Have you ever observed how people troop in for discord shows but refuse to join voice channels and if some manage to, they sound robotic? This is the struggle our network providers here make us pass through every day. The amount I spend on data in a month is enough to pay for bride price in some remote areas. The annoying part is when we eventually subscribe to an expensive data, the network will never be effective nor strong enough on discord. How long do we have to live like this? I have subconsciously cursed these network providers many times out of frustration.
When I joined Steemit in January, there were many meet-ups here and there to promote the platform but in recent times, that has reduced drastically. This shows that most of the meet-ups were fueled by Steem and SBD. To be honest, meet-ups are relevant and important to promote Steemit and encourage people to stay active, effective and secured. I learnt a lot at the Ibadan meet-up and imbibing some of the lessons have made me grow drastically on this platform. Before the meet-up, I belonged to the magic-family; people that post without promotion and expect magic to happen on their post. The mentality changed after, socialization is a major key to a successful journey on this platform.
The void created without these meet-ups are obvious, most people have lost the mojo and encouragement to stay. A lot of good writers, artists and designers have left the platform because they were not motivated/encouraged. Motivation is not only about the money or upvotes, hospitality and encouragement by the old Steemians would have made them stay.
Even the old Steemians complain in recent times more than the newbies. Before now, it was easy to approach them to get a valuable upvote. Now, you have to go through a very long process before you can get their attention and I don’t blame them for it. We are all trying to stay relevant. Just take a look at the byteball saga, whales and dolphins sent us direct messages to advertise the platform. I was in awe when I got such messages. If old writers can struggle, what is the fate of the new writers?
As a writer, I jot down points before I type and post. Many times, I had to wait hours for power to be restored before I could type and post. I have missed so many contests because of this factor. Not only me, I have read this particular complaint many times on discord. Most times during curation shows, writers had to give a short review about their post before leaving due to low battery or network issues. It can be frustrating and depressing at the same time.
Now to the final struggle. After writing for days which include proper online research, image sourcing and editing, you have 450 upvotes with less than $1 to show for it. A unique post with less than 5% plagiarism and 100% error-free. Then you start wondering who you have offended. I invited a writer to this platform around February. After two posts, he disappeared. He said the platform does not encourage good articles because he posted two articles that got no upvote. He is right and wrong. Right because he believed in what he wrote to be unique and deserved a good upvote but wrong because it doesn’t work that way on Steemit. Here, you have to keep pushing till breakthrough comes your way.
The struggles we face to push out good articles are many but we still do and will never stop to. I believe that was what 
