I am still here :) Hope you are doing well too @sircork. It's been a long time!

As far as my witness position, I'm here as a "backup". I was voted out of the top 20 a long while ago. I mostly lurk, keep up with the "important gossip" and throw my "2 cents" in every now and again.

I'm ready to serve as a top witness again if the need ever arises. I doubt it will, but that's mainly what the backups are for.

There is a lot of inertia with the witness voting process. It is really hard to move your way up, but it is also relatively easy to stay in the mid level once you have put the work in to get there.

I believe the intention is to find trustworthy and competent backup witnesses, so once you have proven yourself as one, you can generally stick around as long as you do the work necessary to keep your node up to date with the latest hardforks and be available to support if/when needed.

In theory active stakeholders could make the backup witness positions (and top witness positions too for that matter) more competitive, but having super active stakeholders who spend a lot of their personal time in the best interest of the chain/project has always been a bit of a pipe dream for Steem/Hive.