Minnow Of The Week : The Journey So Far

I completed 50 days on this platform today, YAY! It's been 50 wonderful days here and the learning graph has always grown a little each day. This post is my entry in the contest hosted by @runicar . It's a great initiative by her as it will help the minnows to get recognition and showcase their talent. I do hope more and more people participate and tell their amazing stories. Here goes my story :

* INTRODUCTION :

My name is Samridhi and presently I reside in Bangalore, India. I've been working as a Software Developer in a startup here for the past 2.5 years. Being a developer and that too in a startup, half of the day goes into writing code and debugging. But lucky for me (or unlucky) I'm an insomniac. Sleep doesn't come easily to me. So, after office this is what I do : I blog, I paint, I write poetry, I cook, I read and the list goes on. I'll let out a secret today: I'm an introvert. This is why writing helps me tell all the stories and share all those thoughts which I want to. Writing comes naturally to me but when it comes to meeting people, I always tend to make excuses and not show up! I'm also a prolific traveller. Infact, if I haven't travelled for more than a month, I start getting restless. I always go to peaceful places and avoid the crowd. Traveling helps me get my peace back and the relaxation that I need. I also love to learn more about the history, culture and tradition of other places. In the future I hope to visit each continent atleast once and learn more about the various places. If you want to learn more about me, here's my introductory post :
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@hungry-nomad/hey-steemians-a-newbie-here-from-india-introduceyourself

* HOW DID I COME ACROSS STEEMIT :

Since I am very active on Facebook, I keep posting my paintings, poems, photographs, restaurant and travel checkins/pictures. So one day, I got a message from my one of my college friend. He suggested me to start writing blogs as I keep traveling so much and have so many topics and content to write. It's not that I have not tried before. Over the years, few of my short stories, poems and blogs have been featured in a few site but nothing big has ever happened. Usually the blogging sites that I have come across have either asked me to pay to get my work published, or to have my own blogging site with minimum xyz followers. Some of them were very specific : They needed only blogs on a particular topic with a lot of terms and conditions. I was looking for just 1 platform which helps me blog about anything that I want. Be it poetry or painting or photography or travel. So, when I told him about all these issues, he asked me to checkout Steemit. And I'm so glad that I did! Two days of researching, reading about steemit, and here I was!

* MY GOAL ON STEEMIT AND THE VALUES THAT I AM BRINGING TO THE COMMUNITY:

Both these topics are inter-related for me. In the process of achieving my goal, I will be bringing great values to the community. Well, I have so many mini-goals which will finally help to achieve the main goal : Get Steemit More Recognition And Appreciation That It Deserves. Steemit provides a great platform to learn so much and help others to do the same. Any topic that you are looking for is right here on Steemit. Personally, I am aiming to bring out quality content related to travel so that if someone reads the blog they should feel like they have already visited the place. My goal is to interact more with people (which I do on a regular basis), learn more and share more with everyone as well and make sure the the quality of my content only goes higher and never degrades. I also flag and downvote people who are just misusing the platform and posting irrelevant content or spamming everyone else. All this will help in achieving the main goal. I am also saving up to buy my own DSLR to improve the pictures that I take. The main goal can be achieved only when everyone puts in there best work and help improve the content quality on Steemit.

While following all the mini-goals, I will be aiming at welcoming newbies, encouraging them, interacting with as many people as possible, downvoting and flagging spammers and nuisance makers and post only worthy content in my blogs. By doing all of these, I will be helping to not only remove the spammers but to also encourage people who actually have great stories to offer. All this together will help to add great value to the community.

* HERE'S WHY I DESERVE TO WIN :

Being a minnow, it's very hard to get noticed. Even then from day 1, I've been aiming towards my goal which I've mentioned above. My First Post is a proof of the effort that I take to write a blog. Even with such a hectic work routine, I make sure to dedicate atleast sometime each day to Steemit. In a mere 50 days time, I have managed to gain more than 300 followers and interacted with people over more than 400 posts. This just shows my dedication towards the platform. I've also made sure to promote any kind of contests and challenges which are organized. This not only helps more people to participate and get the best work rewarded but also provides users with a chance to find people with similar interests. So far I have participated in a number of painting, poetry, photography, caption, steemit world map, quiz, stories etc challenges. This just goes on to show that I've actively participated and given quality work in all the challenges. Which at the end of the day, adds to the community's value. Unfortunately, as a minnow I am able to reach only a handful of people. This is why I feel that I need to win so that I can reach out to a wider audience. Even I want to help the newbies but since I am one of them, presently I don't have the number of followers or steem power to help other minnows out. If I do win, I feel all this will change and I can make a better contribution to Steemit and make it reach the zenith of success!

* MY BEST POST :

Here's a link to my best post (according to me!) :
https://steemit.com/travel/@hungry-nomad/a-visit-to-ooty-ooty-ooty

This post will also show the effort I take to write a post. I wrote small descriptions of all the places along with images. I even made sure to attach it to the Steemit World Map. Since I wanted more and more people to be able to read my blog and learn more about the places, I made sure to even use a translator to write a short description about the place in Japanese and Chinese. Unfortunately, like I said before, only few people viewed it. Here's hoping that in the near future, I'll be able to reach the goals which I have set.

Cheers!