Hanae, I appreciate your patience. Of course, there's a time and place for faking it. If you'll forgive me for saying so, however, what I want from you, as your follower, is for you to be real. Speak your mind and heart, using language and photography, as well as you possibly can.

Steemit.com, Busy.org, and the rest of the Steemiverse are set up in such a manner as to reward you more for different things at different points in your Steemiverse career. Early on, like right now, you get rewarded more for upvoting and commenting on the posts of others than for the posts you make yourself. This is deliberate, a design feature, that gives you an incentive to be sociable here and make connections. We are establishing a lasting community that will improve our cultivation of content. We all must act as flowers who are also gardeners.

Reblog posts by other Steemians. Join steem.chat and converse with people. Take time to make friends, and make a name for yourself.

Don't get intimidated by how difficult this platform can sometimes be. We have obsessions here that other platforms don't have. One of our obsessions is originality. Much more so than on other social media, you need to make sure that you created whatever you post here. If you want to share with us your thoughts or feelings about what others have created, that is fine, but you must give credit to those who did the work, and you must add your own discussion, so that something about the post is original to you.

I have followed you because I believe in you, Hanae. I believe you — your writing, your photography, your unique juxtaposition of youthful sojourn in an ancient city — can succeed in the Steemiverse. And followers like me are going to love witnessing your success.

So please don't lose heart. Rest assured.