Trust and Guilt and Self-Esteem - A reflective approach on my Pre-Sale-Spending.

Prologue

4 days ago, on may 7th, the DAO posted that they broke even with their investment.

That was exciting. Since then, the spending has gone up 1,7 Mio. $$$, so the DAO made a very nice 45% return on investment so far - and some big players are still holding their feet still before jump on the train. My bet was that we reach 2 Mio. $$$, meaning, 2,000,000,000 DEC. Almost there.

The Top 6 is contributing with 350,000,000 until now, so over 20%. The Top 20 holds 660,000,000 Pre-Sale-Point, almost 40%. That's concentration of power!

Looking at that made me question my own contribution in many ways. Why did I spent so much? Is it fair for me to spend so much money on a game? Was I being egoistic with that?

My part

I'm at 2,800,000 Points, meaning that I spent 2,800$. A part of that is from my HIVE-earnings, but most is from my savings. To put that into perspective:

I live and work in Ecuador. Minimum wage, benefits excluded, is $470 here. I spent almost 6 months worth of salary. That's the kind of money that could change a family's life. A few years ago, that was the kind of money that would change my life, and it's still worth a few months of saving up for this.

But I'm good now. I explained it in posts before (Post 1 is about financial goals, and Post 2 is about how to live with financial freedom). The bakery is running well, a few side hustles are getting me extra cash, and on top there are the passive income streams.

Trust

First I want to talk about Splinterlands. I got into the community 2021 for the first time, dropped out, and came back last year to find that many things had changed to the positive. And they kept changing to the positive. I got in touch with many of the high-society, the ones in the Top 20 of the leader board. They took the time to explain many things to me.

The more I understand, the greater is the fun that I have in the game. It's not an investment to me, I don't expect to make an amazing return like Mondroid described in his post about rebellion , I think that's only possible if one really spends 10k or more. But I will monitor my income and development of value.

In that time, the team earned my trust. I don't necessarily agree with everything, and there's a lot to be done to fix many smaller issues. But I'm sure that they'll get to that, together with this community. Even though I'm not a big fish, I feel like I have a say in things, that my comments are read (and most of the time corrected, as I'm still getting things wrong) and taken into account.

I trust in that the team will keep up the good work. That the huge amount of money I gave them in exchange for bits and bytes will be in good hands, and will be repaid with more fun than I expect.

Guilt and Self-Esteem

So many people around me need money, and I spend so much on a game. At first, that didn't feel right. But I thought about it - and I still have enough to give out more interest free loans. Just yesterday $300. In total, I'm owed around $5000, so spending around half of that for me, for my pleasure, for my well-being (yes, SPL creates that for me, both playing and writing this blog), for my leisure does not sound so bad anymore.

It's a way of giving myself something back. I burned out establishing my business, fought and struggled so much over the last 10 years, had to pick myself off the ground several times, always gave more to others than to myself on all accounts (money, time, energy). Reflecting on that, I think it's okay.

And now?

I got enough promo-cards to play in Gold League, and a extras in case some turns out gold foil. That would be funny, having exactly 6 copies of Gramel to get to level 3 - but one is gold foil. Now I'll have one extra to rent out. I hope that my investment will give me enough points in the Conflicts to also win enough of the Legendary-Archons. The ones from Rebellion were way too powerful to ignore, so I rather get some as extra for my previous investment.

I hope that I can keep building my stake in Splinterlands in a way that will let me participate even better in the next edition, or mini-edition. My Hive-Blog-Return is getting better, and I was able to finance around 100,000 DEC of the pre-sale with it.

So, I see this as seed money. I planted it, and hopefully it will make me a lot more, so next time I can spend double and finance most of it through the ecosystem itself, without using too much of my savings. And who knows, maybe I get lucky and get one of those Black-Foils-Arcana, to bring me $10,000. That would be a nice return.

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!

If you don't play the game yet, you can use my referral: Click here for referral :-)