Today's indexcard post from @tydynrain made me think. It was about discipline. I wrote some of my thoughts in a comment to it, and here are some more, even though I only mention that word once:
Image by kenshinstock on Freepik
Ever since I got on Hive, I've been seeing posts telling me to do this or that or something else to be successful on Hive. Post consistently, make meaningful comments, upvote the right stuff, use this frontend not that, include these tags not those, post here not there. Many of the hints and tips contradict each other, but... I've been trying to follow all of those rules. To tell the truth, that's been quite stressful! So for now, I'll just do what I like.
Consistency
I get that writing new posts every week or day or hour will make me more visible, and might get me more upvotes = more money. And I openly confess that my only purpose with joining Hive was to earn. My purpose changed, and will keep changing. I wanted to do a food blog, and realised I couldn't, I wanted to talk about books and found I have nothing to say except "I love reading!" Right now I'm here because I like it, (and for the plentiful giveaways.) Next week I may want to write a daily diary, and the week after that I might want to talk about my broken bicycle. Regardless of how much or how little it earns me. Sure, every upvote on a post of mine is welcome, but that's no longer my goal, so why should I feel that I have failed if some day, some week, some month, all I've done is commented on and upvoted other's posts, and not published a single new post of my own? I refuse to let that stress me. No more "My goals next week" posts from me, no more "Sorry I failed, I'll do better!" unless I really feel that I have a goal or a fail I want to talk about right then. My constinency from now - until I change it - will be "do what doesn't make you feel bad."
Meaningfulness
Does "Count me in, please!" as a reply to a giveaway post count as meaningful? Well, it does to me, since I can't enter the draw without writing something like that. It probably counts as meaningful to the giveaway poster too, since it ups their "commented on" count, and mostly gets a tiny upvote too. But compared to someone sharing their visit to Madame Tussauds in London, or how to dive for pearl mussels off the coast of Toba in Japan... well, perhaps not? Except, maybe to me and the author of the post I replied to.
I'll quote a famous Swedish young woman "How dare you?!!" and paraphrase it completely out of context:
How dare anyone judge for anyone else what is meaningful or not?
Upvote and comment on the right things
Is "I love the blue in the third image from top!" something the creator of the images wants to hear, or will all my comments and posts get downvoted for me saying I like it? Maybe not even by the author, but by someone who liked the yellow image better? Dare I unfollow this account whose content I no longer want, or will that put me on a down-vote list? I'll no longer worry.
And the opposite, how to find something nice and cheerful and encouraging to say about a post I'm not interested in or completely disagree with? I'll no longer worry about that either. If I have nothing nice to say to a post, I'll just drop out of that day's "upvote and comment" contest instead of spending half an hour staring at it and then adding a bland "nice day, keep it up" to the other forced comments.
Right or wrong, I'll keep commenting on and upvoting the posts that interest me, even if spending the same % upvote would have earned me twice as much somewhere else. The point of upvotes isn't to earn me stuff, but to show appreciation for someome else, right?
Frontends
Sorry all of you who favour one over the other. Work harder to convince me. I mostly use one to post, another to handle my tokens, and a third one to read longer posts on because it's so much more legible.
Tags and communities
Those still have me confused, and I have to look them up for every post I wish to make. One community demands I put their tag first and never crosspost anything I posted there, another community with the same interests loves crossposts but demands I put pics of myself to prove I'm me, and a third that I only post in English and make a separate post in another language. Enough to make anyone dizzy!
Some tags have to be among the first 5 to count, some can be anywhere. And different frontends apparerently lets one add a different amount of tags, so there can be 10, 15 or even 20.
I wish there was an "official tags list" website somewhere, where I and others could search for a tag like "pgm" and get the reply https://peakd.com/hive-146620/@zottone444/the-attest-is-finished-stake-pgm-and-go-to-earn-by-voting-engesp
When I joined, "Hive is one big community!" is what I was told, so a simple cooperative website like that is kind of what I expected. But haven't found one yet.
I have been directed to this post by @savvyplayer which is about tip-tokens, many of which allow people to earn by staking. But it doesn't quite answer my questions about when to use which tags.
TL;DR
I said in a comment to another post today, or maybe yesterday already, that my plan this week is to not have a plan. I'll take the day as it comes, and enjoy it.
This post is part of it. Simply saying to myself "I don't have to!" released a whole storm of words!
I'm awed by those who have enough stuff burbling in their brains that they can't help but write one or two or five posts a day, and I completely understand people who rack their brains and discipline themselves to write, just so there'll be one post every day. I can't compete with either of you. But then, I don't have to. I only need to compete with me, and right now the competetion is about how to make the best day for myself - which doesn't include writing a Hive post unless I really want to.
