Steemit has given me the best thing I could have asked for:

^{Image provided by @artzanolino, modified by myself.}

For two full years and a half, I spent my days in classrooms with two dozen surprised students sitting in front of me. I taught them linguistics and English with passion, from the structure of sentences and words to the deep structures of our speech and their effects on our minds.

I did all I could to nurture them, but at that time, all I could think of was fulfilling my duty as a teacher: I woke up at 6 a.m. and could only ride my bicycle back home at 3 p.m.

I could feel my life seeping away from my bones every second, every day, every week, every month.

I learned a lot during that time, but I cannot say that I was fulfilled. My days were filled with frustration and a feeling that there had to be more to life than this. Then, I remembered my childhood happiness when I was in drawing lessons, and I went back to them, I went back to writing, too, and I picked up programming. I quit my job at once because I could not live my life half in frustration and half in joy.

But then frustration came again and did not leave for months: frustration and fear. I syphoned my parents' salaries into my stomach all these months because I could not stand working. If that is not laziness, then what is it? I realised that I would have to find something to do, and that something would most likely not involve drawing, writing or programming, because I was not good at the latter, and the former two are not enough to make a living in any area of life.

These feelings of fear and frustration lasted even after I had joined Steemit and had been here for a whole month. But little by little, they disappeared until this month. Here, in April, 2018, I realised that I am building this account slowly but surely, and that it is right on its way to become enough of an income to live where I want to live.

Imagine this: all of these years I spent them in frustration believing that there was no other way.

And this comes from my whole life before, from more than 20 years of thinking that one has to work dissatisfying jobs in order to get a living. I'm sure that there are thousands more people in that same state, living their lives in a vacuum that extracts their souls little by little in order to please a boss who does not care about them or their livelihood.

Does it really have to be like this? Is it an illusion?

Will the Steem bubble pop and make me lose all that I've earned, all the hope that I found that in the future, I won't need to spend my years feeling dead inside?

I sure hope not, and I hope that this hope that I have is not making me wear pink glasses and a cognitive bias that tells me that everything is alright when it is all falling.

I have been very attentive lately precisely because of this. I am hopeful, and hope brings self-delusion. But I've researched a lot and asked a lot and I have not found signs to counter this, and in the end, regardless of the result, regardless of whether Steem falls, I think that Steemit has given me something undeniable.

I have found an answer to this long question and the realisation has brought with me a strong hope that even without Steem, but a thousand times even more probably with Steem, I will be able to fulfill my dream to be able to nurture myself and to feel good while I earn enough to live. I really feel like I will be able not to fall into that pit again, that I have learned the lesson to value myself and the ways I choose to work, because regardless of how much a job gives, it is not enough if it brings us to sorrow and distress.

And you, what is the best thing that Steemit has given you?

This is post #3 for the 30-day writing challenge hosted by @dragosroua

Previously:

• #1: My Fantastic Journey into the World of Steem
• #2: What would I do if I got 1000 Steem tomorrow?