I wasn't going to SPUD today, but decided I would Power Up whatever was liquid in my account, which amounted to 333 STEEM. That is just under $60 worth. Funny to think that the same amount on this day and at this time in 2018, was worth $1,198 and two months before that it was at the All Time High and worth $2,763.
Ahhh - how things change.
This is a picture of my daughter as she searched for a toy from a box. It seems like an eternity ago, but at the same time, I remember taking that photo and I know exactly what she felt like when I held her in my arms as if I am holding her now. Those days were incredibly hard on us all, and moments like this were rare. I am glad they are behind us, but I am sad that I missed so much of them as life was so difficult that there was little time to enjoy the life of a young family.
Tomorrow we sign away the only home she has known and on Tuesday sign for the one I hope she will remember as home. The one where she will have to learn a great deal of patience as her parents build it into that home. She has already stated that she will help paint, but she will only paint barefoot, as she doesn't want to ruin her socks.
Steem has a way of making one stay even amidst all the fear.
@tezmel
Tezmel is a poet. A real one.
While the words are beautiful, she is wrong on this occasion, as Steem doesn't make anyone stay. People choose to stay. Though, her sentiment is from the right place.
What I think is that while the numbers are above are impressive if they come to call once again and, depressive to think that is where they once were, the price of Steem has little to do with people staying. Yet, it is a good reason to stay and it can often justify the time spent on staying. Yet, I think it is secondary for those who do actually stick around long-term.
The reason is simple. We are human.
And part of being human is being creative, using our minds in combination with our hands to make something that we believe has value. Value to us as individuals, or value to others within a community. However, much of our daily lives have had the creative necessity extracted from it and our creative freedom of imagination gets constrained to what we must do to make ends meet, like it or not. Yes, there is creativity in the daily grind too, but there is very little space to create outside of the framework of the task at hand, to be the artist reflecting and expressing ones deepest mind.
Much of the social experience is engineered around consumption of content, not the development of content itself -and while this makes good business sense - it doesn't make good human sense. We are all creative at heart, problem solvers who face challenges and turn our mind to seek a solution and when we have free time, we explore.
Cave paintings and jewelry and the patterns knitted into the jumpers to keep us warm - they are stories of who we are, marks of us left to be seen by others, to teach, to be admired, to aid. All through the history of human, we have created something that we considered necessary, even if it served no immediate practical purpose. Yet - we likely believed it did - like an amulet carved and worn to ward off evil spirits.
I think this is where Steem is at its most compelling, when people use it for their creative pursuits, whatever they may be. Yes, some will create for the income potential alone, but even that requires a degree of thought and the effort put in to develop what will earn.
Others though have found a place that justifies the hobbies they enjoy by giving them a hook upon which to hang and present them to the world. A love of sport, art or literature, design, politics and photography. No matter the interest there is no limit for the creative mind to take what it knows and spend some time to reflect and craft the story a narrative for the world to see.
I think that this is one of the attractions of immutability as there is the sense that the marks we leave will endure, even if we do not. Our memories of what is important to us set in stone for others to discover, to learn from, to admire to find aid.
I believe that the importance of this in what has become a world of disposable souls is what keeps so many here using mind and hands to carve out a digital space, a creative space that is unbounded by the physical limitations imposed by the world, a culture, an individual's fear.
Steem has a way of making one stay even amidst all the fear.
And in this Tezmel is not wrong at all, for she speaks of the root cause of the suffering that so many face. The fear isn't in the failure of the platform, it is in the failure of the self, the failure to be that creative human and put oneself out into the space to be open for the world. Steem helps people face their fears.
And we fear the world of consumption has made us irrelevant and invisible, for we are in an attention economy. People look to make a mark on the world, when what they actually want, is for themselves to be seen. And we seek our fifteen minutes of fame from strangers, rather than the lifelong support of those closest to us.
I think that Steem starts to turn the tables by integrating the economy into community interaction so that what our minds and hands do, have value in the community, rather than having to outsource their skills to build someone else's dreams. Here on Steem we all own our creativity and it is up to us how we employ ourselves.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]