Weekend-Engagement!

It's Friday, THE day of the week when @galenkp posts his weekend engagement topics. And like every week, I click on that blog to see if a topic immediately makes me think, "That's it!". I often see topics that I think I could participate in, and occasionally I do, and many times I think about it because I forget about the hustle and bustle of the weekend. I couldn't let that happen now, because one of the topics suggested for the weekend engagement is one that I have thought about before. Namely:

• Would you still want to post blogs on Hive if there was no monetary reward at all? Why or why not? Explain. Remember to use your photos.

Interesting question! And I'll even go so far as to say it's a "Tricky question." For several reasons. I'll come back to this later! As an active user of Hive, I have often wondered what my relationship with the platform would be if the rewards for posting blogs were to disappear. It's THE question that forces me to also think deeply about my motivations, as well as my personal experiences on Hive. And even that one question forces me to think about the broader context of decentralized social media.

Time Is The Most Precious Thing We Have

To answer this question properly, we first need to look at what it costs to post blogs on Hive. And then it depends on how you look at it whether you are going to say that it is 'free' and therefore there are no costs involved, OR whether you also understand that it takes your time. Time is a precious thing, you can never make more of it. There are 24 hours in a day, and that's it! In those 24 hours, you have to do everything, work, eat, sleep, socialize, hobbies. Working and sleeping are the two things that normally take up most of your day. For this, I will use my partner as an example. We get up around half past six in the morning, I'm going to make coffee and he's going to let Skipper out for his morning round. Then we drink coffee together and then at a quarter to 7 he leaves for work. And he doesn't get back until around half past six or six o'clock. This can vary by half an hour, depending on the traffic on the road and whether he still visits the supermarket or not. But you can see that a very large part of the day has already passed. After returning home, he naturally wants to sit quietly for a while, talk about the day... and then it's time to eat. Usually, it is almost 8 o'clock before we have had that. Just some time for some games on his PC, maybe watch a movie and then it's time to go to sleep around 11:30 / 11 o'clock. Finally, the alarm goes off early again the next morning. Then it starts again, the same every day... except the weekend when you can stay in bed a little longer. But certainly not TOO long, because time flies by. And because there is so little time to do other things during the week, all of these things have to be done on the weekends because those are the only two days you have time for them.

So back to Hive, and the question, would I still want to post my blogs on Hive if no money/crypto could be earned from it?

How It All Began

To find an answer to that I have to start at the beginning. For me, the beginning was that I lost my job, which caused our financial situation to take a big hit. The job market was bad and I received rejection after rejection on my applications. We lived as frugally as possible, had reduced all expenses to the bare minimum and there was no room for anything extra. Hoping to make a little extra money, I started blogging to make money. Through a few contacts I made there via a Dutch-speaking bloggers platform, I ended up on Steemit Hive. Especially in the beginning, it was extremely difficult to get noticed, to get involved, to build an audience, and to receive appreciation in the form of rewards. I also had a hard time when I started here because English is not my mother language, but I pushed through. Ultimately, this was successful to a certain extent. And while the rewards were of course important, and certainly are, I have always really appreciated receiving comments on my blogs. The engagement from the community! And that's something I've been missing lately! Engagement appears to have declined significantly. Where there once were lively discussions and interactions in the comments, this has certainly decreased significantly in the last year. I have noticed that my engagement has also decreased, partly in response to the reduced activity of others. It seems like a vicious cycle that I notice in general on Hive, and this also affects motivation.

I cannot say what the main reason for the decline in engagement is. I think a combination of several factors is responsible for this. But that this is not helping me much to stay motivated will be clear. Because this question is not intended to express concerns, I will not go into too much detail about what I have noticed over time. But of course, it does play a role in the decision I would make whether I would still post blogs on Hive if there were no more financial rewards in return.

The Answer To The Question

The answer to this question is not so easy to give. Of course, the loss of financial rewards would have an impact on my motivation. After all, it takes time and effort to produce content, and without the financial rewards, I would find it difficult to justify that investment of time, especially in the financial situation we are in with increasingly rising costs. After all, time is the most precious asset we have. And that time must be spent usefully, and in the time you have to spend, resources for subsistence must also be earned. I have also said goodbye to other social media where you get nothing for your time without any hesitation, precisely because I would rather spend the time that I can spend on social media per day on a platform where I can also earn something. So if the financial reward from Hive disappears, I will certainly have to use my time to create income elsewhere. And I certainly won't be able to spend the time I would have to spend on Hive. In addition, there are other things I have to do with my time... and as I stated earlier, we don't have more than 24 hours a day.

On the other hand, over time Hive has become more than just earning rewards. It is a community of like-minded individuals who strive for decentralization, freedom of expression, and sharing knowledge and experiences. The time I have spent at Hive has also yielded valuable contacts that I would not like to lose. So that again could be valuable enough to continue to attract me, even if the financial incentives disappear.

Taking all this into consideration, the bottom line is that if the rewards were to disappear I would probably spend a lot less time on Hive than I do now. Maybe I would post an update blog every once in a while for people who do follow me and I would continue to read some blogs here and there from other people with whom I don't want to lose contact. But certainly not with the same intensity as is now the case. I wouldn't have time for that anymore.

Conclusion!

After this long story, a summary. So you can say that my involvement with Hive depends on several factors. Consider the combination of rewards and interaction. Rewards certainly play an important role in my decision to stay active, but they are not the only motivator. If the rewards disappeared, I would still find a place for myself in the Hive community, but with a completely different focus, intention, and frequency.