Celebrating two years on Steem! Reflections, trips, moments and insights.

So, it has been a wild two years, friends. I am as thrilled as ever to be here. So much has happened. Friends have come and gone from the platform, and there have been many highs and lows -- but mostly just phenomenal goodness.

I've joined communities, run a long ongoing writing challenge (which comes to an end tomorrow!) and found tags and projects to love, and... oh so much more. My involvement here is ever changing in some ways, and yet the same. I am not going anywhere. Steem is one of the greatest adventures I have ever been on, and I love being a part of this.

I'm not quite sure where to start. I started out as a nobody, and learned and grew and became a dolphin! I'm going to take a quick spin through my time on Steem, and provide some insights for the road ahead.

Thank you @steemitboard for the wonderful badges!

My very first posts

For my very first post, I wrote a 50-word short story for the #fiftywords challenge. It was about something I had actually experienced long ago in Greece, when I stepped off a boat from the island of Crete and found something bizarre had happened in the night while I was sleeping in a berth. People were saying a word I couldn't understand. I had to look it up in my vocabulary book. It was the Greek word for earthquake.

When I posted that, I was such a noob! I had no idea what I was doing. I remember the trepidation with which I clicked Post. At the time the challenge was run by @miniature-tiger. Eventually, I took it over and ran the challenge for a very long time. Then I converted it into a 50-word short story contest. Then I switched it up to a micro-fiction contest with a limit of 250 words. That adventure comes to a close tomorrow as I wrap up it up with a final winner and move on to other Steem-based projects.

My second post was a really stupid meme challenge entry.

My third post was a reflection on the murder of a child I knew.

Called The White Squirrel, the post was a ramble of unharnessed thoughts, and I assumed rightly that no one would read it. I was too new. I had no followers. And I could simply bleed out the pain.

The take-away? Steem is a home for every type of content. It's probably important to identify who you are here, and what you stand for. But if you want to post some fiction, then a meme, then a post on grief, you are free to do so.

Which leads me to....

My fiction writing adventure on Steem

Perhaps I should add up the number of short stories I have posted here. There are many -- probably on the order of 75 or 100. I've never counted.

I have found some phenomenal writing communities here. On the downside, they don't always agree on how to behave, write, communicate, and support the writing journey, and there have been at least three falling outs I know of where groups splintered off. I have left servers where I felt the drama and politics stole my energy and were harmful to my craft. I've never spoken of this, and won't dwell on it here. But it has been a very wild roller coaster ride, particularly on Discord where all the relationships are formed and the chatter happens. On the positive side, dramatic interactions are awesome fodder for fictional character development! People are amazing and interesting, even when they are damaged, even when they hurt others. I never stop loving those I've had to leave behind.

Most recently, I joined @steemfiction and was so excited to be a part of their second publication, Dead Silence, a collection of stories by nine Steem fiction writers.

Thank you to @jeezzle and amazing team that spearheaded this project! Here are the authors:
@jeezzle
@felt.buzz
@janenightshade
@improv
@manoldonchev
@stinawog
@giantbear
@blueeyes8960
@jayna

The Events

The most memorable and powerful experiences I have had since joining Steem two years ago have been the face-to-face, elbow-to-elbow, glass-clinking moments with my fellow Steemians. I've attended local meetups, met with friends for coffee when I happened to be in their area, traveled to meetups in different states, and -- most amazingly of all -- I attended #Steemfest3 last November in Poland.

There simply are no words for the incredible, powerful, emotional, brilliant things that happen when Steemians get together. We are bound by something deeper than mere acquaintance, mere friendship. I am a person of words, and this is where they fail me.

But I'll talk a bit here about #SteemFest (past and future) as well as an upcoming Steem event.

SteemFest 3 retrospective and how to get to SteemFest 4

At Steemfest 3, I learned more than my brain can hold about Dapps and amazing Steem blockchain initiatives. The incredible, talented and super organized @roelandp had multiple speakers, events and outings scheduled all over Krakow! I'm sure he had an army of helpers, but even so I'm not sure how they pulled off such an incredible, multi-faceted event. I must give a shout out to @detlev, who was an incredible host and I know did a lot to help make the event successful. But there must be dozens of people who work together to pull these events off!

Here are a few of the most awesome highlights.

Thanks to @anomadsoul, I stayed in a terrific Air BnB in Krakow with @coruscate, @nomadicsoul and @jeanpi1908, and had the most awesome time with them.

