365 Days on the Chain

Happy Birthday to Meee!

Today is my Steemit anniversary. 365 Days of the STEEM ecosystem teaching me what incremental investment and compounding returns actually are. More on that in a moment.

To celebrate, STEEM has gone back to August 2017 prices 😅:

_Source

As easy as it is to get depressed over the price drop, it actually reinforces my primary takeaway from one year on Steemit.

Wealth comes from incremental investment over time.

It feels a bit silly telling you this. It seems obvious, and we've all heard it before. But do you act like you know this to be true?

I'm sure some of you do. Maybe some of you are part of that pareto distribution, the 20% who produce most of the results. If so, go on and smile knowingly to yourself. Now, to the 80%:

It's all real.
You really can build something from almost nothing, just by paying attention, doing what you can do, and putting what you earn back into your efforts.

Here's what it looks like when you do:

Now, because of the volatility, you might have to blur your eyes a bit to see the pattern. But that second big peak is way above the first, and a good 8x the last big slump. Looking forward to the next big peak. But price volatility is a
distraction; it misses the point. There is always volatility in life. This past year has taught me that lesson quite well.

I don't like seeing my account value dip below $200 when it previously was above that, but last year (for many months) my account value was $20. That's right, a 10x increase, and not because of market growth!

I did invest some USD, but that accounts for less than half of the growth. The rest? Investment of my time and creativity, which paid dividends.

My Steemit Year 1 Highlights:

• I won a contest in the @ifc!
• I got my biggest ever upvote from @curie!
• I won some nice rewards from @steemmonsters in their map design contest and as a writer for the water element (and a second curie!)
• I made it to the final four of the ifc! (and a third curie!)
• I was recently accepted to @themesopotamians project, which has me really excited going into year 2.

What Steemit Means to Me:

I'm not sure I can properly explain why I am so proud to have saved and invested roughly $200 bucks. In a crypto that I can't be certain will survive. One reason is that this year, that savings represents a true sacrifice. My family's income took a dive last year, and in times like this I've habitually looked at other savings as money that's just sitting there, not helping when I need it most.

You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that.
--Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

So there is the heart of it: I have never really believed I could build wealth through incremental investment. I never really understood compounding returns.

Incremental Investment

Steemit has shown me that investment can take many forms. It is not limited by how much money I have. I might have known this before, but now I act like I believe it. How did my behavior begin to change? It is surprising how motivating it is to log in and discover you've won a contest, or a $40 curie upvote, or even a 40¢ upvote from a handful of friends.

Compounding Returns

Steemit has shifted my approach to savings. The mechanism of powering up and using vote power demonstrates, for those of us who never really had capital to invest before, what it means to "make your money work for you." That's why I will put 2% of my income into savings, even when the power bill is due and I didn't get enough contract hours this month. I can see that the money doesn't just sit there. I can use it to grow my account.

Again, money is just one type of return. Contests lead to more opportunities. Relationships lead to new ways to collaborate. Due in large part to my involvement on Steemit, I've earned money writing on Medium, renewed my interest in writing and drawing, worked through some mental blocks, and became motivated to clean up my act at home. I've met some cool people and become much more confident in my ability to invest.

It's 12:45 am now, and once again I've poured out my thoughts onto the blockchain. One more trip around the Sun. Not at all who I was, when I'd first begun.

Thank you to all those tagged and many more.
🎂 🍻 🎉