You can read more into how this post came about by listening to 
The main points to be addressed are how you made it 'here' and why you are still involved in Steem.
I would love to make a place where new Steemians can go when they are feeling frustrated about Steem. Read real stories about what kept us all here and why, to this day, we are still here.
This is a good opportunity to explain how I stumbled upon Steem but I think even more relevant are the reasons I'm still involved.
How I made it to Steem
In the autumn of 2015, I bought a shop on the island of Mallorca with a couple of friends from the UK. We'd all had enough of England and in a slightly rash and ill-calculated move, bought a Jewelry shop by the sea. The shop opened in March 2016 and by June we could tell that it wasn't going to allow us to fulfill our dreams of living in the sunshine with the Mediterranean literally just around the corner. I still look back fondly on the 6 km commute by bike and the swim in the sea to cool off prior to opening each day - and I'd happily still be doing that if the business covered our rent and left us with a little beer money.
However, it wasn't to be and I sold my half of the shop to my friends and ventured across the island to my mothers empty apartment, which was also by the sea and has a nice pool downstairs.
I would have quite happily stayed doing the above at least until the end of the summer but was told that I couldn't retire yet and had to find an income from somewhere. I was during this time that I checked back in with this Internet thing that I'd disbanded for 9 months or so after working and living online for most of the 20 previous years. I checked back in on Twitter and found 
He had mentioned that he'd recently joined STEEM and was posting some of his work there, and so in August 2016 I signed up, on my iphone 5s. I wrote one post, which took bloody ages on the phone, it earned a couple of cents, and just a week or two later I was flying over to Valencia to start work for the United Nations.
It wasn't until around Feb/March 2017 that I noticed Bitcoin had hit an all time high of around 1100/1200 dollars, and I remembered that I had this Steem account. I tried for a month to buy some STEEM but couldn't work out how or where to do this and in the meantime the price had gone from 20 cents to around 40 cents. I did buy a small amount at around this price and started to post again with my phone, and this time with a little more success - 10/20 cents at times.
A hard fork revamped the rewards mechanism and votes went wild, I was hooked. It took months of commenting like mad (even on work time) to gain any sort of traction, and start to see regular names visiting my (mostly average) posts. When I quit the UN in the autumn of 2017, Bitcoin was starting to go mad, and then STEEM (and SBD) followed. Just prior to that though, I made it to Steemfest 2 and put some faces to the names - a fair few of those names are still posting daily, and doing well. The connections made at SF2, SF3, and during my time here are a big reason as to...
Why I am still here
For around a decade, I spent a lot of time online and the vast majority of that time was spent knocking around a video-chat community. I hosted a server, made a load of friends around the world, met and visited easily over a 100 of them - and didn't earn a penny.
Steem in some ways reminds me of this, but as well as the networking and friendships, there is the chance to earn a little crypto at the same time. I read a comment a couple of weeks back stating that if the Steem network didn't have the rewards, it would be 'just like all the other shitty blogging/reddit type networks'. I think this comment is somewhat correct and although I have people here I consider friends, I also now have other means to contact them should the network vanish (which it won't). And so I think it's fair to say that earning STEEM, Splinterlands cards, and a variety of tokens are a factor in most peoples presence here, including mine.
As well as being vested in Cards, tokens, and Steem Power, I am vested in the people, their lives, and I want so much for them to do well, not have sick children or partners, and have a good life - one which I can check in on from time to time. I've always said the only truly original content is the content produced by you, about you - and this, along with a smattering of whenSTEEMmoon, is my main reason for checking in each day.
By my standards, I've been somewhat lacking on content of late. It's partly due to the new job and being tired, and partly due to the pressure of the auto votes. I can't get away with a 10 minute effort, and so I'll only submit something (on this account at least), when I have a good hour or so to write. In this regard, the tribes (and my use of alts.) have been a blessing - I don't pick up a bunch of STEEM going this route, but I feel less pressure to contribute something which could well reach the lower echelon of Trending.
Although my post count is down, I've been buying Steem and using the commute to read about what others are doing. If you thought my lack of posting was a sign I could be heading out the back door, here is my power up history (excluding rewards automatically vested via content and curation).
15,000 in the last 3 months or so. I shall be seeing you in 2020 and beyond :)
Cheers
Asher