Where ya been, Sweeney?

To say I've been less than active for a while would be an egregious understatement…

I've averaged maybe a post every couple weeks this past year, with huge gaps between spurts of activity. Looking at my wallet, it may appear that I've been doing plenty this whole time. I've seen a fair amount of success playing the @steemmonsters markets, though that only consists of a few minutes at a time, a couple times a day. The time I used to have, or rather the time I made, for writing just isn't there any longer, and I'm grateful to have at least been able to stay connected to the chain. I do have the Steem logo tattooed on both of my hands, after all, so I'll likely always be around in one capacity or another.

Life has a great way of throwing you curve balls and keeping you on your toes. I made the mistake of assuming that things were better than they were on the home front, and devoted too much time either writing, checking stats, or just chatting with other steemians, rather than paying attention to those right in front of me.

When I first began blogging on Steemit, my second son was about to be born. Things were looking up, and the skies were blue. As little baby Vincent grew up, he became more and more rambunctious, requiring more and more time and attention. This restlessness is something I didn't experience with my first son, and I made a lot of plans here on the blockchain thinking I'd have the time to do it.

Every child is different, and I quickly learned that the amount of time I wanted to be spending on STEEM, and the time I could spend, were drastically different. As work and family obligations became the priority they should have always been, my post frequency dropped, then fell off almost completely. Finding a balance between life and this hobby had become all but impossible, so I gave up on Steem almost completely to focus on my family.

Little did I know the damage of my inattention had been done, and had caused the love of my life to justify committing the worst offense against our relationship. I still hold on to the hope that we can work out our problems, and that of course requires mucho time and attention, too.

Broken is the only word to describe how I still feel inside, but my boys don't deserve a broken father, so I'm gathering the shattered fragments of my mind and doing my best to keep busy.

I'm still writing, just not as much of my own content

On top of time constraints, my moral to do much of anything is low, to put it mildly. My self-worth is at a minimum. To write in the same jolly manner I always have just seems like such a difficult thing to muster at the moment, but I suppose I'm getting better every day.

While I'm not writing for myself as much at the moment, I have seen recent successes in my freelance front, and now write crypto blogs for miningstore.io, and marketing content for inthegame.io. These jobs were landed almost completely because of the work I've published here on Steemit, and I'm eternally grateful for the experience I've gained.

A note on @thesteemhouse

If you've known me for any amount of time, you might know about my real-world makerspace project called The Steem House. When I first imagined what it could be, I crowdfunded 2000 STEEM to get the ball rolling. That money, after declining in value by about 75% with the crash last year, depleted fairly quickly with marketing, setting up a website, token, and other startup expenses.

I failed. Plain and simple. I took on too much to complete on my own, and couldn't seem to find adequate help, and the project has fallen by the wayside. In a way, I felt obligated to make right those who had financially supported the project, and mentioned in the discord that I'd be willing to refund people. I realize how stupid that might sound to some, but I'm nothing if not scrupulous.

A couple of the larger investors jumped on that opportunity and said that yes, they would like their investment back. This was a detriment to my already waning moral, and coupled with my inability to build an engaging audience around the project to build revenue, it fell further and further down my list of priorities.

I still plan to honor my word to those couple of people, and will definitely do so before I move forward in any capacity with @thesteemhouse. I have been sending small amounts of STEEM over to the account from my personal profits on @steemmonsters, though that's fairly slow going.

So what now?

To be completely honest, I have no clue what the future holds for me. I don't suppose any of us know much, but I'm unsure about so much right now, and won't be making any promises to the internet for a while. I hope that I can find time to get back into producing some of my favorite sort of content. I've got a lot of great things to say about this place, and maybe one day soon I'll be back to the Super Cool happy go lucky guy that Sweeney is known for being.