A few days ago I hit the mark I'd been aiming for as a year-end goal on Hive. During the many challenges I've had IRL, I wanted to claw my way back to building my hive power to at least 500HP before the end of the year. As of this week it's mission accomplished. This is a pretty significant achievement for me after the theft of my funds in the spring that I'd sent in order to buy HIVE.

Now I've been able to s-l-o-w-l-y rebuild my HP with the few and far between (but very much appreciated) trickle of upvotes I get with each post. But hey, a little is better than nothing, right? You make do with what you have. I set all posts for 100% power up, and that has been a help as well.

I've also decided to cut back on the posting frequency to better match the level of support I'm getting. Daily posting wasn't making much sense, as the effort was a time-sink without much return. So now I post less often, and it feels like less of a waste of time (no use spending 6 hours researching and writing a post that no one is going to read, right? Might as well cut back).

As I see more interesting posts, I may share a thoughtful comment as those have a slightly higher chance of receiving a response. My next near-term goal is 600HP, and if I can find a way to actually purchase HIVE (after the loss on ionomy), I can get there that much faster.

I thought about posting only in communities (as some whales want you to), but they tend to get oppressive over time and I don't want someone dictating every little thing that I can write about. So I'll drop in and out of communities over time while also posting directly to my blog (even if those posts receive no upvotes, just so that I don't feel like I'm working or writing for somebody else).

I think the important point is to aim for achievable goals in order to give you those "little victories" along the way. If you can't easily reach your hive power numbers, set writing goals for yourself. For example you could aim to make a number of THOUGHTFUL comments per week and hit that step-by-step. There are many metrics to success as a blogger, all you have to do is to take that first step.