Exciting morning so far

Well this week is starting off pretty good. With the big scary hard fork coming tomorrow, I decided it would be a good time to invest in about 6,000 Steem. I needed some Steem to purchase Steemfest tickets for my wife and I, and then I just powered up the remainder of it, which put me at about 6200 SP, so I guess I am a dolphin again.

While a lot of people are powering down in protest over this new hard fork and freaking out about the upcoming changes, I am embracing them and realizing that while powering up, I can help people's posts earn a bit more, and now I can also earn some more for my time as well.

As a content creator and an investor in the blockchain, it is nice to know that my investment can make me a bit more than before. While I do understand where some of the content creators are coming from when they are worried about their post rewards going down, I wonder if a lot of them have taken into account the tribes.

With the exception of Creative Coin, which does a 60/40 split, the majority of the tribes have been doing a 50/50 payout scheme since they started, which makes posting and curating in the tribes profitable for everyone. So while your Steem rewards, may seem like they are going down, just remember that you also have a layer of rewards from the tribe tokens as well that you are able to earn, which makes your payouts on your posts much higher than they were prior to the tribes coming along.

I just purchased mine and my wife's Steemfest tickets! We can't wait to get there to Thailand. The picture above is from the floating markets in Bangkok. It is one of the many things that we cannot wait to experience there. I learned my lesson in Poland last year when I didn't give myself any time before and after Steemfest to enjoy the country I was in and be a tourist, so I made sure to schedule about a week extra. That won't even be enough time for us to do what we want to do there.

Many people think that Steemfest is a waste of money and it is just a group of "rich" Steemians getting together to circle jerk each other. This really couldn't be further from the truth. If you ever want to get excited about the potential that the blockchain has, or get informed about all of the new and upcoming projects that are coming, Steemfest will do that for you. It is also pretty awesome to be surrounded by like minded people that come from all sorts of backgrounds and hear their different stories about how the blockchain has impacted their lives and how they have been able to change other people's lives using Steem.

The friendships that you make here on Steemit are pretty awesome, and then when you meet some of these friends in person it is incredible. When you interact with these people in your posts by rewarding and supporting them, hang out with them in the different discord communities, and then you meet them in person, it is like meeting a life long friend. It just shows that the friendships that you make here on the platform know now boundaries of where you live or any of that.

Rusty has been getting bigger each day and getting stronger. He is still a lot smaller than his brother Keiichi, but doing better each day. Whenever he sees a bottle, he knows that it is feeding time and he gets super excited. When I was prepping his bottle, he was on the counter with me and he dunked his whole head inside the kitten milk powder can and tried to eat the powder. I wish I had my camera for that one.

It is a pretty bonding experience to bottle feed a baby kitten, especially one that was so close to being losing his life. I am glad that we took this little guy and his brother in. Rusty is a fighter and is full of life. I am going to be introducing his brother Keiichi soon, but I wanted to make sure to let everyone know how special Rusty is.