After catching up on some posts and conversations here for the past week, I read these posts by @wakeupkitty and felt compelled to write my thoughts about them:

Booming Vote!
POLL: Are You, is your posts, Visible?
POLL: Which Post/Comment, of someone else, Deserves an Upvote? Why?

Joining Steemit was never my idea. I didn't even know about this place until someone told me about it and encouraged me to join. During that time, I was anticipating to lose my job because one by one of my teammates were let go. I had to find an alternative source of income and this platform somehow appeared as an alternative that can be explored, ya why not?

And so, in March 2018, I registered myself here. I quite like typing and writing, so I thought, it shouldn't be that hard. At that time, in my mind, I had an objective or rather, a hope, to make money from writing and in the event that I do lose my job, I should be able to sustain myself for a bit. I started reading articles about how steemit works, upvotes and all that jazz. When I was ready, I started posting on random topics, thinking it was easy peasy.

Boy, was I wrong, so so wrong. It was hard. Not so much about the writing but to earn an upvote is just so darn hard. I read some posts with high, humongous upvotes and thought to myself, whaaatttt?? Just a few simple sentences or a photo with a sentence could earn so much? I couldn't fathom or comprehend any of it. For posts that clearly had a lot of effort and time put into them, those made sense.

I started reviewing more and realised there was some form of algorithm and strategy at play which were all beyond me. I decided not to think much of it. After a few weeks or months, I started to discover communities, with like minded members of similar interests and I started posting within the community, and joining contests that I understood and was able to join. Communities soon became a huge part of my Steemit journey. I honestly don't think I would have stayed around for so long if I hadn't found communities where I could connect and engage with others. And frankly speaking, I felt a sense of belonging, to have topics after topics to write about passionately and be able to interact with friends from all over the world.

When communities and contests happened, I no longer thought much about earning because it became fun to write, to comment, to participate and support the work of other members. Winning occasionally in contests helped gave motivation too. Community contests gave content for me to write. Getting an occasional booming vote helps too. At the same time, I experienced quality curation, read good and engaging posts and comments, and learned about curation trails, auto upvotes, steem basic income (SBI) which gave the foundation for me to earn.

That said, there were also times when I was disappointed by so-called "members" who exploited communities for their own benefit, simply posting while making little to no effort to engage with others who supported and interacted with them. And these things, you can see - e.g. when one writes with no heart and they were just there to reap the benefits without much effort, taking things for granted, that the moderators and administrators would upvote them.

Then, I was a member, a contest host, a moderator or an admin for the communities I was part of. At that same time, Covid happened and I finally lost my job. So I had loads of time. I wrote about anything and everything that I enjoyed doing, taking photos for my posts, plan what to write, structure and format my writing. It was truly fun then, although involved lots of hard work. Writing a quality post takes effort, especially one that involves photos, steps, format and structure. As a contest host and moderator, curating is not easy either, to read through every post and comment, to choose and justify which posts to feature and then to write the curation. After that, it is distributing the rewards and all. So, for those of you who thinks it is easy to curate, please think 100x more. It is NOT easy which is why I am very appreciative of the time, effort and energy that @wakeupkitty, @solperez and all other quality curators put in (thank you loads and loads 💖).

For me, all these became tiring later, with the amount of time spent to curate, comment, host with hopes to build the community to be a better place for its members. And I felt I no longer have the mood to write, hosting contest started to feel obligatory. And when the whole split thing happened, I was unsure about what was going on and I didn't like the feeling when people started taking sides and posting strongly for or against the process. I thought to myself, this was my happy online place... what happened? At the same time, I found a job end of 2021. Time and energy became a constraint. And another thing was that I couldn't withdraw my earnings anywhere. Most exchanges that accepted STEEM or SBD were either not regulated or were banned in my country. When all these came together, I decided it was time to leave and so I did. I stopped writing.

Then, somehow last week, after 5 years, Steemit came to mind suddenly and I decided to log in for the fun of it, wondering if I could still log in. I dug for my posting and active keys and tried and voila, I could! It was like a sign. I browsed around, thinking how things may have changed and then I saw @wakeupkitty, still active! It was like meeting an old friend after many, many years (in a way it is, considering I left 5 years ago). And when I saw that she continued some of the contests I joined before I left, the memories started to return. I remembered the fun, the excitement, the joy of writing and reading comments and getting upvotes back then. And that was how I decided to write again.

After 5 years, I think my priorities are different now. I just want to type and write anything, depending on my mood. No stress, no pressure, just pure writing, be it posting or commenting. I don't have expectations which means I won't be disappointed. I see SBI upvotes are still active, that works enough to keep me going. And I will support quality, heartfelt posts and comments (according to my eyes, of course) with the little that I have, in support of this community and I hope those who join together in this journey, genuinely has the same objective. I just want to write, and write I shall. And this is just a random post of thoughts 😍.