not staking because after D-Live I realllly didn't trust Ned.

Have you been getting criticism lately? I vote everywhere. I wish I could give everyone big votes all the time, but there are so many people and so few votes haha!

I see your point, I don't judge people for not staking or even straight-out leaving Steem. It's hard to stay optimistic when the market is so bearish and the investors are so intent on cashing out.

While I've understood these problems since they started happening, I somehow reason it out as "secondary" and keep powering up.

I think it all comes back to when I used to make more money and I didn't save it. I wasted it all on clothes I never wear, a phone that I got stolen from me, etc. I don't have one penny from when I made thousands by working at back-breaking hours. I wanted to reward myself and I did so by buying myself lots of stuff. My currency devalues so fast that the best way I saw to keep it was to use it.

Now, even through all of those bad things we can both see, I want to have a future. I don't know any other way to store my money. I don't have a bank account in dollars and the last time I "hedl" I lost all my money due to bad choice in altcoins. Steem is the only investment I know that has kept my money growing for 2 years. I started at 0 and now have the equivalent of $1500.

I don't know if things are going awry right now. I see the bad things happening, and the good ones, and I just know that I've earned here and don't know anything else.

What do you think? I'm a bit lost and feel like this is the best thing around despite the circumstances.