Hillman imp, 1966, de-luxe. For sale - not by me but some other -old?- very old?- lady
Now I’ve got your attention (really, it’s a great little car) the following.
The post in which I discover I am on a cricket field.
It was late and not the right moment to start getting my knickers in a twist all over again. I had just finished a post for today addressing my confusions when I stumbled upon this post by #onnovocks which was very similar to mine, especially when reading down the comments.
First, I wondered whether I should upvote this post, or some of the elaborate replies that kept on adding more valid points. After all, this post was old (6 days) and do votes then still count? What happens to my penny for your thoughts after day seven (or was it ten)? In any case, significant votes are never made on posts older than 3 days, since that’s not how the market works, apparently. So much for my errant ways that took me down the line, into history.
Next, I was upset because this post spoiled the post I had just written for the following day, pretty much addressing all the points I had collected over the past 3 months which I though were fishy but had made allowances for, regarding myself a numerical numpty. Only no, WAIT! I can just go ahead and post it anyway, because nobody will find this post I discovered way back in history, so MY post would never be considered “borrowed”, which it wasn't anyway because I had missed that post, already buried 6ft under by the mere 86 people I am following.
By the way, what's the deal with having many followers? I get what #beeyou thinks it is about (in that post), but I am not so sure it is part of the initial sifting process. There are big fish out there with over 1000 followers (following only a couple of hundred themsevles). Is there some kind of important statistic attached to one’s follower tally?
Take for example #dbooster, a sophisticated blogger by all appearances, who inspires me to brush up on my Japanese. He just held a party when he got his 600th follower. I gave that one a miss, fugless about the point of that post. Apparently, if I had attended, I would have been richly rewarded. Fortunately for him not many did, or he might have ended up out of pocket. Or unfortunately? Who likes a quiet party? But no, it all ended up alright in the end, with his adding on a further 100 followers in no time at all. I remain miffed as to the benefit of this.
I keep my eye out for the analysis posts by #miniature-tiger in the hope to increase the transparency of my window on Steemit. For now, however, he writes mainly for tech-heads and I only stop by for the psychedelic pie-charts, to give my head a spin.
In the meantime, the good housewives are knitting along cheerful copy. Caching! The photographers are digging deep in their portfolios. Totting up. The gardeners sow another row of beans and the walkers go on another round. Bingo! Well not quite. Not for the bloggers who care to share and remain authentic. The ones who feel it matters to reach out and touch the lonelier ones than they waiting for human contact.
Followers and leaders there be, also here…. Doesn’t have to imply inequality, at all. You can take turns…. Nonone needs to feel left out. Like in picking teams for sports at school. There is no way you can’t end up in one team or the other, even if you didn’t get picked, exactly. All good news.
Back to #onnovocks’s post
This post referred to the curious incident, every night, with the views not corresponding to the votes. Now, this comes as nothing curious to me, since, from day one, in my naivité, I noticed a glitsch in the system, that did not tally up views properly. After all, how come I was getting ONLY an average of 3 a day? (Views that was, not votes.) Probably, something to do with my VPN or unupdated Windows 10 or as my son always advises, easily fixed by pulling out the plug an putting it back in.
Things have changed now. I’ve gone viral at least three times. Once, I had all of 95 votes! (67 views) and another time, I even earned fify-EIGHT cents with only 9 views, but thanks to 18 votes. Still, was I satisfied with that? No. Greedy me. I was after more! Answers that is.
The questions kept piling up. I found myself on a path leading to hell one step at a time. I started howling that there is no place on the whole web that is more fragmenting and less unifying than Steemit. This was the greatest veil of deception. All my definition of hell.
Then again, as a spiritual researcher I ought to be delighted to have found so much of it concentrated in one spot. Makes my work a lot easier. Just sit back and take notes as it all comes rumbling by on a conveyor belt. Reminds me of the final round in the BBC Saturday evening gameshow from the seventies/eighties, the Generation Game, where prizes could be won if they could be recalled a few minutes later, after they had passed by in front of your nose.
“Didn’t she do well!?” No, not so well! Which of my followers am I following again? I check my notes. It’s important, I know that much, since it’s been advised to be loyal and form a small circle of “faithful followers”. No messianic conntoations implied.
