In doing steem full-time my intention is to be helpful here every day. Today I fell a short on that with making what I see as the worst post I've made so far which is impressive given the competition! In my last post I attempted to help with the problem of Steem account creation. Within 5 hours of creating the post, I listened to feedback and completely removed what I originally posted and replaced it with links to what we already have. If you helped with this, thank you!
The part I am specifically sorry for is taking almost no time before making the post to consider what else we as a community were already doing about this and making my own offensive solution. That was a stupid move and reflects a selfish state of mind with limited awareness of the whole. Selfish can be translated into all of the other undesirable states including greedy, not good enough, better than, etc.
I intend to continue serving here full time each day indefinitely and I intend to learn from each blunder I make to be more effective here.
Two weeks ago I received a letter in the mail from Charlotte expressing her frustration with the Steemit account creation system. She said she had tried to sign up 10 days earlier and still not gotten any confirmation email. She asked if I could help. Naturally my first thought was to make something myself to completely fix not only her problem but what must surely be the tip of the iceberg on a much bigger problem that is the Steemit account creation system.
Where the stupidity came in was not even thinking first to see if anyone else had already tried it to help with this. What I have learned today since making the post is that releasing a more sustainable account creation system is one of Steemit's top priorities. In the meantime, several of members of our community already have working solutions that such as https://anon.steem.network/.
During the last two weeks, I spent hours planning out the perfect account creation service that would meet everyone's objectives using my incredibly limited knowledge of how to make an account with the Vessel wallet. The service would get the account created fast, it would have a great customer support, it would accept payment with Steem as well as PayPal/Stripe, and it would pay for itself with tips.
After hours of planning, I first dedicated a day of work and video production to this and shared the idea on YouTube after delegating 30 of my Steem to the new account to be used for creation. Up until this afternoon, I thought every account had to have 30 Steem power delegated to be created which fortunately is incorrect. Next I paid for a transcription which cost about $30. Then I paid my friend to edit the transcription and make a blog post out of it which cost another $30 or so. Finally, I put another hour or so this morning into getting the post prepared for Steem and published it. In other words, I invested hours and dollars into making a service that mostly drew criticism and not one person will ever use. Face-palm.
With my intention to help solve a problem that was posing a big frustration to at least one person, I was shocked to discovered the most critical feedback I've ever seen on one of my Steem posts come rolling in. Fortunately after reading tens of thousands of what might be viewed as hateful and critical comments online in response to what I have created along with about the same amount of "OMG YOU ARE THE BEST" comments, I realized quickly I needed to make an adjustment instead of just thinking everyone else was out to get me. As the steemit.chat witness channel conversation focused on the service a few hours after I made the post, I read the comments there and completely removed my service within 5 hours of making the post on Steem. Instead of doing a "DELETE" post, I placed links to the existing services we have running already which were shared in the witness chat. It is no longer possible to order the service and not one person attempted to use it.
Shortly editing my post, the humbling realization came of the mistake I had made to which I had been blind before. In the middle of mostly comments centered on my character including how disgusting I was for offering my account creation service and all of the repercussions I would face for my post and what a faker I am, I found a comment saying "maybe he just did not take the time to even look." As soon as I read that, I could finally see the issue because the truth always stands out for better or worse.
I had not even taken 10 seconds to Google "Steemit account creation service" because if I had I also would have seen the first search result which is https://anon.steem.network/. With it costing just a few Steem to create an account there, planning a service that cost $50 and showed in the video tutorial how I was delegating 30 Steem to make the account would have been insane.
Had I even thought to look and found this, I would have simply made a post promoting the existing service as I have done with so many other posts in the past showing my favorite Steem services. Usually I do Google and I do ask around before going forward because I have been asked thousands of questions online which just required me Googling and copying/pasting a response. One of my few pet peeves is failing to take the time to Google which I fell face first into this time.
Fortunately today I did show a huge improvement over what I used to do in the past. For most of my six years in business online if I did something stupid I then proceeded to defend it for a long time and/or remove the evidence without ever admitting my mistake or only using admission to get back in the door to do the same thing again. A list of my top 7 painful failures is available at https://jerrybanfield.com/entrepreneur-online-failures/ and that was made before my Udemy ban which is now #1. Today I at least skipped the defensiveness and got straight to doing my best to respond to feedback which meant deleting my service before it ever even did anything and linking to existing services in my post along with communicating in the witness chat.
What I felt worst about was then being caught up in all of this mentally on a day I spent mostly with my two year old daughter while my wife was with family for the birth of our niece. As my daughter was asking me to put her stuffed animals into diapers, here I was thinking about Steem. Again.
Not being fully present when spending time with my family and friends is one of my top shame triggers because I feel like I'm missing out on the most important parts of life. Fortunately I talked to my wife about this and she said she experiences the same thing on a daily basis for both when things go well or go wrong.
I have hurt over this and cried about it and felt remorseful for hours today all while I was unable to do anything about it at my AA meeting and then being with my family. This is what I do today instead of numbing the pain or doubling down and acting tough only to end up treating my family and friends and strangers like crap.
Why not just sweep it under the rug and say no big deal because most people didn't even see it? In my life I find it extremely helpful to own up to the ways I've acted selfish especially where I have not even considered how other people involved might benefit the most or be hurt by my actions. Thankfully I've learned owning up to my mistakes not only makes me feel better and shows me how I can do better but also guarantees I have strong relationships with my fellow human beings. I also see today that facing the pain immediately helps it go away faster than if it is ignored.
The people I trust the most are the ones who are willing to be transparent with mistakes instead of hiding them. What some of us try to avoid is the uncomfortable truth that all of us do stupid and selfish things. Many of us even devote our entire lives to selfishness and stupidity as I did for years with just enough breaks to be useful enough to survive. Life is a lot easier when we each own up to our mistakes because not only do we then feel better and the people around us don't have to guess at our mistakes but then we can learn from each other's mistakes instead of having to always learn the hard way.
I hope in writing this that you're able to avoid making the mistake of offering something on Steem that already is being offered and acting with self-centered motives when considering what to post. I also hope that it helps provide the courage to fail big because while a lot of us are interested in getting more followers, few of us fantasize about how great it will be to make a stupid mistake in front of those followers.
I hope this repairs any damages in our relationship and makes it stronger going forward! I want a real relationship with you and not one that is based on some fake idea of me being perfect or me expecting you to just upvote every post I make and comment with "OMG YOUR POSTS ARE SO AWESOME YOU ARE THE BEST" every time. We each need to know when to adjust what we are doing and when to keep doing what we are doing right. We each need to know that our relationship is not easily thrown away because of one post or one comment. At the same time, we must respect our right to do whatever we want regardless of what anyone says.
You can count on me to keep trying to be helpful here each day and you can also count on me not getting it right sometimes as each new lesson I learn makes room for a new error! Thank you for reading another post and continuing on this journey of life with me!
Love,
Jerry Banfield
