Hi John. You're doing great. I suggest having a look at the #anarchy tag to read up on your political views.
My advice to noobs is to do an #introducemyself post, then stick to commenting and curating until you have at least 30 followers, preferably more. If you don't have followers, you'll pour blood sweat and tears into a blog post, and very few people will ever read it.
This can be very disheartening.
Welcome aboard, mate :)