Looking back on my first year on Steemit after reaching 1000 followers - A Self Review And A Thank You.

Gday all recently i passed by a hard worked for mile stone of 1000 followers, in under the year iv'e been on steemit iv'e had this goal visualized for some time now when I first started out here, iv'e had a few missteps along the way and had slower than normal months but I always believed I could get to this number, of course now the number goes to 2000 that I hope to achieve before the end of the year but in coming up to my first year on Steemit I had some thoughts and insight I thought i'd share with everyone about how the past year has been for me and where i'm going to go from here, so consider this a self review and a thank you note at the same time, so lets begin with how I initially joined Steemit and where my journey has taken me so far.

Foray into politics and the beginning.

During the wild west of crypto's a friend suggested Steemit, a writing based platform that generates currency via your content, as a writer with no outlet I immediately jumped on this and began writing, at first I started small, writing articles about the crypto world and what was happening but I also used my blog to talk about politics, philosophy and a whole host of different things, it was slow going at first, making mistakes a long the way but I eventually found myself quickly becoming addicted to steemit and writing articles, like I said as a writer just having an outlet was an amazing thing and being able to get paid for it was even more enticing, so I began writing every day sometimes twice or three times a day trying to push out content to build my base but I began to notice a growing trend on Steemit, specifically about the whales.

While I understand now that whales have been here for a long time or came to the platform with a following I was growing a tad angry, I was writing massive articles every day and receiving a few dollars while some people were writing the absolute bare minimum and receiving a massive following as well as being circled by other whales upvoting them hundreds of dollars, it was very grating for someone who was only a month or so into the platform, so again I changed my blog in what Iv'e described to myself as the "mini sell out" phase, I began to churn out articles every day that were essentially clickbait to get people in while also producing a big article every day that hopefully would keep people around, for the most part it succeeded every now and then but I began to drift further away from the platform in my frustration.

Looking back I realize now that I was simply trying to break into a trend that was already completely saturated but at the time I felt like my efforts were kind of in vain insofar as that I felt that the whales and dolphins of steemit just circled each other and made each other richer and that breaking into that level might be impossible, so for a few weeks I left Steemit and sort of resigned myself from the platform, but funnily enough it turned out that the money and followers weren't actually what was keeping me on Steemit as I still continued to write on my own social media, it wasn't until a friend mentioned it to me a few weeks later that I remembered what I was enjoying about Steemit, the freedom to write and get content out there and that's really where my Steemit story picks up I began to look at what I was writing and realized I was writing content with the goal of getting noticed and while I did partially enjoy what I was writing it wasn't what I really wanted to do.

That's when I decided to give it another go, only this time I was going to do it with something that i was entirely passionate about and felt needed to be written, that's when I completely changed my blog and entered the 2nd era of my writing on Steemit.

Writing with passion and switching my blog.

While perusing Steemit I was always on the Gaming section of steemit looking at things at the same time I was browsing other sites reading and watching and that's really where the idea struck me, now before I say this I mean absolutely no offense to the Steemit gaming community, but the more I read the more agitated I got, while I was used to the endless shit that was posted on sites like Kotaku or IGN I was beginning to see more of it on Steemit, reviews that essentially went no where apart from "This game is fun" or reviews that were bare minimum being up-voted because of their standing in the community, I'd been writing and talking about gaming for a decade prior to this and I decided why not actually do it myself? every time i'd ever reviewed a game for friends or on my social media it would be met with great response and I never compromised my reviewing standards, so thus an idea was hatched.

I set about writing up a review on a few games and had a few ideas in mind that I would like to strictly adhere to, which I think I have for the most part, there were a few core tenants that I devised.

• Never review a game I didn't like

• Be honest with the people who would be reading it

• Be objective and tell people this was your personal experience with the game

• And never end up like mainstream "journalists"

So I began to write and published my first game review about the reboot of Tomb Raider and surprisingly I attracted a fair amount of attention and then once again with my follow up on the sequel, the next day however I received the biggest up-vote iv'e got for a review on the new Wolfenstein, almost $200.00, at that point I knew I was heading in the right direction, from this point on I went on to write over 300 articles in the space of 6 months, most game reviewers and journalists would probably average around 10 a month, however now I was writing about something i was incredibly passionate about and talking about things that mattered to me, namely the world of gaming, the combination of money and the freedom to be real with people was incredibly invigorating, at the time I was getting paid more than enough to cover my bills and was working a "job" i absolutely loved.

