I Need a Little Humor Right Now

Me:
But I never powered down, not even once. I invested real money in STEEM and always powered up my earnings. I'm a long term supporter of this platform and its technology.

Dude with the clipboard:
Yes, I'm afraid DASH, yes DASH was the correct answer. You should have been investing in Dash.

---

Sadly, I don't have any Dash. Or Ethereum (I bought some once but then sold it again). Actually, since early 2013, I've been mostly a bitcoin maximalist. I played around with other coins here and there, but never invested much. Steemit was it for me. The perfect combination of vision, technology, and philosophy that clicked and got me thinking beyond the Bitcoin blockchain.

Sometimes I feel like I backed the wrong horse. I've been meaning to get some Dash, Ethereum, Monero, Zcash, and the like, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe the recent price rises will come down, and I can jump in a bit. Maybe they will just continue to rise as the dollar collapses. I don't know. At least I paid off my house.

To make this post a little more valuable than just a some humor and me processing my various stages of grief at Dan's departure, I thought I'd highlight something which has been helpful for me (bah, I guess I am still just going through the stages). Check out Dan's recent comments:

https://steemit.com/@dan/comments

There are a few that stand out to me:

I never give up

(in regards to working on blockchain technologies)

New opportunities to pursue my vision of free market solutions to secure life liberty and property.

Ned's the captain. I'm the engineer. I build ships for others to sail. Steemits future depends on web development more than anything else and that is not my skill.

I proposed removing it. It was rejected.

(very interesting story here if you've been following the concerns over the "open source" nature of Steem and the closed aspects of its license)

Also... Aliens?

I have also seen impossible flying objects doing instant 90 deg turn and disappear over horizon.

Ah yes, humor. Another great way to deal with grief.

I really appreciated this personal reply to me:

You and I both. Steem is dominated by politics beyond my ability to control or fix. The code is in good hands, the team is more than capable of implementing any thing the community desires. lets hope the community choses wisely.

Dan is a genius. He's amazing with computers, as I've already talked about, but he may not be amazing with people. The struggle was probably too much. That said, another aspect I find interesting is the use of the world control.

Imagine for a moment you're orders of magnitude smarter than most people around you. You see them doing things you disagree with because, well, you're smart and you're convinced you're right because of your intelligence. At what point would you need to control others in order to save them from themselves? If you have kids, you know how tempting this can be. It's easy to have a pure, idealistic philosophy, but when it comes in contact with reality and impacted wellbeing... what then?

Control is, I think, ultimately an illusion.

I wish the best for Dan, I really do. I hope he continues to be successful in his vision to build "free market solutions to secure life liberty and property."

I also hope he doesn't leave a trail of uncompleted projects behind him as early investors and miners get rich off later investors.

I'm trying not to judge without context and understanding of what was really going down. All I can do is process my own emotional responses. I hope a bit of humor and some reflection on the last things Dan has said can help you process yours as well.

Peace.

And for now... since there's no other project I know of to compete... I'll continue to Steem On.

---

Luke Stokes is a father, husband, business owner, programmer, voluntaryist, and blockchain enthusiast. He wants to help create a world we all want to live in.