I was supposed to create a culmination post entitled "The Lay-By" but since it's a Thursday, I decided to do a thing I used to do which is, well... Things I Used To Do. Too soon?

I decided to file it under this because based on the reception this contest/challenge has gotten, I won't be doing anything like this ever again haha! You see, I'm an experienced judge so I figured why not have a go at organizing my own contest? I mean, how hard could it be, right? Just plop some SBD on the table, and people would immediately flock.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Could it be that people have become allergic of money? Perhaps they've become too tired of holding SBD in their wallets? It's only either one of the two, right? I mean, it couldn't be that people aren't just reading my posts. Right?

Before I get too emotional up in here, I do want to take a moment to thank everyone who has set their auto-votes on me and to the people who continually commented on my posts. Big ups to Hive account@meesterboom for being a constant source of support and hilarity, and for Hive account@dreemit and Hive account@ryivhnn for stopping by once in a while. I know schedules are tight so I appreciate being included in that. I would like to give a shout out to my new friends Hive account@johleen, Hive account@irastra and Hive account@three.colours for submitting entries and for your continued support. From my experience, people usually stop supporting me after I give them a shoutout, so I hope this isn't the case for you guys. Thank you also to the returning Hive account@finleyexp who always knows how to motivate through her comments, and for keeping a backlog of my posts as part of her massive reading list! Oh, and thank you to Terry Hive account@surpassinggoogle for saving some of the posts from going below $10 haha! I know that you can only resteem so much posts, so I appreciate the votes.

A special thanks to Hive account@meesterboom and Hive account@dreemit for contributing to the prize pool! You are the real heroes of this initiative :D

This is the first September I've spent on Steemit, and coming from the wave of support from the previous months, I was very optimistic. Thank the heavens I've been listening to the wise words of Hive account@lukestokes, so my expectations were well sorted out. It's a good thing too because... September sucks!! Hahaha! Don't get me wrong. I say that in a laughing, head scratching manner. Had I been operating on last year's mentality, I would've just up and quit Steemit forever. Not go on hiatus, but to just remove from my mind. I'm surprised I've been taking this relatively well, and I owe it to the stoic mentality that has been imbued on me. So, thanks, Luke!

The criteria was simple: interpret the koan and share a story of your own. Wayhay! That even rhymed! My first set of rules confused some people, so with Hive account@johleen's guidance, I revised it and published it midway. That increased the comments by one or two people, but I guess the lack of participation stems from the lack of people clicking on my links after all.

It's like my name was a repellent, or the picture wasn't attractive enough. No conversions from promotion channels, very little conversions from resteems. It's as if it was built to fail from the get-go.

I actually planned this for quite a while now, but I was fortunate enough to chance upon Hive account@dragosroua's 1000 SP lending call. Since I was going to link his 30-day challenge, I decided to submit an entry to his new challenge as well. Unfortunately, I didn't win. But, that's okay. I continued with the project, since the 1000 SP was just going to be a bonus. While my posts earned more than the eventual winner of that, it did get more consistent interaction even if it didn't start exactly on the first of September, so good choice picking the winner there.

Without any sponsors, I eventually changed it to be a 30-day challenge for myself. After all, a lot of people clamored for me to post more regularly, since I used to just post about twice every week. I usually post long fiction, so it was quite hard to post consistently. That's why I decided to use koans here instead, so that I would be able to keep it up for 30 days straight.

And, much to my surprise... I did!

Woohoo!! Yay me! The farthest I have ever gone before was seven days straight. But now, I was able to post every day for 30 freaking days! If you would've told me that last year, I would've just replied, "What? You're still on Steemit?"

Thirty days. That's some achievement. The big 3-0. It didn't cure me of my Writer's Block (if anything it only heightened it), but it did fulfill the many requests for me to post regularly. I mean, how much more regular can I get!? Unfortunately, more than 90% of those people didn't comment even once.

Not. A. One.

Don't get me wrong though, I truly appreciate the comments that I did receive. I treasure each and every one of them. They're all wonderful, and there are no complaints on my end about them. Not one bit. I'm extremely grateful to the people who took the time to comment. Lending your time to someone else's post is no small feat, and I will forever appreciate the awesome individuals who do so for mine. My eyes well up just thinking about the gratitude I feel for them.

I didn't expect hundreds of people to send in their entries, though I certainly hoped for it, but I at least thought that those people who consistently told me they wished I posted more regularly would at least comment once in a while. And, there were only a handful of them. I didn't ask for everyone to comment on everything, but they could've at least commented at least once.

These days, I guess that's too much to ask. At least spammers took the time to say it was a Nice Post.

I'm not sure if I've said it before but I have codenames for my projects. For example, A Day in the Clouds was codenamed BLIMP because all of the proceeds went to Hive account@zeppelin which is the name as well of a type of blimp. This one was codenamed PYLON, not because of my love for the Protoss, but because it was another term for the traffic cones we see on the streets. I found it so apt, because I wanted people to pile on and submit their entries. After all, the prize pool is larger than most of the other contest out there and it's not that hard to submit an entry. One only has to tell a story. It's quite difficult to tell a story about the traffic violation in question especially if you didn't read the koan after all.

_{Credits to Hive account@meesterboom}

You see, what I do is I leave thoughtful comments on people's posts. My votes are worth nothing, so encouraging comments and resteems are all I have to offer. Whenever I leave those kinds of comments, I don't expect a return gesture readily, that's why I consistently comment on other people to somehow say, "Hey.. Notice me, senpai." If that doesn't work, no hard feelings, no resentment, I just move on and stop commenting on that person because clearly they're not interested in returning the support.

It's a calculated move, sure, but it's how I regulate my time here. I'm not making a boatload of money, so I just try to post what I can and support the people who return support. When I have spare time, I branch out and look at different interesting posts. Luckily for me, a lot of the awesome people who return support have the most interesting posts in all of Steemit! It's kind of a cause-and-effect, I think.

As with everything I do here, I conducted an experiment by going through my Following list to see who I should still be following. I don't follow a lot of people, but based on the support I get, I'd rather just follow only a handful. What I envision is to be able to vote on all of the people I follow. Not just vote, but to digest all of their posts and comment on all of them. What I want to see when I look at my feed is a string of posts that I have read, commented on and voted. I guess that's the very essence of following, isn't it?

For the whole month, I consistently commented and voted the people I'm following to see if they would return the gesture. I was surprised to see that more than 90% of the people I'm following didn't do so. So, I created a simple program using Steempy to see how many people are actively overlooking me. The way I calculated it is by measuring the interaction and assigning scores to see the strength of our connection. I don't want to elaborate on this just yet, as I'm planning to launch it as an open source project. Since "contest organizer" didn't work, maybe going back to my roots as a software developer would land me more interaction. Also, I figured that one month is too short of a span, so I'm giving it until the end of the year before I press Enter on an unfollow bot that I have coded. Now that I've written it on the blockchain, I feel that there would be some bias from readers who realize this. It's entirely my intention.

Don't get me wrong though, I feel no resentment for the people who overlook me. I just want to sever ties because as far as I'm concerned they're already dead connections anyway. In a way, it's a safeguard to spare me from future resentment (if it ever pops up) and to free up some space so I could follow more supportive people. I'm in a happy place right now, and even though this whole challenge was a bust, I would still continue on with Steemit. Although I did build myself up to a burnout, so gone are the days when I'll be posting daily. I would be going back to posting once or twice a week, or even less. In a way, I guess that posting daily is the thing that I used to do.