Back when I was 18, I was in hospital with pancreatitis, which I had 6 times that year due to a medication I was taking. It is a painful condition and if the pancreas ruptures, deadly. During these times in hospital, I wasn't able to eat, but I was able to give myself a morphine shot with a button whenever I chose, but there was a minimum limit as to how often.
I would take the painkiller as soon as I could.
It wasn't generally because I needed it, but it was terrible being in hospital, hungry, having family and friends drop buy randomly, while I had tubes up my nose and could barely speak. Anything to take away the time was welcomed.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a button the keyboard that printed money whenever you needed a bit extra?
When I was leaving work today, I looked at my phone and realized my voting mana was at 100%, which is very, very strange. Then I realized that last night I didn't actively read and vote before going to bed and then got buy at work and it recharged. I don't know how long it was that it was sitting full, but a full mana "costs" me, in the sense that my stake isn't earning curation rewards. It is still earning something however, as there is a ~3% interest paid on stake, which by itself is far better than a bank.
Back in the day the dream was to be able to live off curation alone, but I suspect I will unlikely get to that stage consistently enough to actually ever do it. At least any time soon. With the spike a few hours ago though, the old thought crossed my mind and I was wondering what the base level price of HIVE would need to be for me to live off curation.
It is high.
Assuming I would need to cover my current earning, plus more for a buffer and pay the taxes etc,
the floor price of HIVE would have to be somewhere around €6. That is about 20x up from where we are, and it could very well get there in the next blow-off run on the markets, but it would have to stay there in order to live off curation alone. Of course, if it did get there I would be able to sell some of my holdings, pay off the mortgage early and therefore, require less per month for living expenses.
While this is just a fanciful dream for the future, I was also thinking about the past. It will soon be seven years of creating content on this blockchain and that amounts for me, to tens of thousands of hours work, nearly all during the night, every weekend and around my other paid work in the real world.
What is an appropriate return on the investment?
People often cite the "could earn more flipping burgers" argument in terms of payouts, and that is valid. Even as someone who does earn quite well in relation to Hive, I could earn more (in less time) at McDonald's, a job that I know I can do and I am (was) very good at. But, do I want to work at McDonald's when I could be pressing buttons here?
And this brings up the conversation of the value of personal time, which is again often cited. People think that their hourly rate on Hive should be similar to what it is in the real world, or what they would like to get in the real world - if they had a job. But, that is not the case, because there are other values of time other than money. For example, if I could earn the same working a fast food job, I value the activity I perform on Hive a hell of a lot more. But, if that fast food job was to say, pay me 10x, I might forgo the value of writing and instead flip burgers.
After all, it isn't my main job.
However, jobs can give meaning and purpose and while I earn significantly more as an employee, I don't get anywhere near as much meaning out of my work as I do out of Hive. I have a good job, work with talented, interesting, and friendly colleagues - but I don't get that sense of "changing the world" like I do on Hive.
For instance, if I was going to be remembered for my work, I would rather be remembered for my work on Hive, than as my work as a Sales Enablement manager. It isn't because I am better at writing than I am at my job. It is because what I do on Hive is more meaningful for me, which is why I would rather put my effort into this, than focusing solely on earning money.
And I think that it shows in my work that I am interested in this, and it isn't because I write daily or because of what I write about. It is because of the way I write. I am in here, it is me, my experiences, my personality, my character. I can be many things, and all of the things I have been to this date, have likely appeared in some form on this blockchain.
My account is me.
And I find this strange, that I have monetized myself, by being myself. It isn't about building my "personal brand" like an influencer, because I don't want to live that life of conflict where there is a difference between the digital persona and the real me. I also don't want to live in fear of being discovered as being that difference.
You get me?
You get me.
And I haven't changed that much from the kid I was all those years ago taking IV morphine whenever the machine said I could. The difference is that then I was looking to avoid people and the world, to numb myself from my own experience. Here, I press that button daily to improve myself, to become more aware and hopefully connect with and help people in their lives too. Rather than running from suffering, I am trying to understand the causes.
And, I think that this is part of how I built my mentality for investing, for looking long into the future of Hive, because I know that the road isn't likely to be smooth or comfortable. It is going to be filled with pain and challenge. Waiting for better times is wasting the time we have to make those better times. Becoming numb to the problems is to choose complacency, to say, "this is not my responsibility" and once we do that, we give up our ownership, give up our agency, and become irrelevant.
A lot of people are struggling for relevancy in this world, and they are looking for a place where they have meaning, where they feel like they have a purpose. But, most are looking externally only, as if there is a perfect place out there for them, a perfect job, a perfect partner. But, we can never have meaning by doing what others expect of us, if it isn't meaningful to us.
Making money isn't that hard, though it seems incredibly difficult. The real problem with it is if we are willing to make money regardless of the work we do - what are we willing to sacrifice? Time? Energy? Morals? Love?
The hard part is making money doing something that we value for what it is, not that we do for a paycheck at the end of the month. The problem is that most of business is largely meaningless, as it is a circle of useless activity, busy work. It is a whole lot of jobs to support activities that don't make us better as individuals, which don't make us better as a society.
Yet here on Hive, I get to make a little money, doing something I love, for a cause I am passionate about, with people who have similar interests, even though they might approach it in a different way. If everyone was working to improve themselves and make the world a slightly better place, wouldn't it become a better place? Working toward building a community where people are able to apply their skills, time and effort to work toward a better future where they feel relevant - is worth the energy.
Money, just like a key, opens doors.
Where that door leads us, depends on which we open.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]