You do matter! But I understand. People always focus on the messenger rather than the message. They turn others into heroes, emulate them, treat them like something much larger than life. This has been a strange predicament for me as well.

I want to share my music but as soon as I get on a stage I feel my image becomes equally important to everyone. I ignored my image and had a lot of arguments with venues, and when the venues accepted my way of doing things, my resistance to focusing on my image became my image. I felt a lot of people who talked to me didn't really understand the music, they just wanted to talk to the guy who could move a crowd. So now that I'm on steemit and I have a chance to share my writing with more anonymity, I take it. I think once I have a bunch of friends here and I establish myself as an equal with big fish but more importantly with small fish, perhaps I will share more about myself, maybe even a picture....but I will only do so out of the desire to connect with others here, trying hard not to use it in any way to gain celebrity.

As far as the money.....I never feel guilty for receiving anything...in order to give more freely, it helps to receive freely..... unless it directly takes away from people who could obviously use it much more than I can....in a place like steemit hat is rarely the case because even a large payout usually isn't really that much of a dent in the dailyreward pool. If you feel guilty about it why don't you just donate that money to users who you feel really deserve it and don't get enough of a payout? Are you worried people will like you even more? I wouldn't try to avoid that when you are just being you.

Anyway, good to have a conscience about these things, so glad to read your post.