You know who's been powering down?

Me.

You know who's been delegating their own Steem Power to a bot?

Me.

And you know who still received a delegation of Steem Power from a good Samaritan?

Me.

That just doesn't make sense, does it?

I would have never delegated SP to me...

If I had checked @connecteconomy's wallet and seen that she's powering down, okay, I might have still considered delegating to her, because maybe she needed it for something urgent and I could now help her out by replenishing it for a while. A very non-judgmental person might have done that.

But if I then had noticed that she's given her own SP away to a bot - no way! She obviously doesn't need it / want it / appreciate it. Right?

In my defense, I did both with good intentions:

1. I started powering down around 4 weeks before Steemfest. I had decided very late to go to Lisbon and since I was a little short on money, I thought, hey, I can pay for it from my Steemit earnings! Of course it takes 13 weeks to power down, so I advanced myself the money and wanted to pay me back week by week. That's why the powering down is still going on. Of course, with the SBD being so high at the moment, and Steem, too, I have paid myself more than back by now.

2. I met the @boomerang people (well, one people) at Steemfest, and since I hadn't been posting and voting much just before Steemfest, I thought it would be good for the community if I delegated my SP to them. This way it would circulate and be useful for those who needed it, even if I didn't have time to hang out on Steemit. And I would make a few Steem cents in interest - I considered that a win:win. Also, I like to experiment. I can always review later and see if it truly made sense or not.

Steemfest changed everything

For many of us, I guess.

I don't remember why I wasn't so engaged in the weeks before Steemfest. Maybe I was busy, or maybe I had Steemit-fatigue. That happens. Especially to minnows.

But of course once you've met people in person and Steemit has a face and so many hearts, all of a sudden, something completely shifts. I have been here pretty much all day every day since then, I think. Some days I even post more than once. And if I don't post, I'm all over other people's posts, commenting and having conversations. So there's really no reason anymore to give my Steem Power away.

New Year's Steemolution: I'm taking my power back!

So, since I've noticed that I received a delegation, I couldn't stop thinking about Steem Power.

And in a reverse psychology kind of way, my delegator unconsciously forced me to do the right thing and course correct a bit.

You know, when I joined Steemit, I had very soon resigned to the fact that I'll never be a whale and all I want is $50 per month to invest and I'll be happy. I've been reaching this amount consistently, so I was pretty happy. I therefore never really focused on SP a lot, except for investing around $500 in the very beginning, just to make my vote worth something.

My vote has been worth $0.12 recently.

In the past few days I was thinking how much of a difference I could make to newbies, if it would be worth at least $1.

I've been bringing quite some people to Steemit, and it's sad to see how quickly they give up. I want to prevent that.

So I'm going to focus a little more on accumulating SP from now on, so I can help them earn more and stay.

Doing the math

In order to have my vote be worth $1, I would need 6,500 SP. That's a little out of my reach to buy.

Also renting Steempower - which I learned about only this week - seems incredibly expensive at first sight. Maybe it does make economical sense and provides a huge ROI, but it's not something I can risk to test at the moment.

So that part was a bit depressing at first, I have to admit :) but then I put myself in the shoes of a complete newbie and I remembered that even a $0.30 vote makes a big difference, too. So that's what I'm going to aim for.

$0.30 feels like a realistic goal, even though it might take me 8 months to get there. I think I can do 100 SP per month. That will increase my vote by $0.02 every month. If I don't reach 100 SP with my posts, I'll just buy the rest.

If the SBD / Steem ratio remains as it is now, that should be easily possible. Maybe I can do it even faster, but I don't want to stress myself with unrealistic goals.

This starts NOW!

I'm a big believer in starting with New Year's resolutions already in the old year, because it's proven that it's way easier to continue something, than to start something.

I am happy to report that my upvote has grown by $0.02 already today. Here is what I did:

1. I powered my powered-down Steem right back up. Luckily we have free blockchain and don't pay for back-and-forth transactions like this :) I will do the same with the remaining power-downs (or is there a way to stop them?)

2. I cancelled my delegation to the @boomerang bot, but I want to say that I still think it's a great tool - especially if you don't have a lot of time to spend on Steemit. It will still continue for a week, but then I should get it all back.

3. I sold some of my SBD on Bittrex and bought 70 Steem, which I powered up right away.

So there we go. This feels good! :)

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Thanks to @decuration, @lichtblick, @stellabelle, @cryptoctopus, @boomerang and @blocktrades who all made me seriously think about this topic this week.