In the first part of this post you will find some ugly things, but if you want to place a flag here, be sure that you read the whole thing.
In a few weeks, I will celebrate 2 full years here. And 24 months here are proof that I believe in this system, no matter what I do and how do I act. But the first 20 months here were different: I was happily employed, I was safe and Steemit was like a playground to me.
No matter what I will say next in this post, I still claim that Steemit mostly attracts lazy, unemployed people who don't do shit to find a real job. Since they found Steemit, their ambitions went even lower, they can always earn few dollars and, instead of trying to make it "outside" they spend their whole time in front of their smart devices, refreshing their browsers and scratching their heads thinking what they will write next. I always criticized people who would cash out each 20$ on their bank accounts because those 20$ kinda prevent them to confront the "outside life".
I lost my job, my health got worse and Steemit became the only thing that can save me. But it seems that I had more inspiration to write these posts when I was employed. I actually had something to write about. I felt satisfied when I wasn't at home between 7 AM and 3 PM. I appreciated the time that I was spending with my family and each second was a joy. My alarm still rings at 5:50 AM every morning. I still visit my old office and help my former boss to fix some things. He has a lung cancer and these are his last months. He can't keep me on the job, he can't pay me anymore, but I feel better if I spend few hours somewhere else and be useful.
I really want to get tired and get some good sleep after that, but I can't sleep while I'm thinking about how my Steem Power goes lower and lower. So I engaged myself to learn some programming languages, I started with Swift and made few Steem-inspired apps for iPhone and now I am learning Javascript. I hope that I will learn more and more and use that new knowledge to create something bigger than myself. I found support here and I am very grateful on that.
In my two years of Steemin', I supported some wrong guys, some wrong groups, and some ideas sounded great but they were nothing but a fraud. I don't go on Croatian Discord Channel anymore. I witnessed some dishonest acts like: "I will organize a contest, you make an entry and you will win!", and it was said in front of all of us. There are also guys there that I can't support anymore because they present themselves with lies! For example, you can't write about yourself that you are a psychologist below your "display name" on your blog page if you didn't go to college for that and graduated successfully. And the same guys asked me for support on that Discord channel, but they never shared a single upvote with me. That means that you don't like what I do, so why should I support your false identity?
More and more of them are turning from being bloggers to be the "entry makers" for different kinds of contests whose organizers go up and up in the same food chain. On the network that was primarily made for blogging, that is just not OK.
I never visit "HOT" page on Steemit because the most of those guys bought the upvotes that placed them there. The pending payout is not a measure of the quality of some post, that is something that can't be changed, but it's sad. But luckily, I can change myself and stop supporting those who buy upvotes: If you can afford to buy an upvote, that means that you don't need mine. So, from now on, I will be more careful about what do I support.
I must make myself to post every day here. I rarely make a shitpost, all of my content is original and each of my posts has some message. I am in a bad position right now, but I am still one of the most self-confident people I even knew. That's something that pushes me to go on and on. And I have to find a new job.
