Splinterland Journey Chapter 5 New Season, Lackluster Rewards, Plan of Minimal Spending

I'm making the commitment here that I will post at least one blog post every day. More than once a day would be preferable. And that under no circumstances would I ever let my RC be at 100%. Because I would just be wasting RC then.
The season ended yesterday and today is a new season. Unfortunately, I never got anywhere near Bronze I and I realized that I wouldn't make it to Silver because there was an hour left. I was able to finish in Bronze II and got 7 season chests.
The rewards were lackluster. I didn't get any lucky drops. What I did get was a bunch of potions, a negligible amount of credits, and no cards.
My daily chest gave me a potion. Nothing exciting to write about.
I've been making about 0.1 to 0.2 DEC per win in Bronze II today even though my ECR is below 40%. It seems like there is more DEC to go around during the start of the new season.
I did something that I regretted. I opened my Chaos Legion pack. I was missing one potion of each type so I bought them and then opened the CL pack. I got 2 rares and 3 commons. And now the 300 airdrop point that I could've gotten every day turned into cards that only gave me 55 points in total.
I feel like pack openings are going to be disappointments unless you have a lot of money to put into them. It was a learning experience for me though as I have never opened a pack before. Now I know they're just not for me as I am a small spender.
I've also shifted my focus on trying to grow my collection and progress in the game by constantly spending to spend as little as I can. I saw someone doing a spellbook-only challenge and that gave me inspiration.
I'm certain that If I just keep pouring money into the account it will definitely grow and stuff, but at that point, it just feels like a Pay-to-play experience rather than a play-to-earn experience and I'd rather play something that's different from all the other games already out, and that's a play-to-earn game so I will try to spend as little as I can and see how far I can go with that.
I can already see it now. A few months from now and generally nothing would have changed and I'll still be in Bronze. But if that's the reality of not investing money constantly into the game then so be it. I'm hoping I can make some HIVES and STPs from blog posts that I can use for the game. It does feel play-to-earn like that since Hive and Splinterland are so deeply connected.
I'll try to get better and go into Silver. Bronze to Silver is definitely a game-changer by all accounts.