I tend to have my head in the clouds, maybe its the entrepreneur in me. When I joined Steemit 5 weeks ago I, like many others dreamed of hitting it big on here. But is that the right mindset? Here are my thoughts of the night.....welcome to the inside of my head....
The Excitement and The Curse of the Cryptocurrency Dream...
Everyone who invests in cryptocurrency tends to think the same way. They want huge gains, hopefully by tomorrow if not sooner. I know that when I started buying crypto initially I really didn't believe in what I was buying. I bought because my friend did. I wanted to hit it rich like everyone else dreams about.
It took months worth of research and trying to understand blockchain technology for the whole thing to finally "click" in my head. I went from thinking that crypto was a fad, to believing that we are witnessing a technological revolution that will impact every sector of every industry in the coming years.
I felt the same way when I joined here on Steemit. It took some courage for me to join here, having never written content before. I lurked for months reading around the site trying to decide if it was right for me. But when I did join, I made the mistake of looking at the trending page like most people do, and I saw some pretty mediocre posts paying out hundreds of dollars. I thought, if they can do it? Surely I could too right?
I own my own small business online but I have also dedicated more than 40 hours a week to this platform for the last 5 weeks, saving all the rest of the work I have to do for my business until the late night hours. When I joined here I was so hopeful, almost unrealistically about how Steemit might change my financial life, everything else has gone by the wayside.
I made a couple posts (that look horrible now that I scroll through reading them, including my introductory post) and I got some upvotes, which I was super excited about. A week ago I got some REALLY big upvotes (for me anyways.) It was like hitting the lottery. My heart was pounding with excitement.
And Then I Started Dreaming...
I started to day dream about Steemit's future success, and my future success. I would scroll through the Steemit tag page and ignore anything negative I saw, whether it was posts about how many "shit posts" there are on the trending page, or other criticisms. Surely I am no one on this website, I can't do anything about any of this, why read about the negativity? Is that going to motivate me to continue on here when I know how long the road is ahead and the bumps that will take place on the way to mass adoption?
I have a goal to accrue 1000 SP by August, which will mark my 6 month anniversary here on Steemit. It's a lofty goal for me. I will be buying some along the way when I can afford it, but I would like to earn at least half of it. I will NOT take any profits out of my payouts. Everything will be going to buy Steem Power, or modestly used for voting bots to gain visibility.
I will be spending all of my free time working here on Steemit to work on blog posts, and commenting, and reading. Reading takes up the most of my time, as I do not comment on everything I read. I save my comments for when I have something to say. I do not want to spam comments all over peoples posts, hoping for an up-vote. I want to meet new people, and encourage others.
And while all of this excites the "inner entrepreneurial" part of me, it also scares me a bit. If I continue on my path at the rate I am going in 6 months time I will have spent around 1000 hours on this platform. I used to buy crypto and store it away safely and go on with my day. But Steemit is a double obsession, it now not only takes up all of my time, and every extra cent I have from my job will be used to buy Steem Power. All this effort and who knows what the future of Steemit will be in a year.
But I guess that is what all ideas start out as, right? Especially businesses. Nobody opens a restaurant and knows for a fact that with all the work and money they spend that it will be a sure success? No one knows what life will bring, regardless of the amount of effort one puts into something....
So, I am rambling a bit. I tend to do that. I guess what I am asking is, is it better to be more realistic about Steemit's shortcomings? Should I think that this whole thing is a gamble? Or should I continue with my head in the clouds thinking that Steemit is going to change the world as we know it and by the time I accumulate 1000 SP I will be far ahead of the rest of the population when they decide to jump in? And at the very least, I will have hopefully met some really great people along the way.
I would love to hear your thoughts about this! Would you leave me a comment below? Are you an eternal Steemit optimist or a skeptical Steemian? I am looking foward to connecting with you! Steem on!