Meeting Steemians Face To Face Is A New Favourite Thing!

^{Here's today's post for @future24's Steemit Monthly Author Challenge (SMAC) where I get to make a post about my life each day, for 30 days.}

Yesterday's Steemit Meetup was a little easier to manage than the last one. I was able to get a lift into London and then just the one tube to our destination. It had a whole different feel too. A smaller group of people which meant we were able to talk more easily as a group or one to one.

^{From left to right - James @jJ, Sarah @ultravioletmag, Jay @JayR, Ade @adetorrent, me @gillianpearce, Mike @themikepitt, Enrika @redricka}

We met in the Whole Foods Market in High Street Kensington which, if I remember rightly, used to be a Department Store so we had plenty of space. 😊

There was a lovely welcome for us as we entered the building. Clearly someone knew that Steemit was worth celebrating! 😁

After some general chit chat we got down to business and James gave us an introductory talk and demonstration on how to trade crypto with some good insider "secrets" on wallets, exchanges and bank accounts. Most of it was more than I needed at this point but little by little I'm increasing my knowledge so big thanks to @jJ for a glimpse into a possible future.

Fun and enlightening conversations were had by all, interspersed with lunch, coffee, cake and other snacks.

Sarah explained Minnow Boosters delegation to us which was a little disappointing as it turns out you have to have Steem in order to buy a delegation. Since I only have 1.4 Steem I'm not going to get very far. I toyed with the idea of maybe buying some with real money but I'm still a bit wedded to the game of seeing how far I can get without buying Steem. We'll have to see on that one.

Ade drew me a simplifed idiots guide to trading, on a napkin (if it's good enough for the Beatles - think Hey Jude, it's good enough for me!) 😁 This was a huge help in getting it sorted in my head since I'm a very visual person. I'm hoping next time he will draw me a picture of how author and curation rewards work and what happens with the upvotes on both.

Next thing I knew it was 4.20 and I was late to get back to Wimbledon to catch my lift home. Time flies when Steemians get together.

I hope we can make these meetups a regular occurrence. It's a big help to me to keep focusing on all the things I love about Steemit and worry less about how well I'm doing, what the whales are doing, how I don't know enough etc. etc

I was beginning to feel a little burned out and had started publishing less. It felt like my Steemit honeymoon period was over. But yesterday's get together gave me the break I needed, away from a computer screen and today I feel refreshed and ready to get back into the game!

Thanks to everyone for that and I hope to see you all again very soon. 💙

^{Thanks to @future24 for starting the [Steemit Monthly Author Challenge](https://steemit.com/steemit/@future24/steemit-challenge-idea-the-monthly-author-badget-challenge.
Click on the link for details as to how you can join in.}