Stewards of Terra Mater update

It has been a while since I wrote an update for the team. Spring work, helping people, running training classes and preparing for the Warrior Heart Retreat in a few weeks is drawing my attention away from the team. I will work hard to be more diligent as I want to support the development and encouragement of the team.

Latest Chart

I am excited to see two more Stewards getting close to graduating to become minnows. It has been three months and I think that it shows wonderful progress to accomplish being a minnow in such a short period of time.

Some observations

I noticed that a number of the stewards have slowed down on their blogging and are also allowing their steem power to sit at 100% for extended periods of time. I know I've been guilty of this too and I'm working hard to make sure I keep upvoting. When we let our steem power sit at 100% we are not contributing to help other people. We are wasting our opportunity to give steem from the reward pool. It is a waste of delegated steem as well. Gifting is what makes this platform work. When we stop giving, it has a huge impact on other people and their own moral and enthusiasm.

I encourage us all, Stewards and Steemians alike, to keep giving and giving and giving! This is tough as it seems that morale and enthusiasm is tied directly to the price of steem. When it goes up, everyone is all excited, but when it drops that excitement wains. The price of steem is going to go up and down. That is life. How we govern ourselves through the ebbs and flows of life determines how much we enjoy the ride. If you are not going to upvote on a regular basis, please let me know and I will find somebody who will.

Some changes

In the coming days I'm going to decrease the delegation to some of the stewards while ensuring that you still remain above the 500 SP so that you can keep your voting bar. I want to thank @earthmother for her offer to give some of the steem back. I also know that others are busy moving and getting into spring activities. Since they won't be on as much, I will make sure the steem is used appropriately and when winter returns, we will re-adjust once again. I appreciate the support and encouragement that I get from the Stewards a great deal. I'll be making the shift in the coming days.

I also have a group of ladies who will be blogging under a single account and when they get going I will be inviting them to the Stewards of Terra Mater. So big changes are in the works.

A tip about price of steem

If we are constantly evaluating the 'value' of steem by comparing it to the US dollar then we are completely missing the point. The value of steem is not tied to the relationship of the US dollar. The price of steem is tied to the value of the content that we provide for the steem blockchain. The only reason people care about the US dollar is because we still have dependencies that require US dollars. But when we remove those dependencies, the price of the US dollar disappears and we are left with a monetary token that we can use to trade among one another.

If we took the price of the US dollar out of the equation, we are left with the realization that we are still earning tokens, no matter what the price. I just held a workshop that only accepted Steem/SBD. All people had to do was comment on my post and I would upvote them to help them pay for the course. Where on this planet can you gather the currency you need by having people give you tokens from the commons? It is like asking to be paid with apples growing on the boulevard. You just have to go out and pick them. But when it comes to fiat currency, you need jobs or a loan to acquire the funds to pay for things. Loose any of them and you are hooped.

Here, all it requires is gifts, participation, capacity to build healthy relationships and if you want to make lots; hard work will do. If we look past the old paradigm we will see a platform that anybody can get plugged into, no matter their caste, skill, language or any other characteristic. Price does not matter. Steem keeps plugging along. I'll admit that my morale also dropped. But I will work through it and continue.

For us, we have been covering our bills for months, even when steem is below $2US. We can do that because we live off grid and need very little money. Our dependency is VERY low and that is what people should be focusing on. Rather than working hard to generate thousands upon thousands of fiat dollars, work to be as independent as possible. That way, should anything happen, your needs are always covered. You will then find that the price of the US dollar matters not!