I did not realize it but while I was on my extended break from writing, my one year anniversary on this site came and went. It is strange to say that because I still remember being the new guy on the block and looking at the "mature" one or two year old accounts with awe and admiration. "Wow, that person makes a whole two SBD on everything he or she writes," I thought, without sarcasm, as I watched my own posts die, having only earned 0.05. I often described myself as a "noob" when I talked about my Steemit activities and in a lot of ways, I still feel like I am one but, perhaps, that is the way it is "supposed" to be. That is to say, we don't necessarily "feel" our knowledge and skills as we come to possess them.
I have been here long enough to see this place change and change again, I have met quite a few people, and I have come to enjoy the work of many others but I never felt like I was becoming a "mature" user. I still create rather crude content in the sense that my posts are far less refined than they could be. I exclusively curate manually. The finer workings of the crypto currency world are still mysterious to me and I haven't branched out into the many helpful discord communities that have sprung forth from the womb that is this site and our collective desire to have our posts receive greater attention. In short, I still use this site like a day-one Steemian.
I may still feel like a new Steemit user but I see an interesting parallel between being the owner of a "mature" account and becoming an actual adult. When you are young, you see the adults around you and think that they have some hidden knowledge that you lack but when you become an adult yourself, there is no great revelation. You are not given some divine gift of knowledge at the age of eighteen or twenty-one or thirty-three. I have aged enough that my childhood self would have called me old but I often still feel like a teenager when I take stock of my beliefs and attitudes. I don't know the secret to living a happy and prosperous life any more than I did when I was fifteen. However that does not mean that I have learned nothing in my years as an adult. I am infinitely more stable and clear minded. I have gained much more understanding of the human condition from years of social interaction as well as a number of other skills that I lacked as a child and a teen. Perhaps, owning a "mature" Steemit account functions in the same way. Sure, I still use the site like a "noob" but I have built a healthy network of friends and acquaintances, my people skills have greatly improved, and I have found a healthy outlet for my many rants and tangents, which are all things that I lacked when I started writing here, a little over a year ago. Maybe that is what being a "mature" user really is (that's what I'm going to tell myself, at least).
Whether one agrees with my view of what it means to be an adult and to be a "mature" Steemian does not matter. We are free to forge our own path, whether it is in life or on Steemit and whatever we choose, we will find that we must always continue to learn along the way because our "adult wisdom" doesn't materialize out of nothing.
Well, that's my anniversary post. I am still happy to be here and I am happy to see that many of my friends stuck around too. In the short term, things are looking up a little bit (for now) and I hope that this year is more successful than any that has come before in this site's short history.
Peace.
All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website, unsplash.com.