Would you help me build a great relationship with you because I am struggling and I need your help? Will you join me in walking through despair I am feeling after 2 months on Steemit and help me figure out how to do better going forward because I feel like I am not doing enough on Steemit despite spending about 6 hours every day 7 days a week here? I share this because I have learned it is important to walk through the pain in life and look at the lessons within the challenges in order to improve.

What might looks like success feels like a disaster.

With over 7800 followers in two months, thousands of dollars earned, and generous witness votes getting me 10 blocks a day within the first week, some might share this as a great Steemit success story. How do I actually feel about it? From my point of view I feel like a total fuck up. I feel the shame of not being good enough weighing down hard. I broke down and sobbed three times today because the pain was so great. What do I need to learn out of this?

Here is the list of things I feel am not not doing good enough on Steemit.

1. Responding to comments.
2. Writing thoughtful posts.
3. Staying connected via steemit.chat.
4. Upvoting great posts by followers.
5. Respecting the service of those on Steemit longer than me.
6. Balancing my use of Steemit with the rest of my business and life.
7. Building real relationships with followers.

In summary, pretty much everything I am doing I feel like I am not doing it good enough. Even though I am doing my best to help out here and am getting rewarded very well for it, I still feel like I am not giving enough. As evidence ...

Projects launched within 2 months on Steemit.

1. Crowdfunded Steemit ad campaigns.
2. SteemJ freelancing platform.
3. Steemit meetup.
4. Becoming a witness.
5. Upvotable curation project.
6. Steemit video course.
7. Authoring posts daily.

Any one of these would probably be enough but seven is way too many and evidence of someone who feels like they are not good enough desperately trying to seek approval by doing everything with most of it often ending up done half way if at all. I am grateful anyone is still following me after I have found ways to set up so many different expectations and then not meet them! I need help figuring out what is most important and focusing my time on what is most useful to you.

Would you help me understand what I do that is most valuable for our community because that is what I need to be focusing on? At the same time, would you help me see what I need to give up doing because this will make time for me to focus on the rest? For example, would you rather me make new posts or respond to comments? Do more ads or finish SteemJ? Help out more as a witness or do more meetups? Upvote your posts or respond to messages on steemit.chat?

Here are a few ideas that might be a good starting point.

Would you tell me which ones of these you like and/or share your own because that will help us all start using them?

1. What if I focus on reading posts tagged with jerrybanfield or something else to help me find the posts you want me to read and upvote because this might be the easiest way for us to work together? Even with just following 300 people my feed is already more than I can handle while currently the https://steemit.com/trending/jerrybanfield category is pretty wide open.
2. What if we make a certain tag up like #teamjerry that is code for me to read that comment because then I will be able to just search through posts and focus on those comments instead of currently I do not even see most comments while which ones I respond to are almost totally luck and most likely to be critical.
3. Which projects should I drop and which to continue forward with? The one I can throw out is the upvotable one or maybe doing meetups because the others I have a lot of passion for. Which can wait and which needs to be done earlier? Maybe the crowdfunded ad campaigns could wait? Maybe Steemit is not ready for SteemJ yet and I should just pay the developers out the reward that have been working on it?
4. Should I just give up using steemit.chat unless I need help with something because using it just seems crazy to be typing responses there when I am not even responding to most comments here?
5. Drop down to just one post a day because testing 3 posts a day has been absolute hell? What do I write about that you care about the most? So far it seems like tutorials and cryptocurrency updates.
6. How much to upvote comments? 1% to 3% to let the author know I read it? 10% to 100% for a really good comment? Just ignore comments without the #teamjerry tag?
7. How do I respect the service of those that have been here since the beginning? Clearly this is something that is difficult for me in every area of life as I walk into any room and think I know better than everyone else. After going a few years, I am certain of it.
8. What to do about being a Steem witness? Is this a worthwhile use of my time? Should I invest the time to get better at managing my server or just disable my witness and let others do it to free my time up? How often to help out others in the steemit.chat witness channel if I am going to do it? Would it be better if I drop asking for votes or ask at the end of every post or ask in comments or ask in private messages?

Thank you for walking through what feels like the bottom of the ocean with me! I jumped into Steemit with so much excitement that I fell like an anchor to the bottom. Now I am lost in the dark and reaching out for help.

Would you help me build a deeper relationship with you and understand my place in our community because I am having a hard time seeing it myself?

Love,
Jerry Banfield