Holy cow about the uni costs. What a blessing. I have not done that well by any means, but steemit has been a big help to my finances since about Nov 2017. I got in a year after you, so I was not here for the glory days of the first year. But I was here last year for the price rise and took out a lot of money that helped me and my son enormously.  

This is one of many platforms I am posting in. I do not "believe" in steemit to an extent that I would hold wealth here. The shenanigans are too many and too hard for me to understand, and I do not care enough to try. Today alone, I found two new scams going on and I only looked long enough to find out how to protect myself from them.

The fact that less than 40 anonymous and somewhat unscrupulous and mean guys hold 80+ percent of the value here gives me no interest in "investing." The fact that the place is too hard for most content creators to last more than a month tells me the issues are too big to overcome. The 90% kill-rate for people who try here is a dismal stat no one really cares about. 

But I personally am doing well enough to continue and these are the positives for me.

I'm using steemit as a place to:
- get my natural weight loss message out to the world
- make friends online and in person
- make current income; try for more than that
- learn about crypto in general
- learn technical details and skills in blogging and video making. 

All of that makes this place worth my while. One of my goals that I do pretty well with is connecting with my steeming friends in other online places. That way if I wake up one day and the place is gone, I will still be able to find them :)