In human terms, I’m still drinking milk every 2 hours, pooping as often in cloth or disposable diapers, and crying instead of speaking. But, finally, it's 14.07.2017!! I can do my One-Month-Old recap on my life on Steemit planet!

I've just 300 followers, I don't know it all, but ONE THING!

Quality Content and Genuine Engagement are a minnow’s best bet! What's that? Oh, worming your way into that special chamber of a steemwhale's heart? Good point, but that's terribly hard to do! ;)

Initially, I was misled by more-senior users who dropped F4F and UV4UV comments like bird droppings all over my page. A few of the more rotten eggs showed up on my 'Follower' page to gain my follow only to drop me afterwards like a hot potato.

That’s really one of the unfortunate ugly, thoughtless sides that can be found on Steemit — the existence of superficial users who confuse fresh-faced joiners with their behaviour. Personally, when I first came across these spammy behaviours, I thought to myself, 'Oh, this must be how things are done on Steemit for minnows' and acceded to following them. Thankfully, I didn't stick to that crappy train of thought for long.

These spammers still haven’t got it in their skulls that it’s really not about the hard number. It’s about the depth and quality of the relationships with your followers. Even if you ensnared a thousand followers, if they are all aloof and self-interested, it's really unlikely that they'll bother to head down and checkout your profile nor respond sincerely to your posts. And they really don't give a shit that you spent 20 hours researching, writing, editing, and even translating your wonderful post.

Another thing is that when you add followers without first checking out if their content suits your preferences, your 'Home' feed gets packed full and you end up getting bombarded with an endless slew of new posts each time you click on ‘Home’. And the quality posts from the handful of people that you want to find and peruse? They get sucked down beneath all that sludge. What a sad death. :(

It’s all about the Money, Money, Money. . . NOT!

Yes, we all have to pay the bills, we all have difficulties, or a family, or a community that would benefit immensely from our wallets growing suddenly fat. While cryptocurrencies do seem to get created out of thin air, Steemit is by no means a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes loads of sweat and effort to build a following here. It can get really tiring and draining at times, especially at the start, but everybody has been through that.

Yes, even the popular writers! It might be easy to fall into the resentful pit of, ‘Hey, those trending writers with thousand dollar posts have it so easy. They are already on the whale’s steemvoter or curation trails. They could post a cute puppy picture and still earn a thousand bucks!' So what?! STOP your brain right there, because all that speculation, envy, and time wasted on being green about them in their moment of glory does absolutely nothing to assist you in your progress toward your Steemit goals!

All these trending writers had to start somewhere too (unless it's the baby sister of Dan or something). They too had to work their asses off to get noticed and to get where they are. If you look at their profiles, most of them have their accounts created around 10 months ago (except @trafalgar, he’s just an amazingly charismatic writer).

Upon proper scrutiny of their profiles, it will become apparent that these guys had at least 6 months more of overcoming setbacks and working their aching eyes, strained neck, and stiff fingers to the max! Before they had laurel wreaths to rest upon, they had a pokey bed constructed out of $3-post twigs. So sit up, and work harder on your content and engagement. Maybe someday, it will be YOU that other minnows look at up to with twisted faces of envy. ;)

I repeat, monetary rewards should not be the upmost motivation for our existence on Steemit.

If not the money, then WHAT?

To me, it’s crystal clear. Value creation. For others. And for ourselves. Where there is no value for me, I would be easily demoralised, and low morale would affect the quality of my posts. Where there is no value for others, the sticky effect is lost. My followers, if any, would not be attracted nor enticed to revisit my profile because doing so would be wasting time on my useless content. In this kind of scenario, I would risk losing even the most loyal of followers.

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Highlights of my month on Steemit
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(1) I have been enriched by my experience here.

Well, I’m sure that anyone who is blogging for the first time can say that they've learnt a lot from merely creating Steemit posts. Aside from flexing my muscles of ideating, writing, editing, photography, and content flow management, this technology-noob actually learnt some basic html coding in order to make her posts more reader-friendly!!

