Well, I will sure try to.

I know a lot of you don't know who I am. I'm not a whale, I don't spend a lot of time on Discord and when I do it's usually making smart-ass comments, and I don't post very often. It's not that I don't want to. I just don't get a ton of time in the day to do it.

(I get busy with this stuff all winter.)

I think about it a lot though.

While I was on Steemit, a thought kept occurring to me every time there was a flag war, whale infighting, vicious and/or slanderous posts about other members, or just plain old greed.

Can we rise above this?

In the end, I decided that I had no stake with which to use as a bargaining chip to speak my opinion. I had earned a little bit over time but in the end, I was getting a post or two a week and they were earning me between $3 and $10. I delegated a lot away and tried to help out as much as I could with projects that meant something to me but after a time I became disheartened with everything. I thought that I was going to be busy all winter anyhow so I would just shut down my Steemit account and see how I felt in the spring.

(The crocus is a symbol of joy around here.)

Winter is also a tough time around our house because of all the darkness. We get maybe seven hours of daylight on the winter solstice, so there is a lot of snuggling in and hoping that spring comes soon. This February we are planning a trip to Lake Atitlan, in hopes that it breaks up the winter blahs and gives us an idea of what it is like there for future homesteading possibilities.

Okay, back to what I was on about.

So I was leaving Steemit and @comedyopenmic said that I should make an account on Whaleshares. I said that I didn't need more distraction, I needed less but was told that I would like it here and to just make the account, even if I didn't use it.

I didn't really think about it for a week or so and then I got an email saying that my account had been created. I was going to leave it at that but thought I should go and see what it was about.

It looked like it was Steemit.

I looked at a few posts and saw that they were getting rewarded well. That made me look into it further and join the Discord server. Then I met @ceruleanblue and @ijmmai. They were nerd talking. Then I met @krazykrista and she wasn't nerd talking. She had a great sense of humour too. She offered me 25 KrazyKoins for joining the server and then I ended up making a BitShares wallet.

Then I made an introduction post to leave there as my placeholder while I went on my hiatus and used the KrazyKoins on it. I went on Discord to thank her for the generous gift and saw @derangedvisions, who was familiar to me. I stopped to say hi and got talking to @erodedthoughts as well. Then a few weeks later I was making videos and planning an advice show with my wife and had it mentioned that I should become a witness. Then I met @bushkill and his bees, and I got a bunch of help from @thebugiq.

(Us at an old truck we found while stealing some really nice topsoil out of a ditch last summer.)

And so on, and so on...

What I'm trying to say is that I found the community I wanted to support and be a part of. When I tell friends from Steemit about it they say that it's just another way to rape a reward pool and that WLS is going to drop like a stone in price.

As for the first point: I don't think that is what people are trying to do here. Don't get me wrong. I know there are greedy people everywhere but everything I have felt and learned about this community tells me a different story. The witnesses I have talked to have only conveyed goodwill and fairness to me. In their actions and their words. This is also a big reason I decided to try and get my witness server up and running. I know it's not going to make me a bunch of money but when it comes to decisions on the blockchain, I feel it will give me a say in how things go.

As for WLS dropping? Oh well. I just hope all my Steem is liquidated by then and I can buy a bunch.

As for what I want to see happening here, my first priority is to keep the sharing going. Sharing of everything, really. There is a post-discussion room that is begging to be used to discuss posts that you like, or dislike, but so far it has been used more as a dumping grounds for links. I would love to see more people using it for engaging and sharing ideas.

Another thing I am passionate about is human interaction. I understand that there are good and bad bots, and the good ones can really help make our jobs easier. I just balk at the thought of people's posts being jammed with comments from bots. Personally, I would rather get no comments than a stock comment from a bot, but that's just me. I am interested in any ideas that will boost interaction between us.

Thirdly, I really dislike plagiarism. When you take someone else's hard work and pass it off as your own, I feel that there should be repercussions for that. I don't know what, but there should definitely be no rewards for it. This is where we have a hard time. How do you police it, while still giving people their freedom? Generally, I just start investigating any suspicious accounts but I can't do anything about it, except call the person out. I'm hoping that we can come up with a surefire plan of action in the Discord channel and start setting people on the right path. It would be nice to get people of different communities together to help the waylaid of their groups see that it doesn't pay to use someone else's work.

In a nutshell

I'm not here to get rich. I'm just here to make friends, have fun, and possibly earn some rewards for my scribblings. If I do, great. If I don't, at least I will have met some excellent people to share the journey with. If you like what I have to say, please think about voting me as one of your witnesses. If you don't, please let me know what bothers you about my words and I'll clarify my position in case there's a misunderstanding.

Either way, you should vote for witnesses that are aligned with your vision and values.

You can vote for witnesses here.

You'll probably have to type my name in the box and find me that way.