The other day, not only did my video card fry, the day after one of my RAM modules fried, but I also lost my delegation. So it wasn't exactly a great day.
I never expected that the delegation would last forever. I always assumed it could be taken at any moment. Of course, I never expected to actually get it either.
I had never talked to @fulltimegeek, as far as I'm aware. I don't know him. When I got the delegation, it was a complete surprise. I kinda freaked out a little bit.
I kept waiting for him to contact me, but he never did. I don't know if he checked up on my posts occasionally, or checked my upvotes, or what.
Sure, it sucks to not have it anymore, but I'm grateful that I had the opportunity that I had. Many minnows might never experience what it's like to have 5000 SP. Especially now that Steem is worth more (though not quite as much more this week), and it's harder to power up.
He Needs His Steem Power Back
I don't know all the details about the abuse of the pool, but I understand why a lot of users are upset about it. Steem relies on all the users following the underlying social pressure to curate good content, and not abuse the system. Yes, you can vote for yourself and your friends, but that's not really what the purpose of this site is. We're supposed to work together to ensure good content gets rewarded.
Voting for shit content just because it's possible is completely ignoring the social pressure, and what this site was created for, and it's liable to get a few people upset.
Likewise, paying people for their votes, while technically possible, is also ignoring the purpose of the site, and abusing the system, to get rewards back that you did not earn through hard work and dedication.
It is, of course, up to every user to decide their own moral beliefs on what they deem acceptable. However, another user may take issue with it, and choose to flag you.
Bots and The Great Self Debate
I myself decided to become a member of @qurator. For me, this is borderline acceptable. Another user recently described it as a circle jerk though, and I can see his point. Their requirement to upvote all their posts at a certain level, and their means of checking it, mean that you are pretty much forced to use an auto-voter. I would much rather people actually read the posts.
The reason I decided it was acceptable is that they require a certain level of quality in the user's posts that they accept. Personally, I would prefer this quality level was a bit higher, especially in regards to the posts that they include in The Daily Qurator, but I don't run it.
I view the combination of the initial approval, and The Daily Qurator, as making it a bit closer to paid curation than necessarily just a bot.
I'm moving more towards delegating to them over time though, rather than upvoting their posts. I will still upvote them when I read them though. I would rather spend my votes on things I actually read, and judge how deserving they are of upvotes on my own.
Qurator is part of my effort to create a baseline income for my posts. If I end up getting a certain amount from users that put me on auto-voters though, I'll have to stop delegating to them, because I would rather not be rewarded a great amount for even my stupid memes, unless people see them, and decide for themselves. Receiving great rewards for whatever you do, whether you put in effort or not, feels like one possible hell that I'd rather not visit.
I likewise have yet to make a post that I think is good enough that I'd buy a vote for. I know that if I make a truly awesome post, it will be recognized, because while I'm still not earning much, I have formed a group of friends and social connections. That's a big key to success here.
Curation Efforts
When I was brand new, I thought it might be cool to be a curator. I had no idea how I could convince someone I'd be a good curator though. After having the master sword for a while though, I realized that it's far more work to be a curator than I could have ever imagined.
There are tons of awesome amazing incredible posts out there. The problem is finding them. Once you have more than a little SP, you realize that not every post deserves a 100% upvote. You have to ask yourself on every post just how much it deserves. I didn't necessarily ask myself how much it deserved in dollar value, beyond if it was overvalued, because there are a ton of posts that are undervalued. I can't give every undervalued post a 100% upvote. So I asked myself how much of my vote it deserved.
I realized very quickly it's not a one-man job. It takes too many minutes and even hours to read through a ton of posts to find the best.
We Need Curator Tools.
I don't know why Steemit doesn't have tools for curators to work together, built-in, but it needs them. I think it's a horrible oversight to not have them. I found myself so often thinking that I needed to work with others to find and share the posts that I thought were the best.
The current curation groups are hard to contact though, and it takes time and effort to form your own official one. Whenever I did find that occasional amazing post that I thought really deserved an upvote, I couldn't do anything with it other than give it a 100% upvote. I kind of just wanted to share posts with a group of friends to make the task a bit easier.
Whenever I thought about forming an official curation group, I wasn't quite sure what kind of post genres to curate. My mind just kept going back to the tools.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I kind of think I need some way to work with others to curate together. Some way that limits the amount of spam and crap.
My Personal Goals
Before I received the delegation, I really wanted to get a big upvote eventually. After I got it, and knew what it was like, I wanted to more than double it. I knew what it was like to have a big upvote, and I wanted more.
Now, it's gone, but I still want it.
I have set a few goals for myself.
500 Steem Power
I chose trading over powering up to 500 right away. Then I got delegation, and there seemed to be less of a rush. Rather than rush right away to power up to 500, given that I have things I am working towards, I am trading to get able to do it. I'd like to get up to 500 steem power by the end of the month however, or perhaps the begining of the next, if that's more favorable.
1000 Steem Power
1000 Steem is a lot of money. All the same, I'd like to be able to get to 1000 SP by the end of next month. I'm not sure if I'm going to really push this goal though, as other things are more important.
5000 Steem Power
This is the amount of delegation I received from @fulltimegeek, and when I still had it, I still had the goal of eventually getting 5000 SP of my own. Now, I still have that goal, but while setting these goals on a timeline, I got the insane idea of trying to get 5000SP by the end of the year. I won't be that sad if I don't make it though. It's important that I work towards it, not that I necessarily reach it.
The Future
I haven't been able to live up to my lofty personal goals with this account yet, but I haven't given up, and I don't plan to. I have ideas. I have posts I want to make. I have goals to reach. I will make them. I will succeed.
Every day's a journey. It's time I start walking.
Animated Banner Created By @zord189