You need Ginabot on discord! You can set up notifications for all kinds of things. I mostly use it to tell me when I've been mentioned in a post or if someone resteems my posts.

I've blogged and journaled online for well over 15 years. Pretty much as soon as we got internet :) Steemit definitely has some kinks to work out and I really hope they do, but it's still a pretty great platform. I hope it stays the distance, because I'd love to be able to stay here long term and keep growing.