My Two-Year Steemiversary

So, yeah...
two years on the Steem blockchain! Wow, and what a ride it has been so far!

It was @pixelfan who spread the word about Steem on social media site Ello during the summer of 2017, and what he said about Steem sounded too good to be true, that users could earn cryptocurrency just by blogging. So, I did nothing. Then, he came back a couple of months later, said it again, and my curiosity was then peeked. I filled out the request to join the blockchain and only had to wait 24-hours to be approved!

I clicked the link in that email to complete the setting-up of my account. The date was 25-Sep-2017. I am not sure why Steemd.com insists it was 2017-09-26, but that is simply not correct unless Steemd registers transactions in UTC? Anyway, I count the 25th as my join-date because that is what my calendar said, what SteemWorld says, and it is an easier number to remember.

Another milestone was reached recently when I finally hit a Reputation Score of 63. Of course, that is a minor milestone as the Rep scores hardly means anything at all here, for the most part only serving as a measure of how many upvotes someone has received from dolphins and whales with higher Rep-scores. But still, it's another gain in numbers, for what that's worth.

After I'd been here for six months, I had earned 500 SP and went from being a 'plankton/redfish' to being a 'minnow.' After another six months and with a little monetary investment, I had 1000 SP. Earnings since then have been much more sparce than before — I have just over 2000 SP now, but almost half of that last 1000 was purchased  by me, here-and-there, as my finances have allowed.

As luck would have it, I bought some at $1.65 because I didn't think it would go any lower, then some more at $0.75 because I didn't think it would go any lower, then some at $0.25 because I didn't think it would go any lower... 😒 Gah!

According to SteemWorld.org, I have published 537 posts since coming here, written 8,239 comments, and made 10,740 replies. There is no way to know how many Steem-related Discord servers I've been involved with, as I have left some over the past couple of years, but I am in 55 of them now. I am an Administrator or Moderator in 10 or so of them.

I am not a fan of this "New Steem" crap — there is just Steem, and it has gone through many iterations of "old" and "new" thinking, even in the time I have been here. Those who have been here three years and longer, such as @shadowspub have seen much more "old/new" change than me without any need to clarify there there is some kind of "New Steem" in effect.

How is this "New Steem" so far...? With the new rules, I am seeing less curation rewards since HF21, not more, as we were promised. Upvote values are decreased because of the new rules, too — my recent estimated 3¢ upvote at 100% Voting Power was diminished to a 1.7¢ upvote on one post recently because too many heavy-hitters arrived at the post before I did, slashing my 100% upvote to a pittance of what the author deserved for their hard work. I have been immensely disappointed in that same way, over-and-over. And, of course, with upvote values going into the toilet like that, it's only logical that curation rewards are following, down the toilet, too.

HOWEVER, I still see great potential here, as I did when I first came on-board, so long as we don't ruin it with greed and petty differences. I considered myself in this for the long-haul, even before I invested the first penny into the platform. So, STEEM ON! Or, as spoken at the end of every installment of the "Curation Corner" radio show in TheRamble discord server:

"Go forth and Steemiate!"

–@ArtemisNorth

 😊

^_25-Sep-2019