A quick thank you.

It's official:

I have been here for a full week!

I create my account 7 days ago, having no idea of what I was getting myself into. In celebration, I want to tell a story about my experience with steem.

I learned about steem from a family friend, who was, and still, interested in cryptocurrencies. I was visiting his house, and was sitting, and talking with my brother. After an hour of this, my mother, who was with us at this time, had to get my father from the airport. Both my brother and I knew that sitting in a car for a drive to the airport would be very far from fun, so we decided to stay at this family friend's house.

This is where the learning process begun. The three of us sat on the family friends couch (me, my brother, and my family friend) and talked.

We started with the basic, "Oh, how are you" type chat, and started talking about bitcoin. At this point in my life, I knew a few things about bitcoin, such as what they were, and their approximate worth. Along with this, I also had knowledge of a few other types of "internet coins" as I liked to call them.

I stated that I would be really interested in investing, but I had no money to really truly invest. Our family friend told me that money was unnecessary, I could get earn it using this website called "steem." When I initially heard this, I thought, "I have a Steam account, and I don't recall there being an option to get cryptocurrencies".

Both of us were extremely confused, but we go past our misunderstanding when we realized that "Steemit" is a social media platform where you can get money for upvotes, and "Steam" is a market place/social media platform specifically for video games.

Once we got that cleared up, he explained the basics to me. "You post quality content, and if people like it, they will upvote and give you money." At first, I was skeptical, wondering where the money came from and why someone would be so willing to give money to someone else, when they could give it to themselves. He promptly explained to me how most of it worked, excluding why these people would help each other (I later learned from experience how selfless the community was.)

I went on my phone, and googled steem, and created my account. I was warned that everything that I posted here would be permanent, but went ahead and posted a joke that my brother told me right before we started talking.

Much like many posts that put in low effort, it was buried very quickly, but seeing ".02" next to my post was something that I became happy about. I wanted to create a higher quality post, so I could actually receive some money, and I posted this one:

This post was my first insight into the rewards of steam, as the upvote (at the time) quickly earned me 90 cents, which seemingly came from thin air, as I just posted a random scenic picture of a lake I frequently go to.

It has been a full week since then, and my perspective of these "internet coins" and steem have all changed.

From this amazing community, I learned all about cryptocurrencies, and found out stern was much more than a simple way to earn some cash on the side, it was filled with amazing people doing their best to create outstanding content, not just for money, but for people to enjoy.

So, in short, thanks so much for the thrilling week, steem, and thanks in advance for the weeks to come.