Thank you for sharing!
You're right, the community here and many other advantages than just the payouts are for many already much better than currently existing centralized platforms. I am glad you've had a nice experience here and I hope it will only get better for us all in the near future. My first year on Steem I had only managed to collect around 8k SP (this was when price was 7 cents, too) as I was focusing on curation and engagement. It's gonna get exciting once we start reaching new heights again, hopefully. :)