On a side note a very very big shoutout to @curie for effectively launching my blog re-brand.

After nearly 400 articles though I realized I was hitting a wall, i'd reviewed and talked about basically everything in the gaming world, I was actively waiting for games to be released to review them and on a more personal level I was kind of suffering, the sheer amount of content I was pumping out in 2-3,000 word articles a day ruined my right hand to the point it was locking in place at times, obviously I was writing a little bit too much but now I was faced with a strange conundrum, I was now growing and making a living out of steemit but I was running out of content to review on a daily basis, that's when a gift from god came out of no where that was the perfect answer to my problems.

Trying my hand at being a streamer.

I'd always wanted to stream but if you read my articles you would know I had a problem with streaming, platforms like Twitch and YouTube had become bloated and those starting out with quality streams were often left in the darkness and overshadowed by gimmicky streamers or soft core porn streamers, that's when I saw my friend @thegoliath streaming on something called @dlive, checking it out I was amazed I hadn't heard of this product before but one thing really stuck out to me more than most, there was very very little gimmicky nonsense happening, as a new platform people were doing their best to bring out amazing content that instead focused on the game play rather than the streamer themselves, I know that sounds contradictory since the aim of streaming is to get recognized but I was more drawn towards the uniqueness of it all.

Being part of a new thing is also amazing in its own right, I truly believe Dlive will make it big in the streaming world someday soon so being a part of the early days is great and on a more personal level it's awesome because I can stream and get my content recognized a lot easier and against, personally, the fact there is no real rules or T&C's is very attractive to me as iv'e often opined the stupidity of Twitch and YouTube for banning a streamer for accidentally swearing or being "offensive" whatever that means, so this is where i'm at now while I'm still reviewing and want to review more having a stream is incredibly handy now that iv'e hit a wall, it's also allowed me to get to know the steemit gaming community a lot better and have conversations with them on my stream, all though I do wish people would be more interactive on the streams so we can build a more vibrant and energetic community, but hey, early days.

So here I am, what's next?

So it's been an amazing year for me, steemit has allowed me to follow my passion and get paid for it, iv'e met some awesome people and I feel like I have something very stable in my life but the most important thing for me is that I have a place to voice myself and after reaching 1,000 followers Iv'e began to realize I am growing on the steemit platform and that steemit as a whole is growing, iv'e gotten a few real life friends to come over here and i'm even poaching people from other platforms to come and join the community whether it be for writing or streaming, my only regret is that I didn't start sooner, it's kind of funny this feels like a new year to me even though we're half way through the year but I'm not being facetious when I say starting on steemit was a new lease on life for me.

So what can we expect in the future? more of the same to be honest, again I know it sounds contradictory but i'd love to get back more into writing than streaming as it's truly a passionate objective for me, but at the same time streaming is enjoyable and I feel like iv'e cut out a lot of downtown in my life and I no longer feel....apprehensive about playing a game for 8 or 9 hours a day when I "should be writing" and with the amazing support of friends on the platform as well as the aforementioned Dlive and Curie i'm not in a good place, not the best but good, ideally i'd love to get some feedback from people who have been following me, i'm extremely self criticizing and can never tell when i'm doing too much or not enough, so i'd like to ask you guys to give me some feedback negative, positive, whatever, any and all helps me to produce the best possible content.

One thing I do hope to do in my second year on Steemit is to promote lesser known blogs of people who deserve a bigger space on the platform, I don't know exactly how i'm going to do that just yet but I do have a few things in mind but we'll see how they pan out later down the road, but I do want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has helped me grow and supported me, without getting too personal there are aspects of my life that have prohibited me from taking traditional routes of employment such as insomnia or personal pride so the fact that you guys are willing to help me pay my bills through my content is truly humbling and i'm eternally thankful to anybody who up-votes me or resteems me, not only just the whales or dolphins but the guys and girls who have been here giving my exposure or words of encouragement, i'm extremely grateful for all the support you guys have given me.

So even though it's the middle of the year, here's to another great year of Steemit and to everyone's health and well-being hopefully everyone can get to and past the level i'm at on this amazing platform, thanks everyone and as always i'll see you guys real soon with more content and laughs!

Thanks for taking the time to read my article, if you enjoyed it feel free to up-vote, resteem or follow me for more, this was an especially enjoyable article to write so I would absolutely love to get your guys feedback on this, drop me a comment below and let me know what you think, Cheers!