100 Followers: my first month on Steemit.

6am in Rabat

I've been awake for an hour, reading through my feed and catching up with responding to a couple of comments from a few days ago. And whilst I have been sitting here, two more people have followed me and I reach 100 followers. A few days ago I promised myself I would write a post when this happened.

Thank you!

Thank you for my morning coffee, and the welcome that we have had here in Morocco. As I sat here with my keyboard and tablet, our hostess took time out of her own morning routine to bring me this loaded tray. I have since drunk the coffee, and eaten the croissant and a bit of the plain bread.

Thank you for Steemit, and thank you too my 100 followers -- [I wish I knew how to see who the newest followers are. I suspect number 100 is a follow back, but I am no sure] -- I hope that my posts contribute to the variety of all your own feeds.

Steem

Of course my attention has been taken by the price of steem over the past few weeks. I think that since I first signed up, and then bought some Steem, the price has fallen 4x, but I am fully convinced of the long-term future of the platform. We have been in Morocco for just a few days, and now must begin to find some work, teaching English most likely. When the salaries start to arrive, I intend to continue to slowly power up. Here's another reason why:

Robert Voice's book, Professors as Writers has been tremendously helpful to me, both with my own writing and with helping ESL learners to begin to write more fluently. One of his insights is that compulsion is a Good Thing, so I am now reasoning that if I continue to power up, it will in a very real way push me to keep writing, and to keep posting.

Optimism

When I was reading through my feed this morning, I decided that I wanted to link to this post by Hive account@bacchist . Far more important that the price of Steem, is the nasty taste of Hive account@msgivings . We met with a cousin of mine in Hong Kong, a student of computer programming of some sort, and she said she was thinking of starting a blog. I found myself unable to recommend Steemit because of the whole Hive account@msgivings fiasco seems to be unresolved. But perhaps that resolution not now at hand.

Hive account@bacchist 's original post needs to now be unflagged -- https://steemit.com/sockpuppets/@bacchist/a-requiem-for-a-sock-puppeteer -- whatever the degree of puppeteering, or upvoted by more powerful whales. I don't want to suggest that the platform needs some sort of catharsis over this, but, perhaps, Hive account@dantheman, have a word, will you?

and

My son, six, says he is hungry. I say here is bread and honey:

"I don't like honey, bears like honey."

Thank you for reading.