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True. That's the great thing about SteemIt: although I don't really feel like meeting my real-life friends, I indeed have quite some people here I consider to be my friends - in spite of the fact that I've never met them :0)

howdy today @simplymike..sorry this is so late, it's probably the middle of the night there but I wanted to ask you what you meant by this "I don't really feel like meeting my real-life friends." you just mean right now at this time? you want to be left alone?

It's the coping with the loss of the cat that makes me not want to socialize with people in real life right now.

But it happens quite regularly that I hold off other people. My friends are a delight, but because I'm pretty hypersensitive, social encounters take up a lot of energy. I pick up every little signal - whether it is something they say, or just what they don't say, or the way they say it. And then there are al the non-verbal signals...

Since I haven't been at the top of my game for the last 10 months (depression, pain, sadness, surgery etc.), I often don't have the energy to deal with all that on top of my own stuff.

howdy today @simplymike..oh I completely understand why you would want to avoid people while going through all that painful stuff.

Then steemit becomes even more important because you don't have to worry about non-verbal signals and most people here truly care about you and share your pain and heartaches.

thanks so much for your reply, thoughts and explanations.

True. When interacting on SteemIt, everything is quite clear. There are no intonations, no non-verbal signals... everything is pretty straight-forward. It'srefreshing, really. And although it still takes up some energy, I get quite a lot of positive energy in return :0)

howdy again @simplymike! yes Ma'am I find the same thing about postive energy return, it's rather remarkable but then I've never been on a social media site before so I don't know if this is typical or not, have you been on fb or anywhere?

I'm still using FB for personal stuff, and I've been using almost every social media site you can think of before, when I still had my biz.

But SteemIt is different. For me, it started out as another marketing opportunity, but it became very personal pretty quickly, lol.
On my personal FB account, I only have my real life friends befriended, so they are kind of obliged to send me positive energy, lol. On SteemIt, every single person I talk to is a complete stranger - there's no one I have ever met in real life. I have never really been a comunity-minded person, but the SteemIt comunity is something really special, and I've never seen such a thing anywhere before...

howdy today @simplymike! well isn't that interesting...perhaps there really isn't anything like it anywhere else, that fact would lend itself to the argument that Steemit can be self-sustaining no matter what happens in the crypto markets.

Ya'll are so experienced here..and you are an entrepreneur! What was your biz or is it still?