Thank you for pouring your heart out in this post. Many won't read in its entirety. Since taking a redundancy package from my corpo employer in April, Hive has been the place to which I've turned for entertainment, engagement, social, and brain food.
Hive is all about the immutable connections between human beings. Some people on chain get this. Others want to establish a business, to extract, or to add value, depending on their own world views.
On the balance though every single day I see people post amazing, heartfelt stuff that other people (who they have likely never, or unlikely will ever meet) exchange stories, words, and tiny little love hears (on peakd at least) that give value to social interaction.
Sure, we all have our diverging, disagreeing points of the view, but to me the value of hive has always been (and at times, with great peril) - an immutable place where what you write stays.
Anything that you write is a reflection of who you are at that moment in time, and people are, in spite of what things in the past tell us, capable of growth and change.
We morph and change as we gain experiences, and as our bodies cry out for something different, and our minds begrudgingly prod us to investigate different ways of doing things.
We all need a break. We all need a moment in the mist to reflect and grow. One of the most annoying things about my old, corpo job was the fact that no one ever stopped to reflect, analyse, and ask "Did this thing that we do really work?" before moving onto the next thing.
The more that anyone can form a long term strategy (though - good luck in crypto, it moves so fast) - the better off people will be.
To me, since I joined steem, all those years, ago, and jumped from one fork tyne to the other, the immutability of this place, and the records that it can hold of truth to a moment is what keeps me coming back.
So many people do not see it as that, and while many view the Internet as ephemeral, odds are - even if it is not visible, corporations are holding onto that data and will give it to anyone who comes along with a large enough wallet.
By publishing content on hive, it is instantly devalued - because it will be there forever, and publishers in the traditional world will never usually want to touch anything that has been ever published anywhere.
As a result, there's a certain modesty and humility that comes with offering up content to hive, and transferring the outputs of my own persona to a blockchian, that will - with luck, out live me. I am sorry that it outlived many members of your family.
I am certain you know how much these chain means to so many people, but I wanted to articulate my views, and to remind you of some of the core reasons the "Every-day" user (not that I am suggesting you've forgotten!) uses hive, and the value it can bring to community, and that, through the power of people writing about their experience, and reading about those of others - the world can be a better place.
Thanks for everything you do.