The conveyor belt prizes round
Under the shower, where else, still puzzling on whether to call the buisness initiative the Masterplan of Sorath or not (seeing as so many folks enjoy it, why raise a fuss?), it suddenly hit me: I TOO have been robbed. Not like in all those heart-wrenching stories of hacks and tricks and false promises, or plain daylight robbery (posting up somebody else’s video): I have been merely robbed of time.
Basic Lesson No. 1 In Finance
I am supposed to be learning that time = money. But I am not sure if I can on Steemit. I struggle already with not offering the plumber a cup of tea, anymore (the time it takes to drink the beverage gets clocked onto my bill). (Note to self: keep some ice-tea in the fridge.)
I am used to putting in my time for free. It’s a mother’s occupational hazzard. You give a kid your best, and often you get little in return. Especially if your child is less than perfect (unlike the neighbour’s children). I have not had a break from work in over 15 years as single mother and workaholic spiritual researcher. Every day has been the same in format, so I can truly say I am a grafter used to the grind, and I never saw a cent for it. There is no superior challenge after that. Unless it is to put all my work down.
Ideally, yes, getting paid would be healthy, since I am forever running on empty and this is running up a debt somewhere in the spiritual world. Money is energy and no more filthy than any of earth’s mucky mess. I am ridiculously self-sustataining and the price is premature ageing. I don’t need much more time on earth, if it’s up to me. I’m a bit fed up with the same routines. I’ve been living like a seventy year old, alone, at home, now for the past 14 years. The thought of more of that - when it’s natural at 70 - sends me looking for thick rope.
It's about making friends
Asking money for what I do would be downright ludicrous. Everything I do has been done before and better. Go read Homer, go read Patanjali, go read Chaucer (if you have a copy). Google essential oils, Bach remedies and Schussler salts, healthy diets galore to choose from, go to AdamMclean’s alchemy website and pack a backpack to visit Spain yourself. What more could I possibly add? Why on earth would anyone need my help (that thing you’re supposed to be offering here)?
This considered, I’m not waiting for monetary votes, and I wasn’t born yesterday and I know only one big friendly fish person read my post with the 95 votes, a dad and musician who genuinely hopes to change the world for the better with magnificence of heart. I will treasure those $138 121 109 85 in his honor, and am forever indebted to his steem-boost that allows me to post my lengthy drivel at all. I intend to pass this on in his charitable spirit when I leave. (If I ever figure out how to wrangle most economically the steemdollars, steempower and raw steem into giftable parts.)
Forget about the money, that’s what I hear all the time. Good. Forgotten. Just have fun! Trying. But I never was that great at having a good time while somebody else isn’t. Or when something isn’t fair, just, in balance.
It occurs to me in a (hot) flash that I know what this is! Global reality-tv. Just another web channel, more local, less commerical, friendlier, more in tune with its audience. For that reason it can never grow. It’s too regional. (The region of personal development.) It’s just another FaceBook or YouTube with fewer disadvantages that I wouldn’t know of.
While I’m at it, let me toss another curse at FaceBook, the illusion that it poses. I’ve lost my dental-hygienst to it. A woman I learned to entrust my mouth to, at last, after 8 years of keeping her on probation. She hopes to become a diet-coach through advertising her knowledge on pumpkin soup and ginger tea in Facebook posts. Roll-up, roll up. I have no idea how this could ever work. I google weight-loss and arrive on her page - as by magic?
While I’m at it, I curse YouTube for dumbing down youth. We could make a list of all the great things that have come out of YouTube, but I don’t feel like that right now. Nothing pops up, off the top of my head.
There, all done.
Transparency is overrated.
The ladies of Steemit don’t care about transparency. They have their own lingo that cuts right to the chase. From them we learn to take only the life-line of Steemit: its TLC. The mothers and women who are very talented and creative but are not recognised as such in the real world. Here they find kindness and support. That is heart-warming. There will be knock-on effects (changing their worlds) not to be underestimated. Never mind at all, that this considered then, too, Steemit can never grow on such a niche market.
