david i totally understand that "not feeling a part of the team vibe". yep. as for advice, well some of the first bit of info the dude above did give was good.

https://www.steemithelp.net/ is a great site, and following that steemd is a useful tool, however with steemit having node issues lately, you may or may not be able to use it. In fact a lot of apps are simply not working this last week because of this. Important to know because you might think, "oh im doing something wrong", when its actually the app is down because steemit is updating and fixing shit..

I think steemit.chat itself is a the bog of eternal stench. my advice is to skip it and go straight to discord. there are tons of servers there, but surprisingly the dude above failed to mention the biggest and best, which is PAL, which has close to 8k members. There's also one called Homesteaders Online, which deals specifically with permaculture/farming, etc

My number one bit of advice, before you start churning out top rate posts: work on getting your following up. at least 100 followers. This is best done through awesome commenting like you have done above! Second is networking. Join a bunch of servers and hang in chat. Trade steemit profiles with people you like. get to know people who are influential! Bonus - a lot of them are realllly nice!!

Last bit. Ask. People are usually happy to share info. There are tons of posts on every subject that you can find by googling.. there is a huge learning curve for steemit the first few weeks, so sit back and be prepared to be here for the long ride.