When I first came to Steemit a little less than two months ago, it was quickly clear that I was going to want to buy in. I knew that I didn't understand the platform, but I knew enough to figure out that there was going to be value here if I put in the effort to gain the understanding. About that time I also discovered the idea of leasing delegation, and the 
@minnowbooster market to do that.
I really liked the STEEM:BTC price at the time, so it seemed like a good plan to buy in. I did not, however, just want to show up as a brand new dolphin with no idea what to do with his voting power. I had a very good sense of how much I did not understand about voting on the platform, and I really wanted my account to grow in stages so that I would have an easier time figuring it out without learning my lessons by rampaging over community standards. So I chose to sell six delegations with varying lengths, in hopes that as the voting power came back I would find good uses for it. I spent six weeks as a minnow, which I think was really important for my understanding of the community.
On Sunday the first chunk of delegation came back to me, and with this week's price increases, I now have a vote worth $0.20 in
Vote Value. As expected, I had some ideas of what to do with it: I'm
supporting songwriters in
Open Mic, working to build the
Webcomics Contest, and actively curating the #printmaking and #letterpress tags, not that the last ones have been much work.
I'm also giving out votes to reward content that I really like, mostly in arts-related activities. My estimation right now is that I'm spending about half of my voting power on rewarding the rest of the community and about half on selfish pursuits - voting my own posts, rewarding good comments on my posts, trying to launch 
@zerocloo's poker blog, and upvoting accounts like 
@qurator and 
@steembasicincome which will give me a return.
I'm not particularly thrilled with that percentage, and I have two methods planned to reduce it. One is that, as more of the delegation returns, a lot of the selfish uses will not grow as fast as the voting power does. The second is that I expect some of them will become completely unnecessary as I balance out my need for liquid rewards vs. SP, which should be just a few weeks away. On the other hand, hopefully the rewarding quality comments on my posts component will grow significantly.
I'm having moments when it's hard to find posts I want to spend voting power on. Because of the way I'm doing the Open Mic bonus prizes all of those votes go out on the weekend, so I expected it to be slow midweek, and it has been. Evaluating accounts for the Minnowbooster whitelist has led me to a bunch of good posters, but the nature of it means they're less likely to be high-volume. My hope is that as things go on my feed will become a continual source of content that I want to upvote for its own sake.
About half of my SP delegation now is either on week-to-week renewals or expiring on Sunday. So far I've been content to let the renewals go and collect liquid STEEM, but I do have the flexibility to increase my voting power if it turns out that I find a good use for it. So I'm feeling pretty good about where I am. I turned out to be right about the STEEM:BTC price, as I bought in at its highest point recently, leaving me with a nice return just in currency rates. And the longer I'm here the more I think that the platform can be an investment asset for me while I'm being an asset for the community.