Don’t get me wrong, as an interface for manifesting the physical side of our spiritual being Steemit is as good or (according to most of the aforementioned women) a better place to be than on your own in your lonely home. Typically me, again, that I’m not feeling that.
The lack of fuzzy feelings towards the girl-power here, tells me I am out of the loop. In order to get in you need to bring something to the tupperware party, I get that. For me that means making new efforts on top of the ones I already was making. So, I am afraid, I have to declare myself out on that deal.
What next till my ticket expires here?
- I really am a most unsociable being, I discover once the moreover. Most posts that are supposed to be up my alley bore me quite some. I have already been there, done that, already figured out what it means to be a mother, a women, an ageing person. I think next comes just enjoying the company. And that's where I strand. Hello and goodbye, is fine. Sharing insights into the meaning of life, also fine, but I need to BREATHE. I need more space than a tiny personal life.
- As a mother of a son, I am interested in what the Millenial boys are up to, but they haven’t changed much over the years, and are hard to slow down for a second and find a rapport with. Boys will be boys
- As a potential investor, I am open to learning more about the financial side of Steemit, but as must have become apparent to you by now, I think my brains have rusted too much on that front for me to make any realistic progress.
- I am reading the classics I skipped with youthful anarchism. I am trying to concentrate my eclectic interests into something I can leave behind and take with me when I go. I am trying to find a skill I might hone. How to bookmark to where I’ve got to, so as not to start at the boring beginning again? (Supposing there is this thing called reincarnation, or supposing every individual makes a difference to the next generation.) I expect to do this alone.
I like learning. So that is a plus. I am learning fast that Steemit is not a place for me to be making endless headway. I think I am mainly teasing myself with the pressures I put myself under.
My list of things to do was already pathetic (non-doing being my ultimate aim). Now it’s become a palimpsest with Steemit things to do.
- There is a doodle competition I have to enter (my only chance of earning steem, which I need if I am to be helpful on any level).
o It furthermore allows me to test my digital design skills; is this something I should have got into a long time ago? Would I be any good at it? Would I enjoy it? No. Back to “would I be any good at it” for I ought to be making a living somehow. - There is a fifty-word challenge (no prize to be won) I enter to keep abreast of those who have come here to write.
o It stuns me a bit how many short stories there are to plough through. It’s asking you to take on the role of editor or critic. All of us, but who is qualified? Where is the quality control on Steemit? We regulate ourselves. It’s like seeing what happens when you abandon a Kindergarten or let the police go on strike. It’ll be fine, surely in a country like Sweden, Holland, Martinique? Democratic, friendly, tolerant, liberal places. - People use Steemit for different reasons. But to boost their chances of getting published, signed on, noticed in the real world, where the money is real, with the help of feed-back and iron discipline (dead-lines) souds nuts to me. The ladder you need for that is simply not here. Alright, granted, I'm a grumpy pots and there is no point keeping your scribblings in your bottom drawer, where they are worthless, for sure…. I give up.
Wrapping all the above into a tight cricket ball, looking for the stumps to throw it at, it occurs to me that I am a fielder and not at bat. The batsmen score. They create content that can help. They make another run for the team. That boat has long sailed for me. I had my time before the wicket. My leg is black and blue.
I come here to break ice. Hell is not only fire and brimstone (Lucifer’s realm). It is also where the frost giants live (Ahriman’s side).
I am not on the pond with the skaters. I am not the fishermen around the hole. I am on a larger vessle in a larger sea. I will demarcate where terra firma begins.
Questions
Still don’t know why nobody invents a different business model not based on growth (there is a limit to how many individuals this planet can accommodate, you know!)
How many of these vast numbers you hope to pull in are going to deliver ground-breaking content?
Is the numbers game not only going to be a repeat of the facebook format?
Why would it work now, again?
Besides, where does this leave the Grand Ethics of Steemit?
How does this build community spirit again, precisely?
Why are some of you waiting with your “best content” for a brighter, fuller day, with audiences pressing up against your blog? (By that time, you can always copy paste from history...I won't tell.)
How will more of the same change what is already not there?
To me, waiting for MORE Steemians betrays the making of more ice. You know what to expect then:
