I came into steemit looking to make money. I came in mostly not knowing anyone (or anything) and just trying to figure out how stuff works.

I came in with a certain idea of what I wanted to write about and post about.

Some 10 months later, my writing and topics is completely different. I'm writing a lot of short stories, some poetry, some minor sarcasm or semi-insightful essays, and some photography.

As a result, my goals are different. I 'earn' a lot more pleasure and happiness writing/posting about things that I'm mostly proud of, and has value in its own right (outside of the measure of steemit/upvotes).

So while the money is still important, I don't NEED that money to feel some happiness and reap some rewards from my work.

That said, while there is a lot of good content on steemit, it still mostly sucks (right now) as a community network, and Discord is where the real friendships can be made. If I had not stumbled across the couple Discord groups I'm in right now, I'd almost certainly have given up on steemit a long...time...ago.