I've been here since April and in that time I've been trying to find my feet, not only in the steemit world but also in the social media blogging world, to which I'm still really new. It's taken me a little while to get to grips with all of the different aspects of these things but I feel now that I've reached a point where I can help to play a bigger and more active role in the community, which I'd like to see grow and become stronger.

So, 2018 will see me commit to spending a more considerable amount of time on steemit than I have been able to until now and I thought I'd begin with a little post to let anyone interested know some of the plans I have for the coming year here.

Writing

First of all, I want to do a lot more writing.

Along with art, writing was one of my passions when I was a young man but over the years, that passion had faded, almost to the point of extinction, until one day I found steemit and realised writing is something I still have the capacity for and I certainly have plenty of things to say. The difficulty I have in my writing is in my lack of confidence but this is improving all the time and I was really pleased with the response to my last written post, Message In A Bottle, which got some really nice comments and gave me a lot of encouragement.

Initially I plan to write briefly on my thoughts about certain subjects and combine this with my desire for a better understanding of the more philosophical aspects of our being in a series of posts I intend to call, The Big Questions.

I don't consider myself to be an intellectual by any stretch of the imagination and I know that I lack a lot in my attempts to think clearly on certain issues, so I plan to try and structure the posts in such a way as to encourage others to share their thoughts and perspectives with me to facilitate discussion which might help myself and hopefully others, rethink, reconsider and/or re-affirm our previously held positions.

I also plan on trying my hand at a little bit of fiction after coming across a post by @adsactly and entering a submission for one of their short story collaborations. Unfortunately my entry wasn't chosen but I plan on developing the idea I put forward and write it by myself. It's been many, many years since I have written fiction, so I'm not exactly sure how this will go but I am looking forward to finding out. If you'd like to see the premise of my idea, you can click here. :)

As well as this, want to further my writing on issues I feel strongly about. I've already written a few posts in this regard but I have a lot more to say on certain issues and in truth, have been held back by the lack of confidence in expressing my thoughts as I want to that I mentioned earlier. From now on though, I intend to overcome this deficiency.

Art

Art is how I got started on steemit, by posting some of my portraits. It's been a while since I've posted my drawings regularly but I plan to do so more in future as well as expanding my horizons a little in terms of the work I produce. I have a few projects in mind for murals, which I'd like to do more of, so plan on recording the process when I do and posting it with the completed work when I'm finished.

Contests

Anyone who knows me on steemit will no doubt be aware that I like to hold the odd contest here and there and that will not be changing in the near future. :)

I really enjoy hosting contests on steemit and try to provide a little value along the way by encouraging others to improve their existing skills or learning new ones, for example drawing in my Learn To Draw With Friends or Daily Sketch contests or gaining experience of trading altcoins on the crypto markets with my Altcoin Trading Championship contest which has just ended, the winner of which will receive 120 SBD.


I think contests have become an integral part of the steemit experience and are a great way for newcomers to introduce themselves to the community. For me personally, they provide a good way of meeting new members as well as increasing my SP and also provides me with the means to give something back to the community by both rewarding those contestants for their efforts by way of the SBD rewards the contests receive and also in hopefully at times providing others with a means of inspiration to create quality, value adding posts.

So contests will definitely have a part to play in the future of my blog on steemit and I plan to introduce a new one in the coming weeks called, 'Comic-Con-Test'. I have a rough idea of how I want to structure the contest but will provide more details when I launch it very soon but there will no doubt be other contests over the course of the year and a second season of the #atc will likely be coming very soon as well. :)

Curation

In 2018, I pledge to spend at least one hour per day manually curating content on steemit. I feel that manual curation is something that the platform needs to try and increase and is often the only way that a lot of quality posts actually get seen. I've been impressed with @clayboyn in this area and plan to emulate his efforts by having my own weekly curation post where I can recommend quality posts that I personally believe add value to the platform or the lives of others.

I think for the time I've had available up until now, I've done a decent job of curating because I actually enjoy reading other people's thoughts and seeing their creative efforts but I still feel that I could be doing more, especially to encourage newcomers. I have tended to stick to my own feed for the last little while since it provides me with a lot of interesting posts to choose from but I think we should all do our part to encourage and support, so I intend to spend a lot more time curating the works of those new to the site in order to further encourage them to continue.

Gain A Better Understanding Of Steemit