I always swore up and down that I would "only curate manually," but some months back I went to more of a :hybrid" system... basically as a result of not having the time on my hands I once had. These days I have to put more time into income producing activities, meaning I have less time for Hive.

I feel a bit sad about that, remembering days when I'd sometimes leave 30-40 comments (in the style of this one) across the network. But the cost of living keeps rising, and my income as a self-employed individual is stagnant to declining, and while Hive is nice I can't pass it off as a "part time job," only as a chance to squirrel away a few dollars to long term savings.

With some reluctance I went to auto-curating a list of some 50-ish favorite Hiveans IF, and only IF my voting power goes above 95%. So the auto-votes ae only activated sporadically. I saw that as a way to still give out a bit, and gain a bit from curation, on days when I simply can't find the time to contribute otherwise... but it still leaves plenty "in the tank" for manual engagement. Is it perfect? Hells, no... but it's better than nothing.