Around a week ago @bigtom13 took it upon himself to issue a challenge. This challenge was in response to a lot of things have been happening on STEEM lately.

At times and depending on who you talk to, there can often be a fundamental divide on STEEM/Steemit (yes I know the difference between the two) of community vs. rewards.

We are all motivated by something, and the question this challenge hopes to answer is of those two specific things, what motivates you?

I think @bigtom13 knew full well when he started this challenge that it isn't going to be as black and white as a lot of people think.

My bet is he was counting on there being a huge gray area that would be the birth point of some fantastic posts.

My Story

I am pretty sure I have told this story in whole or parts across various interfaces to the STEEM block chain.

I was sitting around waiting for Thanksgiving dinner in 2017 when my wife's cousin @robrigo and I got talking about blockchain and crypto currencies. At the time, Bitcoin had seen a pretty meteoric rise to around $7700 and a lot of the hype was starting to begin.

@robrigo was already pretty well established in crypto being a Graphene witness and very involved in BitShares and as I would come to find out a platform called Steemit. He also started explaining a new project called EOS that he was starting to get involved in.

I was immediately interested in the idea of a place where authors could get paid for posting and curating "high quality technical content" as he explained it. I was also a bit intimidated though and didn't have the guts to follow through with creating an account.

That is until Christmas time when I talked to him again. In between that time I had started using Coinbase to pick up some crypto of my own like LTC and ETH. My plan with the ETH was to eventually move it over into EOS (which I did).

@robrigo happened to visit our family Christmas in 2017 and again we found ourselves having a pretty lengthy discussion about cryptocurrency. It was shortly after that I gathered up the courage and asked him if he could help me get on Steemit.

At the time he was part of a witness group on Steemit and they had a faucet that could get me an account and little bit of SP to start out. I think it was around 15 or 25 SP that I started out with. It wasn't a lot, but it was definitely more than people usually start with.

@mrsbozz (my wife) and I love to camp. It's something we do as much as possible through the Summer in Michigan. I mention that because for the past couple of years I have needed a new truck to pull our trailer with.

Joining Steemit was absolutely a means to an end and the end was to be a shiny used (new to me) truck. I got my account created in January of 2018 and after spending some time on the trending page and seeing some posts from people pretending to be their dog that made hundreds of dollars I thought it was going to be totally easy.

Unfortunately, as most of us found out, fame and fortune are seldom instant and they are usually not reserved for the common folk. My wife's cousin had by now started to move the majority of his focus to EOS.

The large upvotes I had hoped to get from his decently sized account were not going to be coming my way. He was in the process of powering down so he could invest into EOS and a couple of other projects.

On top of that, my dog apparently wasn't as cute as the other dogs on Steemit becuase I was lucky if posting a picture of her made $.01.

Common on! How can you not upvote that face!

To say my first couple of months on Steemit were a struggle would be an understatement. I never counted on the upvotes from @robrigo, I didn't want him to vote for something he didn't agree with just because I published it.

Knowing that I would probably never get an upvote from him though, made me realize I needed to do something different.

I joined a variety of initiatives at the time that I hoped would teach me more about Steemit and help me grown my account. I also started some technical series that started to gain some traction.

It wasn't until I found myself in a group called @thesteemengine that I actually started to get some recognition. It's also where I was first introduced to @bigtom13. I've since been in a a couple of other groups with him including @adsactly.

Through the people on @thesteemengine and feedback I gained from joining @qurator I was able to start producing some pretty awesome posts if I do say so myself.

By then though, it was the middle of 2018 and it was becoming pretty apparent that things weren't going to get better for the foreseeable future. We kept waiting and hoping and crossing our fingers, but things just kept getting worse and worse.

This picture from one of my sever rooms is a pretty good depiction of where my foray into crypto was by the later half of 2018. It was a hot mess. I had invested a bit in EOS, and even though the main-net had launched it wasn't growing the way some had anticipated.

It was at that point that I realized, Steemit and crypto in general are going to be a much longer hold than I had planned. I wasn't seeing them as an investment, I was viewing them as a lottery ticket. I wanted it to be something I could invest in, and quickly turn around to make a profit on so I could buy my truck. It was a pretty heavy conversation I had with myself when I realized this wasn't going to be what I thought it was.

That shift to seeing Steemit as a hobby as opposed to a means of profit was pretty relieving. I think it allowed me to relax a little more, there was less pressure to simply earn and it allowed me to focus on some of the community aspects more.

It's still something I struggle with though. When you put this amount of time into something, you hope that it will eventually be worth it. Being honest, I don't think I will ever be 100% not in it for the profit, but where I was once at 90% profit, 10% community, I am probably more at 70% community and 30% profit now.

Let's face it, at the end of the day I need to have something to show for all the times @mrsbozz puts up with me taking pictures of her food!

In fact, since my "shift" to a new outlook, I have earned several awards and recognition including a handful of @curie's

I used to make fun of my dad who was/is really into Microsoft Flight Simulator and the friends he would make all over the country (even a guy in the UK) through his forums and groups.

Now here I am with acquaintances all over the country/world including The UK, South Africa, and Belgium. In fact, here is a great example of how important the community has become to me:

I had some graphics arts work I needed done as a small project for my job. I am not a very artsy person (except for writing and maybe some photography), thankfully, because of Steemit, I know people that are. I was able to work with @morkrock who lives a world away from me to get a high quality vector graphic of the logo that my employer now uses every day.

I think that is pretty awesome for something that was originally started as a way to get me a new truck!

That's my story, I hope you enjoyed it. In the end, I think there is always going to be a dichotomy between earning and community. My belief now is that the earnings(or promise of) are what will bring the people in and the community is what is going to cause them to stay.

If you want to take part in the Community Rewards Challenge, check out @bigtom13's post I linked to above.

Edit

I just realized I didn't challenge someone else to post on this topic. I will fix that right now, I challenge @daan and @cryptoandcoffee

Earn free crypto income with Mannabase