How many other deaths am I not aware of? Did those people I unfollowed recently perish in the intervening years?
I try to do that once in a while and most of the times i get sad. It's like a small part of you is missing. I really enjoyed talking to specific people, i knew and they knew that most of the times each of us posts somethings the other one will read it and make a comment. Thus, it felt awesome having some let's say regulars that you will exchange a few words, learn about them a bit more and slowly but steadily bond together.
On the other hand i get it though. I will talk about myself first. Like 4.5-6 years ago, it was the time that i was extremely active, spending like 4-6 hours daily. Now, for the past 3-4 years i have limited time which means i can make 2-3 posts per week and a few comments, and i was the guy that posted daily and made like 100-150 comments per week, and i mean actual comments reading everything.
Priorities change, i know people who simply don't earn enough and therefore prefer to let's say having a second job rather than being in here, others had kids, faced health issues, and the list goes on. It's always sad, though, to see people disappearing.
As i said multiple times since the Steemit days, i came for the money (like everyone in my opinion) but i stayed for the community! (and still made no money :P )
I am in that frenetic phase of reading everything I can and posting everything I want. I have ... half a dozen draft and probably even more half draft posts that I want to finish, and I am constantly having more and more ideas.
And I am feeding off the writing of other people, which is in turn inspiring me.
It is like an artist's residency. The more I put into HIVE, the more I can creatively extract from other people's ideas, their feedback, their criticism, and their thoughtfulness, which leads to a sort of feedback loop where we all lift each other up higher as creatives, as human beings.
It is a hard thing to articulate, but it is a really nice and warm, fuzzy feeling.
At the moment, I don't have a job, so I don't treat hive like one, instead, I treat it as my "pub", or "bar", to have as many conversations with as many strangers as I possibly can.