IT’S 2018 — I’M 42 — DON’T PANIC

Well, here we are just getting started on our journey into the year of our Lord 2018, and Steemit thinks I’m 42.

42, of course, is The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. That’s a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. If you aren’t familiar with the series, I recommend adding it to your 2018 reading list. I promise it will make you healthy, wealthy, and wise, at least in your imagination. And who really knows the difference between real and imaginary? I sure don't. If you do, I'd be interested in hearing how you distinguish between the two.

42 is kind of a joke, but that’s not going to stop me from celebrating it as a Steemit milestone and interpreting its presence at years’ endbeginning as some kind of positive sign about 2018 and life in general. 2017 was mostly a storm for me, with the exception of a few uplifting lulls now and then, because the universe knows that if it wants to really make a man suffer, it has to toss in some glimmers of hope here and there for comic relief. Perhaps this new year of our Lord will be a better year of our Lord.

Anyhow, I’ve been screwing around with Steemit for several weeks now, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and at this point I feel like I have a vague sense of best practices and how to succeed as a Steemian. And a vague sense of anything, anything at all, is all I need to run out the door and start making rash, Earth-shattering decisions about everything.

So moving forward I’ll be recklessly expanding my Steemstyle and posting a lot more than just pictures of mountains with halfwit descriptions appended thereto. Every writer needs a good variety of genres to spread the depression around, right? Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. It's a shot in the dark.

I'll also be leveraging my Steem Power investment in a way that I believe is fair and good for both me and the community as a whole — 80% of my daily voting power will go to upvoting others to encourage and interact with them, 20% will go to paying dividends to myself to keep me motivated. Yes, the 80/20 rule. 8 votes for others, 2 for me. On average. That's the goal, at least for now. Don't worry, I'll only upvote my posts, not my comments. I really think there's a lot of long-term potential in the Steemit platform, if you invest the time and money in it and try not to be a dick about things, so that's what I'm doing.

Here’s to 2018. I'm looking forward to this one. Hope you guys all have a great year, and don’t panic. 🙂

On surviving storms: When the world buries you up to your neck in bad weather, just remember — you can still go outside and play!