Shifting gears on Steem

Over the last few months I have been struggling to find time to perform all the tasks I need to do as taking the new job has reduced my "free time" by 160+ hours a month.

The benefits of working are that while my wife has had her study income removed, I am able to pick up the slack and also slowly cover a business income tax debt for 2018. While I could have done it with crypto, I think the lower cost is to get work plus, there is more opportunity than the money in the company I chose to work for - a lot of it tied to Blockchain in the future too.

However, knowing that this is likely the best opportunity to earn Steem that there is likely to be again, I have continued pushing as hard as I can (without being a toss) to interact and be a part of the community and, continue building my account.

As @mattclarke said the other day, "stake is influence" and in the future I want to be able to influence the platform in various ways. One of those ways is to slowly bring not only people from my company but the company itself onto Steem to leverage the power of the Blockchain for their own business needs. There is a lot of overlap in process and tech and both will benefit from each other.

I look pretty long-term on crypto and steem and the long view for me requires being able to support interactions to drive more value. That means having stake or at least access to stake, but either way, it takes investment in and while I don't have a great deal of disposable income, my disposable time gets invested as often as I can spare it.

Of course, I have other obligations to my family that eat into my time resources also but hopefully, that will ease up once my wife graduates - which isn't that far ahead now.

When it comes to a POS platform like Steem, how we use our stake does matter or perhaps, it will matter eventually when mainstream adoption starts taking place. Those with stake will become more sensitive to the value of it as earning it will not be anywhere near as easy for most meaning that to increase the evaluation amount, price will need to increase too.

At the moment, Steem is "pretty easy" to come by and that is likely part of the reason so many people don't mind selling what they get. When demand and competition on the pool increased however, people will look for different ways to earn which will also likely mean that less voting on individual content takes place with Steem and instead it will go to projects and initiatives. Rather than contributors being left high and dry however, they will be better rewarded through application tokens.

As I said at Steemfest3, at some point SMTs are going to start having their own events that are largely not steem related directly. @Steemmonsters Fest, @steemhunt conferences, @actifit gyms and @appics meetups. There will be two core levels of investor, those that invest into the platform development and those who invest into the platform content. It is already starting to happen on Steem and will be normal process for the applications.

I am trying to get into a position where I will be able empower applications in their development so that they have the best chance of building strong use case and compelling experience for their users and clients. In turn, their users will have access to applications and platforms that empower them to interact and create in the way that works and is the most enjoyable for them, the individual.

If I had used my stake to cover my expenses and debts, it would have made life much easier now but it would have likely applied stricter limitation on my capability to support in the future too. This is a trade-off and game decision that I hope will pay off in the future.

I also think that I am not the only one making this play as there are many buying in and while they might not be as clear on their future activity as I currently am with mine, in time many of them will develop a position that creates win/win situations for both themselves and the community. As it gets harder to earn and buy in, it is natural behaviour that behaviour will change and hopefully, it will lead to actions that look to create values rather than extract them.

I believe this place is going to change significantly over the next 3 years and it will become much more useful than for just earning a little Steem on. Earning some now however, is a wise move in my opinion.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
_{(sent from phone and it took forever to get her down for a nap today)}