No, it's not my real birthday, but last night when I was looking at Steemd I noticed that I had been on Steemit for 364 days.

I checked again just now and it still says 364 days, so I guess there must be some weird UTC/EST conversion thing going on. Maybe around 7:00 PM tonight it will actually kick over to 365 days.

Either way, I am writing this post to celebrate my one year anniversary on Steemit. More accurately Steem as over the past year I have insinuated my account in many projects besides just Steemit. In fact I am writing this post from the updated Esteem desktop app. If you haven't checked it out yet, you really should. They have added some awesome features in the most recent version that makes is much more user friendly than some of the past versions (the spell checker is a huge game changer).

Now, thinking back on my year here, it is important that I ask myself the tough questions:

Am I where I thought I would be on Steemit after year?

The answer to that question would be a hard and definite no. Though my current SP is about what I might have guessed it would be after a year on the platform, most of that is because I purchased Steem and powered it up.

My followers are also about in line with where I might have guessed they would be after a year, but most of those are either bot/spam accounts or inactive.

All things considered I have to admit, it is a bit depressing. Despite continued development of existing and new projects on the blockchain, things have kind of stagnated. There are some long time users that have a solid follower base that are still doing well. There are also some people that have found a specific niche to post into (like Utopian) that are also doing very well.

For the most part though, those of us posting about daily life (things that used to get lots of views and comments), are really seeing the effects of people leaving or losing interest due to the loss in value of Steem.

I take that back, loss in value isn't a good phrase. Let's call in loss in equivalence to the US Dollar because quite honestly I still feel that Steem and Steemit have immense value.

Am I happy that I joined Steemit?

Emphatically yes! I've made some great connections on Steem and I have learned much more than I ever could have imagined. I was truly terrified to take the leap and join about a year ago. I didn't think my material would be good enough or that people would care about what I had to say.

Honestly, my material probably wasn't that good at the beginning. I also probably didn't have many people reading my posts either. The communities I joined on Discord changed all of that though and I am thankful for everything they have done for me.

Just to name a few:

Steem Repair - Now defunct
@thesteemengine
@qurator
@adsactly
@helpie

These have all been great places to learn, interact, and hone my craft. If you haven't checked them out already, you really should.

Do I plan on continuing?

This one is a no brainer. I really expected to have a lot more active followers by now. I also assumed my post rewards wouldn't be so heavily influenced by delegations that I have given. Despite all of that though, I definitely plan to continue blogging and posting content to the blockchain.

I still dream of that day some Whale/Orca/Dolphin takes me under their wing and makes all of the hard work worth it. Because it is hard work isn't it? The time that we spend here on Steem is time that we could be spending other places. When you consider time as a commodity, right now we probably aren't getting our money's worth.

I do believe one day we will though and when that day comes, I look forward to give back in a bigger way than I already do to the groups/users/friends/followers that have helped me along the way. I dream of the day I can make it all worth it for some plankton.

Happy Steem Birthday to me!

This was the first ten of fifteen total cards I pulled from doing my daily quest today. I am really excited about that gold foil Wood Nymph. The price on the market last I checked was around $1.25 though I expect it go to down as more people start to pull them as their daily quest rewards. Plus the end of the season is right around the corner. Lots of reward cards will be flooding the market then!

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