Introspective, reflective, conflictive, vindictive, ok... maybe the last one doesn't belong, but yeah, let's do this. Let's ask ourselves the difficult questions, the ones that make us feel uncomfortable, like when you can't recognize the crunchy food elements on the house salad.

Yesterday's conversation on

@helpie's hangout left me thinking about a specific difference that those who stayed engaged have with those who fell off the wagon. You know, the thousands of accounts at this point that are just sitting there idling. The always eloquent

@pennsif who joined just recently, shared some of his truths with the group, and they slowly cooked into cognition for me.

Almost right away after joining STEEM, his drive was to do something for a community, not for himself per say, not become a better writer, a better photographer, or rekindle his old passion, penguin catching and document it on blogs, no. He just wanted to do something for a community, and in that sense, inadvertently, he got started with the right foot.

He noted that at no point on his journey the price of STEEM was an impediment to his daily tasks, to his drive even. So, it's not surprise that @pennsif is still here, doing his radio shows, his dollar a day initiative and what have you, week after week.

My good friend @therealwolf also chimed in with this truth, he also has been too focused on building @smartsteem from the ground up, that his drive had not dwindled just because the price had dipped so far into the reds, and thus really drove home the core message of the hangout, the theme you could say.

What are you working on?

Is your world comprised of one habitant, one blog, one important person with important emotions that dares not to let one single root touch the soil? Of course not a single one of the readers of this blog owes me an answer, and honestly that is probably better. But, the question is quite important nonetheless.

If the only drive you had for keeping on keeping on was an unrealized gain, seeing the number climb up higher and higher giving you the sensation that power was at the tip of your fingers, that you could grip it once and for all... then maybe, just maybe, you were not focused on anything real, just the numbers on the screen and nothing more than that.

But you know what's real?

People, the friends you've made, the ones that I certainly have. The communities we've built around ourselves or have joined and given our kindness to. That, and possibly only that, may be the only thing that is real from this whole little experiment of ours.

You could literally extrapolate the whole virtual experience, and place it in the "real world" and it would still hold true. I would still feel part of my community, it's just that I would be speaking and staring into eyes instead of avatars. Our Palnet community got together in florida this year already, in the middle of a bear market at that. How irresponsible!

So let me ask you something... You, the common man, the one who does not develop software like the amazing developers we have on this platform, the kind who understands crypto but is not a professional trader, the one who simply came here looking for answers and found a new way of thinking... Yes, you who read this until the end.