It's SPUD7, everybody!

It's the most wonderful time of the (Steemian) year … #SPUD7 !!!!!!!

(also time to go on and make a potato salad with those particular spuds, but that's a whole different story)

I don't know how I missed SPUDs 3-6 … I participated in SPUD2 and thought the whole thing was great … folks in general just don't know what it is like to be building something together.

I came to Steemit in the mode of building connections with musicians – found a BAD post somebody had written about a musician I was looking for on Steemit, stayed for the opportunities Steemit offered me to write for and with a great group of people.

I have not yet converted any Steem to USD, because I haven't needed to...but the OTHER thing I have loved is the fact that Steem is big enough and strong enough to provide life-sustaining resources in other parts of the world (and yes, @streetstyle, I have reached out and provided SteemLove today). The value of what we create here on Steemit with Steem DOES MATTER, no matter how little the masses understand it (yet).

Of course it has been difficult to watch Steem drop so far since I came in March, but fortunately I was born to hodl … my investment style is influenced by the fact that I have been teaching younger people since before I was actually an adult, and longer than I have been an adult, and also by the fact that my farmer grandmother made me and my sister plant out our backyard so we would learn that way as well … all of life depends on making the right investment at the right time and patiently hodling (okay, WAITING) until the time is right for things to come forth and be ready.

I was that kid who would go out into the yard every day and enjoy every little change over the course of the seasons … it was not a hardship for me to wait because there was so much going from day to day.

Steemit is much like that; there are so many people I have met and so many things I have learned and so many opportunities I have been able to create for myself because of the confidence I have been able to build here … waiting for Steem to go up to the level where it pays bills for me in USD is kind of beside the point because

1. On one hand, frustration destroys my ability to do what I can here
2. On the other hand, the habits of work I have developed to make the most have done that already!

Yep … wrote a whole book on Steemit day by day, flipped it to Amazon Kindle, and about to flip that to paperback …

… and working on book 2, right here on Steemit … this is the 20th part, at a rate of about two parts per day … day 10.5, as it happens!

(By the way, thank you, @streetstyle, for encouraging me to get an image done for The Posture of Innocence and thus encouraging more readers to take a look!)

I said all of that to say that I want Steem and Steemit to be here, for me, of course, for my fellow Steemians, of course, and for many more creatives like us. So, today, I will be joining my fellow Steemians in powering up some Steem … already, I see that since midnight hit across the International Date Line, Steem has bounced up just a bit ... I like to think it is early power ups that caused that, and the rest of us will be able to support that as the day goes on around the world!

Since this is a contest, those that know me know: I am NOT coming to play in terms of winning this thing … although I am just barely a minnow, I am a whale at heart and my power up will show that!