@stellabelle I want to thank you for this article as well as the last conversation I had with you. Im happy to be able to understand this whole thing a lot better... after you spoke about being an owner not an employee, I thought long and hard about that. Its a simple concept with a difficult string of misunderstanding attached to it. literally everything in this article is so important for content creators to hear and understand. I don't think people fully understand what it means to be a "content creator" ON STEEMIT...im still in the process of understanding it.. especially the newbies!. its impossible for a newcomer to come on to steemit and understand the value system here but this is so important to understand. there are so many answers and solutions in this post and I'm lucky enough to understand this now, but many people are so far lost in the bullshit to even ask the right questions. I think the big thing that happens to people when they join, is that they see the dollar signs next to trending posts and then become obsessed with trying to make money and gain followers.. This is an easy thing to have happen. thankfully for posts like this and certain people with the right knowledge and intention, it can be addressed and there can be effort put forth to prevent people from slipping into that.. just like this article^ . I was unable to work on more content for the past week due to escaping the hurricane but something quite interesting happened in that time frame. I had less time to create posts but more time to stop and read peoples posts and articles anytime I had the chance to rest. this comment is the first time I've had a chance to provide real feedback, but sometimes being forced into timeout and only able to read and shutup is very beneficial. I got to silently connect with my followers/following on a deeper level and read through tons of different posts.i even found some more creators to follow.. this made me appreciate and value the "team" apspect of all this. Sure I see peoples posts regularly but this was different.. I read through tons of articles and different categories/ tags appreciating the knowledge and creativity of the community on a deeper level, WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO CREATE SOMETHING NEW MYSELF. I was able to forget about ME for a while. There is so much potential and brains here in steemit that it almost blows my mind. If the right circles(team/teams)of people unite and create, this dreamworld will be an unstoppable land of miracles and "fairy dust" lol. its so true.. steemit is legit something that feels un friggen real.. WE HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER. WE !!not ME or YOU but US. Slowly but surely my mind is shifting from "how do I make money" to- "lemme get my steam power up so WE can rock this shit and keep creating" .. This is a mind shift that is making a huge change for me. I believe that this is the survival of the fittest (in a certain sense), with the fittest being the most selfless and the most creative... and maybe a couple of other things lol. Now that I rambled for a while I should probably end this but I just want to let you know that through this article and a conversation you've helped me have a mind shift thats incredibly important and I believe that that others can also have the same shift.Im resteeming this so my followers get to see this also..I want this to impact as many people as possible.. I too want to write an article similar to continue pressing the subject matter so people continuously see the importance of this and it hopefully gets reinforced. Have an awesome night!