Nice to meet you and thanks so much for the support! I've usually written stuff like this in the past, and felt comfortable knowing that my smaller audience gets me and respects my voice. However, having this reach more people (and larger stakeholders) and be well-accepted so far means a lot. I usually assume that I'm blogging to myself to vent frustration/hit the reset button versus effectively reaching a broader audience (my real goal I've gotten used to not reaching until today). Perhaps the combo of the GEMS community and some nice resteems did the trick here to do some good. I haven't this much of a boost on a post in over a year, so I'm happy.
Like you, I never powered down for one second from August 2017 until the JS incident. I'd hustled to earn all my Steem (and Hive) manually without bots (around 7K Steem staked and ~1.5-2K liquid Steem cashed out). After the split, I finally lost that emotional resilience to hold it indefinitely because I saw how vulnerable people's tokens are when staked, especially when bad actors take control, or there is rapid change.
As for your growth, I think being talkative and removed from recent developments is a good thing because you're not going to be biased and thinking like the herd. You can bring fresh perspective, whether the old guard can respect it or not. As complicated and dynamic as these chains can be, people do grow as people from them and their interaction with diverse people from around the world. That's a big plus.
That's also a wise point about silence leaving the stage open for others to steer. I never thought of it that way before. We're still a small enough community that any voice can make an impact with the right persistence and networking. I've met many of the people who lead this place at SteemFest and another conference, so I know they're mostly normal people in person outside of their use of stake/style on the chain.
Thanks again.
EDIT: I also have always been able to buy a significant amount of either token, but I vowed not to so I could learn from the bottom up and respect all as equals. I thought that earning it was the best route so I didn't buy or inflate my influence. I also wanted to know what it was like to be a new adopter to appreciate the process of growth. I didn't expect that growth to be as slow as it was, but I think that this helped me stay grounded. Using my stake for curation wouldn't even have been a thought. It'd be all for helping others, how I've always envisioned the true power of stake.