Oh, I can relate to this. In fact, Steemit landscape has evolved a lot! It' s something that many members today doesn't know. And it's something we should explain to them. In my almost 6 months as a Steemian, I saw the progress of Steemit.

There was no delegation function. So, were no delegation rentals or lease.
There were fewer curation guilds.
There were fewer whales.
There fewer avenues to earn steem apart from "creating posts".
More of the post payouts was in steem than is the case now.
The Reward curve wasn't linear, so minnow earned and gave out way less.
Steem was as low as 7 cents.
Steemit had more bugs.
There was a time when the reward pool went empty.
Bots earned more than humans.
Everyone was still novice or a learner when it came to steemit knowledge.
Flags where rampant and there experiments that involved flags.
Cheetah was hyperactive.
There were fewer steemit communities, fewer discord help servers etc.
There were no bid bots.
There wasn't full-blown steemit promotion.
There were fewer steem apps; that is; there was no dtube, dmania, busy, steepshot, dlive, dsound etc
There were limited helpers because "helpers" were seeking help too.
etc.....

These ones are really true! But we are still here and never gave up. I am still a minnow, but I feel like a whale as Hive account@surpassinggoogle makes us feel we are.

Thanks again for these great motivational words again.