Photo credit
In September 2017, Bali's Mount Agung started grumbling and threatening to erupt, giving the fear-based Main Stream Media (MSM) a monumental field day!
We have lived in Bali for eleven years now, consider it home and run our four small businesses from our location in the mountains, some 25kms from Mt Agung.
With the media dramatising and reporting outright lies, tourism, which drives this island, immediately dried up, causing massive disruption, loss of jobs and closure of businesses.
Lesson learnt from this for us and others:
"Don't keep all you eggs in one basket!"
With our dependency on tourism for our homestays, retreats, villa management and retail shop, we would have had to let our loyal staff go and closed our doors, had we not risen to the challenge.
Enter the mini grand experiment, not to be confused with "The Grand Experiment" of humans inhabiting the Earth!
I was drawn to Steemit and Steemians because, like the Balinese, I value community and I am being totally honest here, I also saw the possibility of it being an income stream, untouched by our recent downturn of tourism.
"Expectations reduces joy" - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Every day for the past 5 months, I have committed to posting on Steemit.
I have loved the creativity, passionate and intuitive writing, sharing and seeing the results of my labour up there for the world to see.
Except it didn't!
On average, I received 4 upvotes, with on one occasion, 12 being the dizziest number ever received. Do I hear some whales and dolphins chuckling in the background?
According to the statistics at the top of my page, I have:
Blog Posts - 160
General Posts - 551
Followers - 569
Following - 300
Now I am sure we all believe we post great content and I have seen some superb posts over these past months, so of course my mind negatively starts doubting the validity of what I am contributing. " People are obviously not interested in your s##t!" Etc.
The roller coaster, goes up and down, reaching highs on posting and replying, reading great articles, viewing beautiful photography and watching interesting videos. And then the lows with little to no responses.
Then the ego-mind kicks in again when I see someone posts some pics of his morning coffee and earns a cool $700 for his effort.
WTF!!
I love it when people win and are successful, but really?
I am a big fan of 
Yeah, yeah, I know, I shouldn't put my attention on the money, but on my contribution and I really get that, I really do.
But when, as we experienced last November, our income for the month was meagre $126, with four mouths to feed and staff to be paid, the expectation of a little Steem earnings that was not forthcoming, was just a tad disappointing.
Whenever expectations are not met, we inevitably experience disappointment.
Valuable lesson learnt:
Let go of all expectations and focus on the content and contribution!
But also, as others have expressed, maybe there is something fundamentally not quite right with the system that professes to reward content, but doesn't do that across the boards?
It is not economically viable for me to buy votes, nor do I want to prostitute myself in pursuit of whaledom!
Maybe I should wise up, take out a huge bank loan, get a cat and photograph it twice daily?
Photo credit
I am grateful for the $14.42 I have earned over the past 5 months, however, as a return on investment in my time, estimated at 160 hours (average time per blog = 1 hour), the yield is around 0.11 cents per hour!
Ummm.. lets just call that voluntary, slave labour!
Now comes the good news, as the roller coaster ride peaks again.
As a result of all my creative energy and blog posts, I have converted them into five eBooks, one of which is already being sold and generating a small amount of revenue. Four others are being finalised and being made ready to publish, so you see, there is always two sides to the coin and if you dare to ride the roller coaster, you better be prepared for the ups and downs.
Thank you Steemit, thank you Mt Agung, thank you MSM, collectively you have made me more resilient and resourceful.
Onwards and Upwards!
PS - Please do not upvote, reply or resteem this post, or I will have to eat my words! Just joking!
If anyone is interested, each of the series below are 21 blog posts covering different topics
Celebrating The Sacred Feminine
Celebrating The Sacred Masculine
Celebrating Sacred Relationships
Celebrating Sacred Mother Nature
resteemit.com
If you like what you see here in these posts, please feel free to connect with me on:
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