You gave me my "honeymoon" period when I first started here. I was, of course, someone with no following looking to restart my life of babbling about video games after stepping away from (and burning) professional bridges in that industry.
Five (or is it six) years later, I'm still here, worryingly only up to the letter "F" in my Steam library, attempting to document a man's journey to try and play every PC game he owns alphabetically.
I don't think I possessed the eyes or hands of any one individual to come along to the Steem (as it were) or Hive blockchain (as it is) to write, or create content, but the amount of human connection, and the absolute permanency of everything etched into this digital ledger is what keeps me constantly coming back to its front door.
To see people, and their creations.
It is is better when those creations aren't about the platform itself, but are real, hard hitting stories, and boy have I read a lot of really interesting personal accounts and anecdotes on this blockchain. I hope to read many more of these human stories in the years to come.
Yeah, I remember you being a friend of the other aussie's on the platform (I think) and aside from your gaming content you did some great photography. Similar to you and taraz for instance I invested my voting power in you in the hopes that A. You'll stick around and B. You'll use it to curate for further distribution and not just spend it on yourself or just on a few buddies like some do.
One of the advantages of doing manual curation is that you can keep tabs on the accounts you're supporting on your feed, if they start doing well on their own you can lay off your votes for a while, etc. The disadvantage is of course also that the authors may feel like you don't like their content anymore or that you've forgotten about them which the latter often is the case due to timezone or other things you may not see them in your feed for a period of time.
But yeah, glad my voting power didn't go to waste in your case, cause through the years for many, it unfortunately has and now they're just gone with the stake which most likely just landed in another whale's pockets on or off-chain and won't do distribution any favors.
In my case I found it all getting reinvested in my craft. I did cash out some stuff, got new cameras, but always make sure new work gets posted here as well. In all honesty, most of my stake went into Splinterlands. Vices. :D