Its good to know you care enough to dream of making your parents proud. That should be the aspiration of every child. I share the same thoughts. Steemit is a great platform, with its own challenges. But like life out there, be it in NYC or anywhere else in the world, You really only need to know what you want, and how badly...that way, you come prepared to make the sacrifices that have to be made to succeed, here, or anywhere else, for that matter.

I am also still a minnow, although maybe a little more experienced than you now, so at lest i can advise on a couple of things that, if you will follow, will make your steemit experience a little easier.

As a minnow, i know you have a lot of questions about how to succeed here at steemit.

This article should be able to answer some of your questions as it answered some of mine. https://steemit.com/steemit/@miti/a-complete-guide-for-newcomers-and-minnows-to-avoid-a-possible-spam-and-to-write-good-comments.

Also, check out https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@okusarobert/is-your-reputation-still-at-25-or-thereabout-do-you-have-only-few-followers-this-post-will-help-them-grow

They are very informative articles which have been of great help to me.

There is also a great guide in @mitneb who dedicates much of her curation on newcomers with quality content.

I suggest you look her up to help promote your posts. Are you on steemit chat? If you are not, quickly register and message @mitneb directly. She is okay with it, and will pronto respond, and start to guide you

Also, Check out ocd-resteem. It is another place where you can promote this kind of quality posts. Here is a link to the article explaining more https://steemit.com/ocd-resteem/@ocd/ocd-introducing-ocd-resteem-get-resteemd-by-ocd.

Otherwise, welcome home dear. It is a hustle and bustle here for starters, but it gradually becomes all plain and windy!

Cheers!
@ebitularmbert