I've Been Writing Too Much, Not Reading Enough
I woke up this morning, made my coffee, picked up the chicken bones the cats dragged out of the garbage last night, and then sat down to check email, messengers, Steemit, etc.
I came across this awesome article from @razvanelulmarin, which linked to this awesome article on Project Curie.
Razvanelulmarin composed a great piece. He's right, and I've seen his (her?) name in my upvotes, so I know he's (she's?) on the level. (At this juncture I better start using "they" as a first person neutral pronoun).
Aside from them making excellent points (I encourage you to read both the linked articles), I realize I am not reading enough here myself. Some of my longer, and in my opinion, better posts too up to 6 hours to compose. That's partly due to the image insertion and newbie-ness with markdown and having completely forgotten the HTML I learned in the 90s.
The reason I put so much time into those posts is that I want to live up to the community standard of "quality". The problem is, I didn't have time to read what other people were posting. There days where I'd vote and comment on 10-20 pieces, but not every day, and sometimes I just upvote without comment on an author who "usually does a good job."
When I scan the trending topics on the front page, there is almost nothing I want to read unless it's steemit related, but it's usually either just another quasi-celeb, sounds like it was written for Yahoo! Life or just not my thing. That means I have to dig to find good content, which takes time. Robinhood Whales and Project Curie will help me find what I'm looking for, and help you find it too.
But on top of this, this community is experimental in many ways and therefore requires a lot more knowledge depth from it's members than other social media like Twitter and Facebook. We need to learn the Markdown and HTML. We need to engage in steemit.chat, we need to read the White Paper, we need to go to steemit help and search for tips, and I haven't been doing any of that. Never been in chat once. Haven't finished the white paper either.
This is a community for self-starters, go-getters, social rejects who make their own way, and so on. So, you need to contribute by writing, but you need to balance your use of time to learn about how the community works, how steemit itself works, and support other good writers by reading and commenting on their work.
This will probably be my only post today, but not so I can read, unfortunately. It's a bee-yoo-tiful day in Shenzhen and a friend has invited me out. And that's another thing: Don't spend ALL your time on Steemit. Humans need fresh air and sunshine too.
Thank you, Robinhood Whales for the hard and self-sacrificing work, and the same thank you to Project Curie. Thank you, all, who have read, upvoted and commented on my work. And thanks for the reminder that I need to delve into the knowledge base and operations of this far-thinking community. Let's not let it turn into Facebook or Buzzfeed.
And sooner or later, I'm gonna finish reading that Steemit White Paper.