I have very little discretionary income.   What income I have pays my bills and barely supports my family.    Prior to Steemit I could perhaps spend $50/mo of my paycheck on something I wanted.     To address this I was and still am working on projects that could eventually bring me additional income.
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/nd87JxN.png"/>

Why people post a lot, stop posting, leave steemit, come to steemit, etc varies a lot.     If I greatly reduce my posting (*I was in the top 20 for quantity of posts two months into using steemit*) it is not because I was down voted to oblivion, and it is not because I no longer believe in steemit.     In fact, I believe in it just as much as I did when I discovered it in July.    Sure there are things I don't like (*for me it is mainly the down vote*), but they are not driving me away.

My reasons for not posting as often ARE financial.   Yet I am not seeing steem/steemit as failing.    I am simply having to adapt to my own financial situation.

In June I found out a game that had been sitting on the Steam Game Platform's Greenlight program had suddenly been greenlit after 570+ days.     We had begun refocusing on finishing that product and hopefully getting something out there we could make money off of.    My funds were tight though and a friend on a SLACK I participate on convinced me to take a peek at Ethereum mining.  I have a lot of older servers that are quad core and with decent memory lying around so while GPU is generally a better way to mine, I have servers doing nothing I was willing to use.

I setup a miner, and then went to check out a place called BITTREX that my friend recommended.    I've been aware of crypto currency since 2008, but have been in a similar financial situation that even though I knew some good things I had no money to invest.    Thus, mining seemed a viable alternative.     I have tried BTC mining several times in the past but that is so controlled by big hardware guys that even if I joined a pool it was not very beneficial to me.

BITTREX was my first time exploring an exchange.    I happened to sort the rate of increase column on that day in July and there was this thing called STEEM sitting at 120%.    I said to myself "*What is that?*" as I had never heard of it.    I ended up at steemit.com which I could start using without having to pay money I didn't have, and it sounded promising.

I told my friend @kaptainkrayola (made steemshovel.com) about it and he was kicking himself for missing opportunity with it as he is way into crypto.     I stumble upon it purely by chance as I'm trying to learn about some of the places he directed me.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/CgVrn4E.png"/>

This gave me a push into the world of actually owning some crypto.    I eventually would learn how to convert it to Bitcoin so I could actually BUY some things.    I eventually would get a bitpay card so I could then buy literally anything I wanted with funds from crypto currencies.

Steemit.com quickly became a place where if I put in the time it could meet or exceed my $50/mo discretionary spending.   I could buy more hardware for my PC, clothes, take my wife to dinner, more video games, books people on steemit like @lukestokes recommended, etc.    I couldn't do this before.

In fact, it was doing so well that steemit.com easily got as much time from me as working another 40 hour a week job on top of the one I already had.    I could mentally justify this as my efforts were building up steem power.    It was encouraging me to write and create like I hadn't for a long time.

It left zero time for those other projects I mentioned.   The other projects that could provide me alternative funding to my normal job.

Yet I could be justified at this simply because of how effective steemit.com was proving to be.

I HAVE NEVER POWERED DOWN.   I do not intend to.   However, I also am not in a financial situation where I can easily just commit to not using steem to purchase bitcoin so I can power up my bitpay when I need something.    It is much slower, but this has become mainly my only form of discretionary funding.    I am a smart shopper though and I tend to buy things when they are on sale for amazing prices.   I can make a little bit go a long ways.

I have not given up on steemit, or steem.   I am not powering down.    I will continue to post as I am inspired.     Though there is something that has changed.     For me personally it may end up being for the better.
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/qloLpJ7.png"/>

I have shifted more of my focus back to my other projects.    I am going to work on getting them out there and hopefully becoming another source of income.    This is a positive thing.    My focus needed to be in this area, but I had an 8 to 10 hour a day steemit.com habit.     I now have that reduced to 1 to 3 hours per day if I had to guess.    This leaves me a lot more time to focus on not keeping all of my eggs in one basket.

I am here for the long haul.    I still believe steem/steemit to be an amazing thing.    The payout is simply no longer high enough to keep me addicted and constantly a presence here at the expense of other things I need to be doing.

I've begun to find more balance.    I am no longer in the top 20 as I no longer comment and post insane amounts.   I have tried to stay at or below 4 posts per day since the penalty for over that was implemented.   The majority of my posts came from how much I interact with other people in replies.

I was even a bit more crazy addicted to posting than it seems in this.   I am also @chaospoet and I haven't posted anything with that account in awhile.    I mainly haven't been inspired.    Most of Chaos Poet success came from interacting with other people in comments.    I also was doing it before the flood of extremely talented poets hit steemit.     My blog posts for Chaos Poet rarely did very well even when steem price was much higher.    So I purely post on that account when I am inspired and for the enjoyment.   It WILL happen again, as that crazy side of me still lives inside of me.    Yet the "*Weird on the Leash*" will only come forth when I feel the urge to blurt out some more of that insanity.

I also wrote a lot of anarchy and anarchism related posts and debated with people about it early on.    In the time since I began we have great people like Larken Rose, Dragon Anarchist, and many other anarchists posting on here.    Posts of this nature are great for new people to the idea.   It is exposing new people.    Yet if it is something you've been interested in for awhile it starts to sound like a broken record.     I don't post anarchism specific ideas unless I have something compelling to me to say.

I could likely do quite well recycling some of my older blogs and iterating and evolving upon them.    That is not really my thing.   I like creating new things.    So while I am passionate about Anarchism, this is why I don't post on it a lot.

I also have been a vocal opponent to the down vote, and I still am passionate about that, but I only post such things if I am trying to make people think and to get some feedback.    I believe posting too much of that can be damaging to the perception of the platform, so while posts of that nature do tend to pay out well, that was not my goal with them.   I don't like posting things from the negative perspective.    I'd rather create than destroy.
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/IUnxMV7.png"/>

This post may not be the most thought provoking.    Today I felt the need to post a personal post and give you some insight into why I post less.    It is not because I've lost faith in steem/steemit.    For me it is simply life decisions.

***Steem On!***


*EDIT: Note.   Those images I shared are perhaps too dark for the size they show up and on the white background of steemit.   I will need to remember this.  To truly appreciate them you may want tor RIGHT click on them and click VIEW IMAGE.   It is of course your choice.*