On karaoke night, I walked into a bar in downtown Krakow with a bunch of my Steem friends to find the place packed to the rafters with 50-something Polish men singing Mama Mia at the top of their lungs! I sang karaoke with @daveonarrival, @anomadsoul, @coruscate, @blewitt, @jarvie, @adetorrent, @steembirds and others, and I will never forget that night as long as I live.

Another night we all went bowling. If I made a list of things I least expected to do while visiting Poland, this may have made the list. But it was so much fun! I got to hang out with @crimsonclad, @jeanpi1908, @techslut, @enginewitty and many others. All my pictures from that night are a ghostly blue and mostly out of focus or I would post one!

The most powerful experience at SteemFest 3, for me, was the solemn trip to tour the Auschwitz concentration camps. We learned more than perhaps a person would want to about what it was like there. The tours are packed with info and they are very respectful and well done. It was so hard to really look at the chambers, the railroads, the barracks, and the horrible conditions. But I'm very glad I did it. It is a time in our history that we need to remember.

It also made for some incredible conversations with amazing people like @raj808, @adetorrent, @celestal, @techslut and @mrlightning, whose grandfather survived Auschwitz. His story was incredible, and he went on to live a full life beyond that experience.

Talking about this is not easy. Representing the holocaust in a few paragraphs and a picture seems risky, and can in no way express my profound sadness, or the respect I feel for survivors and their descendants. Just know, if you are reading this, that I am touching upon this because it was a truly remarkable experience to retrace the steps of the people who lived and died in those camps, and to imagine what they must have endured. In no way is it intended to diminish those things.

There was much more to that trip and experience in Krakow, including a lovely night of entertainment by @katrina-ariel, @yidneth and @steembirds. There is far too much to capture.

I just want to give people who are considering SteemFest 4 a sense of the breadth of events and activities. I missed the final event, which was dinner in an underground cave, as I had to head to another conference in Germany. But from the posts and pictures, it sounds like it was absolutely wonderful.

On my last morning in Krakow, @coruscate and @nomadicsoul and I met up with @kevinwong and @mammasitta and others at a Vincent Van Gosh inspired restaurant. We talked and laughed and I really felt the experience slipping away from me. I nearly cried. It was a lovely wrap up for this incredible event.

Don't walk, run to get your #SteemFest 4 tickets in Bangkok this coming November. You will be forever changed. Follow @steemfest and @roelandp. Follow @anomadsoul, and check the #roadtosteemfest tag. If you can't afford it, watch all the announcements and try to win tickets. I won a ticket last year, thanks to @blocktrades, @anomadsoul and @thewritersblock, which made it all possible!

I'm going to do my best to get there too. (Here's the Save the date post!)

The Block Party

This coming week I am heading to Colorado Springs for the Block Party, organized by @thealliance and @enginewitty. I can't wait! I get to meet all kinds of amazing people, like @mariannewest and @dreemsteem in person, and stay in a mansion and eat and drink with many fabulous and brilliant Steemians! And I have no doubt I will come away with fresh new ideas and some absolutely wonderful memories.

#Actifit, #WednesdayWalk, #PowerhouseCreatives, and more

From my humble first weeks on Steem to now, I have gone from someone afraid of the self-revealing nature of blogging regularly to being a person who posts daily. There is something on Steem for everyone. Whether you post your photographs with the #photography tag, or take part in any of the hundreds of initiatives, great tags, or Dapps like #actifit, there is endless opportunity to meet like-minded people and be inspired daily to exercise, create art, write fiction or share your amazing photographs.

Actifit has gotten me posting daily. On the rare occasion that I just can't manage it, I feel out-of-sorts and like I've missed a step. I just love it. And an enormous, wonderful community has sprouted up around health and fitness. It's the coolest thing ever!

I mention #WednesdayWalk, hosted by @tattoodjay, because it is one of my favorite tags that gets me thinking about what I can capture and share each week. There are many more!

A few months ago I joined #PowerhouseCreatives because it is a way to connect with all kinds of people who are producing great content on Steem, and getting involved in a mutually supportive environment where we all win. A big thank you to @jaynie and other @steemitbloggers admins for welcoming me, and for all the work involved in running the Discord server and encouraging engagement.

In summary

I'm happy to be here! Thank you to @preparedwombat for getting me started on this journey two years ago and helping me along when I just cannot for the life of me figure out what I'm doing. I wish I could mention everyone who has had an impact on my experience here. There are certain energetic, positive people, for example, like @elizacheng, that just make me smile when I think of them. And all the great people who have made the #fiftywords and #microfiction challenges so much fun, like @felixgarciap and many many others. Thank you!

Oh... I almost forgot. I claimed my PALcoin drop today, so yet another phase of life on Steem begins!