At this point, I've mostly disassociated Steem with $. For $, after I hit 5,000 SP, I'm going to ship some small liquid earnings off for tiny slices of BTC, but that's really it. I've never invested here so I can try to focus on fun and earning it, albeit a hard path. This way, I never have to think much about my account value. The only time I cared about the $, outside of cashing out SBD for USD during its peak a long time ago, was in the scale of rewards I'd earn to see that people appreciated me. Getting $5 or $0.50 isn't going to change my life, but it was a good way to know more people liked my content/I developed a nice following of Steemians.

Either way, we've put in plenty of time for it to be worth more, but I just try to think of this as a Hail Mary miracle for financial gain in the future, a nice surprise if it happens. Thanks for your thoughts.