Throw in the exposure I have to the experiences and expertise of others and the pit of learning here is virtually bottomless!

I've also gotten to know a handful of solid Steemians who are genuine, talented people with big hearts: @ace108, @ajvest, @allasyummyfood, @brentssanders, @cobalus, @cryptodan, @cryptofrygirl, @doctor.fit, @farmstead, @globalfoodbook, @gococonuts, @hitmeasap, @howtostartablog, @joeyrocketfilms, @kayclarity, @lena-tramper, @lexikon082, @redtravels, @rideofpassion, @sflaherty, @the-traveller, and @whatisnew. All the names are listed in alphabetical order. I'm sorry to anyone that I left out, you are still in my heart! Thinking and typing while in a moving car simply isn't the easiest task. =P

(2) I’m a Steemhundredaire :)

To be honest, after my first four posts shot up to the USD70 range post-HF19, I secretly thought to myself that I might make USD 1,000 in author rewards in my first month! Well, reality hit soon after. First, I was dropped from a curation trail (if that's what it was). I believe I was lucky to have been on one in the first place, but it hurts a little to wonder exactly which content-based mistake I made that got me the ‘hot potato’ drop). Then came the upvote drought and the incredible depreciation of rewards over 6-day periods before payouts that we are facing even today.

This meme reflects a true reality of one of my posts last week.

All these said, I still am happy with the $500 that has been deposited into my wallet over my time here. Actually, if I use the values that STEEM and SBD were trading at when I first joined in my calculations (close to USD 2), I would be almost a Steemthousandaire :))

(3) I got featured five times!

(a) Part 2 of my Maastricht trip travel tale was featured in Operation Curation Delegation’s third Daily Compilation Post. I owe a big thank you to @howtostartablog for the nomination and @acidyo for creating this team of curators to give us minnows a boost.

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Click on the picture below to view my featured article:

Here's the proof! https://steemit.com/ocd/@ocd/operation-curation-delegation-daily-compilation-post-3

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(b) @varunsangwan’s tellyourstory contest named my post ’One Girl. . . on a Path Less Travelled By. . !’ as the winner. I won 10 SBD, but more importantly, I was the happiest girl on earth that day.

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Click on the picture below to view my featured article:

Here's the proof! https://steemit.com/tellyourstory/@varunsangwan/announcing-the-winners-of-tellyourstory-contest

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(c) Steemit Blogger Central (@Steemitbc) featured me as a Steemian of the Day. @Steemitbc is a close-knit, supportive haven of lovely Steemians who share and support posts, and extend a warm hand of friendship to one another. @sflaherty and @cryptofrygirl run this wonderful initiative.

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Click on the picture below to view the article feature:

This artsy photo remake was done by talented founder @sflaherty! :)

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(d) My #WeekendWasted entry took home the winning prize. Unfortunately, @dumar022 will not be continuing this contest after a lack-lustre response. Nevertheless, a big thank you to him for this opportunity and to @ace108 for giving me a heads up to his buddy’s contest in the first place.

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Click on the picture below to view my featured article:

Here's the proof! https://steemit.com/weekendwasted/@dumar022/weekendwasted-we-have-a-winner
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(e) @ace108 also picked my #beautifulsunday post as one of four winning entries in his contest of the same name. His approach to picking winners is somewhat different from others. He tries to give qualifying posts that didn’t get as much visibility or earned low rewards a boost by giving them a prize. Of course, this meant that my article had not been very successful in bursting its head through the flood of posts on Steemit.

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Click on the picture below to view my featured article:

Here's the proof! https://steemit.com/beautifulsunday/@ace108/beautifulsunday-powered-up-winners-one-extra-for-the-week-or-by-ace108

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Thank you for sharing in my Monthsary celebratory post! :) If you liked what you read, please leave a comment and upvote. If you'd like to see more, follow @foodie.warrior. There's lots more where that came from :)

Finally, a big THANK YOU goes out from me to all my readers! <3