Thoughts About My Year On Steem

I joined Steem one year ago, on December 31st, 2017. The currency was riding high, and @techslut's long campaign to get me on board finally bore fruit. I've gone through different periods during the year. For a while, I was very active on a few discord communities, largely around my interests in feminism and QUILTBAG issues. For much of the year, I published a post every single day.

There were times when I felt ready to give up on the community. There's a lot of bullshit on the blockchain. There's a lot I don't like. There are scammers and abusers, and assholes of all kinds. There are people who are only in it for themselves. For some, "decentralized" is a different way to say "unpoliced," which is a different way to say "I can do whatever the hell I want, and who cares what it may do to anyone else?" Which is a shitty way to build a community.

I am, in my heart, an anarcho-socialist. I think the only point of society is to be helpful. I am too old, and too experienced with people, to believe that to be an achievable goal for society at large. Predators gonna predate. Which is why communities need to have checks and balances.

I still adore the communities I used to be more involved in, but a few months ago, @techslut did it again: She pulled me into something. This time, it was @utopian-io. Y'all probably know Utopian. It's the project that's here to make working on and around open source projects more sustainable for people.

For me, my support of open source, as well of as love for copy-left licenses, goes hand in hand with my interests in feminism and QUILTBAG issues, as well as my love for science fiction and fantasy. It's all about trying to create a better world.

I joined Utopian as a moderator in the Blog category. In due course, I became Utopian's Chief Content Officer and the category manager for the Blog category. This is a strange and surprising turn of events. I've long avoided startups, save for my own tiny publishing house, and never thought I'd join one.

It was the community that changed me. By the time the CCO position was offered to me, I was already managing the Blog category for the most part, due to time constraints on the CM, and was well invested in Utopian.

As my activity in Utopian ramped up, my posting on Steem became less frequent. Or, at least, so it would appear. Considering the Top of Utopian, Utopian Weekly, and my moderation comments, alongside the weekly Blog Category report, I think I may actually be putting more words in the blockchain than I used to.

I do miss my old daily posts. Especially the weekly book releases post, which was a true labor of love. However, I was stretched too thin to keep doing that as well as my various Utopian duties. There is much work that I've done that has yet to bear visible fruit, but I can say with confidence that it is positive work.

From my first days on the blockchain, through the discord groups, to Utopian one thing remains constant, and it is the thing that kept me here when the allure of easy money faded with the currency: Community. There are some really great people here. People who volunteer their time to create things, to make things better. In a way, the currency's loss of value has been good for Steem, as a community. When the currency goes up - which I believe it will - we'll have a stronger foundation to build on: A community that is committed to making things better.