At the beginning of my journey with Steemit before I started here on Hive, I had great expectations, as we all had.
I was hoping that my writings would be appreciated by hundreds or maybe thousands of people, and that maybe also I'll become a renowned writer.
Then after a long while of writing consistently, none of that happened, as you could tell already, and I had this feeling of "all my efforts have gone in vain"
But, that's not very accurate. The reason why; I've become a better writer in the process, and I even became a better speaker as a result, because both include forming precise and concise sentences, especially given that English is not my native language.
Another example would be a salesman; as salesmen we usually think that our efforts in making offers that were turned down went into vain, but we become better at selling as a result too.
It's pretty much the same with every other field or speciality, in another words, our perceived failures make us better people, and you only have to succeed once!
If I wrote 12 books that were read by no one and absolutely suck, but the 13th book of mine was a masterpiece, then what else would I want? What's most remarkable is without those 12 books I'd have never written this great final one.