When I moved into this house, I calculated my living expenses under the assumption that SBD would never again drop below $2 USD for any length of time. It's currently just about $1 USD and I expect it to stay there for a good long while. I've read it was overvalued, that it was never supposed to be worth much more than $1 USD in the first place.
My finances were A-OK when it was at $3. They were tight but survivable at $2. At $1, there is just no way this can work. I have earned only 139 SBD in the past three weeks which is now worth fuck all. I powered down 250 more expecting that to be enough to make up the shortfall. But then SBD kept going down.
I will now have to power down a total of $750 to make up the difference. I can't keep that up for long, it's like eating your own body in order to not starve. The more I power down, the more I diminish my already insufficient earning ability.
I swore soon after I started not to be like the people I saw complaining that their posts were undervalued. I stuck to that until now. But I am at my breaking point. I have been here since the beginning. I have burned myself out making 4 pieces of content per day, because I had to.
Why is that worth single digits? Why is it worth less than 5 SBD per post on average? I sit here miserable and frustrated, watching simple photography blogs earning hundreds of SBD per post, remembering when I could at least count on 30-50 per post.
Much of this is my fault though. I have been sitting on my writing doing nothing with it besides self-publishing to Amazon where nobody will ever find it, and sharing it here. This desperate situation was the push I needed to send all of my work out to several publishers, but I should have done so much sooner.
I could try to get a minimum wage job, but prior to Steemit I tried and failed at that over and over for years. When I did land a job (only twice in that time) I was promptly fired soon after, usually without explanation. Probably related to behaviors symptomatic of autism, though I cannot prove that and they wouldn't tell me if that were the case lest I sue or something.
I could drive for Uber, but I'd just be trading my car's lifespan away for less than Steemit pays, and it would eat up time and energy I could be using on Steemit and sending out manuscripts. I really feel hopeless. What are my options? Work Steemit for peanuts, or drive Uber for peanuts?
I am not going to live off my STEEM savings because it would only prolong the inevitable and leave me with totally empty pockets. I am not going to sell off my belongings for the same reason. I already put a couple items up for sale two weeks ago for a small fraction of what I paid, and received zero interest.
Part of me feels foolish for all the charity I did. You cannot pour from an empty cup. I would not be in this situation if I'd kept the money for myself. But on the other hand my death is an eventual certainty. Maybe sooner rather than later. As I lay dying, I know for sure that I won't regret having removed some meager quantity of suffering from the world. That sort of satisfaction is beyond price.
Still, now I'm gonna be one of them. I have my car though, and it's kitted out to sleep in comfortably so I will at least be dry and safe. It's still a scary prospect. Who helps the helper? Not the whales I used to rely on. They all delegated or transitioned to upvote/resteem selling services.
That right there is what's killing the STEEM dream for everybody who isn't a whale. Whales who want zero effort passive income instead of participating in the community. I guess I'm just angrily and ineffectually shouting at clouds though, which isn't going to make any difference.
Have I not worked hard enough? I already post the maximum allowed, it's resulted in illness recently (hence why there were only 4 posts in the last 2 days). Is my content not good enough? Do I not engage my followers enough? I guess even if you tick all the boxes, sometimes you still lose.
How did this happen? How did I get here? Was it the controversial posts? Again, maybe it's my fault. I stirred the shit, and rocked the boat, but because I believed it was valuable to do so. Because people should be able to entertain ideas they disagree with, without feeling as if they must also accept them (or destroy their source).
Certainly I can think of at least two people rubbing their hands together and cackling at this article. This is exactly the outcome they wanted for me. Not even necessarily because I believed in the concepts I proposed which so offended them, but because I proposed them at all.
What are my options? Maybe SBD will surge before August arrives. Maybe monkeys might fly out of my ass. There's about as much chance that the manuscripts I've sent out so far will be accepted by any of the three publishers I've yet to hear back from. No author ever gets a book deal so soon.
I wish it weren't so. I wish a near future SBD surge back above $2, or a book deal out of the blue would save my bacon. But realistically that isn't happening. I don't mean to upset any of you either. I know you don't want this. I know most of you make even less and would love to help if you could, but you can't magic money out of nowhere. That's the same boat I'm in.
What really blasts my ass is that I'd still have thousands of dollars left in my bank account as a safety net if it hadn't all been gobbled up by taxes. Why did I start paying taxes in the first place? I know plenty of people who earn very little and simply never started, they haven't been caught.
I wanted to be responsible though. I wanted to pay into the system. Look what I got for it. It's like you can only survive in this world if you're a cheat. Maybe that's not true though. Maybe I am just looking at the world through a lens distorted by fear.
This really, really sucks. I'm scared and don't know what to do except hug my cat, who is still going to eat before I do no matter what. I wish karma was a real thing. Then at least helping all those people would mean that there will be somebody coming along when I'm hungry and cold to help me.
Nobody is coming though, realistically. The people I relied on to live all disappeared after finding an easier way to sustain their own incomes. I have to help myself. I don't mean to dump this heavy load on you guys. If I don't post as frequently as I used to going forward, now you know why.
The STEEM Dream was beautiful while it lasted. It was absolutely ideal for people like me. Creatives unsuitable for any other line of work. Finally able to do what they love, and the only thing they can sustain for long periods, and get paid for it. But, barring a miracle, the dream is over. For me, anyways.
It kills me that there are people earning 100, 200, 300 SBD per post with a small fraction of my following. Who haven't been here longer than a few months. Luck of the draw. They got noticed by the right people and money rains down upon them while I toil in the shadows for crumbs. Now even the crumbs have stopped falling from the table above me, and there is nothing left to eat.
Thanks for following me as long as you did.