Dear steemians.

As I made it through my first 30 days on this vibrant new platform today, I do feel the need to share my travel and talk about all what happened, all the emotions, what I learned, which mistakes I made, whom I have to thank and what I am looking forward to.

How I came to steemit.

I heard about steemit for the first time on a Curtis Stone episode on YouTube around January 3rd, where he talked about YouTubes stricter monitization rules and how he was thinking to jump on over here because one of his followers mentioned the platform to him. He also felt attracted to cryptocurrencies, as I understood, so steemit was an option for him. It was that simple side comment in a completely different content that caught my attention and that made me want to take a look… Ever since, for 30 days now, steemit belongs to my daily „internet chores“ and was my only „internet chore“ for several of these days....

What I came for.

Already having blogged about my transition to a more senseful, more abundant and more sustainable Permaculture life early in 2017 on Wordpress I had the whish to intensify my blogging again in 2018, as my old blog went dormant quite quickly because of my 2017 Permaculture Design Course that took all the free time I had as a husband and as a father of two preschool kids.
Steemit seemed ideal to jump into blogging again, as on first sight I discovered an abundance of Permaculture related homesteading folks that made me feel like I was in good hands. The content of all these (you) people was magnificent and I thought that not only I could make money by blogging about my favourite things, but also through comments, that I could fill with my fresh Permaculture knowlege, could contribute to the financial side of our family life.

All the love.

Upon setting my foot into steemit for the first time with my introduction-post I was confronted with such a huge avalanche of love and careing interaction that it felt quite overwhelming and I was so hoocked you can't believe. Resonating comments where popping out of every corner and I felt very sheltered by the #homesteadersonline community that dearest @bobydimitrov invited me into in the first hours of my steemian life. Upvotes where dropping in regularly and plentyful and likeminded steemians like @bobydimitrov, @squdsi1, @sagescrub, @schoonercreek, @theferalone and @stortebeker where very inspiring to me and a joy to read from and intercat with.

The dark side – ignorance is bliss.

With all the love I received there where dark clouds forming in the sky the deeper I entered this rabbit hole. It was a darkness that was the opposite of love, abundance and „sharing is caring“. It was the darkness of algorythm and the thrill of gambling with bots that made the second half of my first month long travel a very hard time for me.
As I learned more and more how this platform actually works I was introduced to more and more rules of the algorythm. I learned about VotingPower that drops and make you „weaker“, about the 30 minute rule that includes to be quick but not to quick to maximise financial outcome, I learned about the pecentages of curational payout not to mention tons of other details, bits and pieces.
Filled with all the complex knowlege and the urge to grow I stepped into a next rabbit hole whithin the first rabbit hole and started automated bidding, overwhelmed by the astronomical earnings of some users with sometimes daily posts. From @haejin to @sweetsssj I wanted to receive my part of their seemingly unfair high rewards and became myself a part in the vicious cycle. I even dedicated a whole week to almost pure automated bidding on these tempting posts with various minute settings to see which would be the best setting for curational outcome, just to learn about "vote dust filter" with $0.00 curational earnings and to feel extremely frustrated about all that stressful, wasted time and vests.

Light at the end of the tunnel.

Seeing my income shrink day by day, not only through my absurd use of bot voting power, but also due to the strong fall of STEEM on the markets in the first half of January I had to remember the sunny beginning of my trip, which was not only the most rewarding financial time, but also the most exciting time due to commenting, sharing and interacting.
I opened my feed for the first time in a while and there was @wwf reflecting on his 122 days to have become a dolphin with countless posts, comments and interactions, when it clearly dawned on me that this platform was not to be used by me as an rule based algorythmic money machine, but that it had to be used as a communication platform. This was the only way to make prolific abundance work for everyone.
I congratulated @wwf on his „fish metamorphosis“ and engaged in a very small conversation that I was rewarded with more $ than the entire week before (posting and bot-bidding together). I went to bed and enden my bot-gambling.

Ringing Rebirth.

Feeling dirty and tired after this week I woke up the next day to see in my wallet a generous donation of @ligayagardener, who out of nothing invited me to @steembasicincome. I felt very honored, happy and flattered and saw it like a hint of destiny to value the giving and sharing more than the bidding for the own wallet, so that I immediately engaged into spending my saved 6 SBD on my six most meaningful steemians so far and invited them into the @steembasicincome as well.
That done it only took an other night sleep for me to discover the second big surprise. Out of noting @wwf had not only overwhelmed me with two heavy duty post upvotes but also with 181 SP delegation!!!!! Now that was simply too much. I did not feel good about this. Here I was misusing steemit for a whole week to receive a double impact of some sort of unconditional love? This had to be a sign! I was happy, confused, flattered, sad, embarrest all at the same time and decided to restart my behaviour and actions here on steemit to resonate with my first steps on the platform. I kindly rejected @wwf delegation and was set to freely embrace this ocean of likeminded ecologists and socienty sculptors again, that practice inconditional love and support to their fellows.

As a way out of the "vote dust filter" I managed to invest a little real money into STEEM and SBD which did not bring me yet into an actionable STEEM POWER range but at least got me out of my bandwith problems and enabled me to interact again.

Don't use bots! You won‘t grow through curation! Only sincere communication makes you grow. I stopped my bot completely, only to reactivate it in case I know that I will be off steemit for more than 16 hours and to not waste Voting Power through supporting „my“ people rather than gambling with the hyped ones.

Looking forward to many more posts and discussions in the future dear steemians!

Thank you very very much for listening and I am very very curious if you made similar experiences or not!
All the best.
Moritz