Exactly one year ago today, I hopped onto my computer and created an account at the suggestion of none other than @nelkeljdm. Following a conversation with him involving photography and cars, he suggested signing up here and sharing my work with the wider world (and outside of my few Facebook friends). It sounded like a great plan, and I could also potentially earn a form of crypto currency, which was still a new world to me. Full of eagerness with a curious mind, I created my account.

And then did nothing with it for around a month. I get like that sometimes…

Fast forward a while, and I made my first #introduceyourself post. It didn’t gain much traction, nor did the next 30 or so of my posts. But I kept going anyway - I mean, I’d already taken the photos and done the vast majority of the work. Writing and posting about it was simple.

One morning, I opened Steemit and saw what I thought was a glitch. One of my posts had a pending payout of over $130. Going from under $0.50 for a post to $130? Yeah, you can sense my bewilderment.

Turns out, the fine folk over at @curie had picked up on the post, and given it a generous up vote. I think I owe that one to @carlgnash, who also gave one of my previous posts a nice vote, and included me in the @curie author showcase for that week. So Carl, if you’re reading this, thank you!

With that, I decided to keep pushing, and see what I could do to create interesting content for Steemit. In the past year, I have:

• Traveled to Dubai and shared stories about shooting around the incredibly hot city.
• Flown my drone around plenty - even enough to make this compilation video.
• Given an in-depth experience of flying to a different city for the weekend to watch Incubus perform.
• Chased super cars around the city for photos.
• Stood in the freezing cold mountains during winter, capturing starscapes (tied with cars as my favourite subject to shoot)
• Blogged about how a sighting over 15 years ago led me to purchase a Subaru STi.
• Done many impromptu photoshoots of friends cars.

And the list goes on.

And on.

And on...etc.

Goals:

Well, I didn’t have much of a goal when it came to writing and posting here, but throughout the course of the year, I eventually decided on two main goals:

1: Work up to a reputation of 60 (I made 58 - close enough)
2: Acquire at least 500 STEEM (currently around 475 STEEM, though I technically did make it as I sent some of it off).

But now, what does the future hold?

My year here has been pretty good. I’ve seen a few more people join Steemit, and then give up after a few weeks after not getting any recognition.

Will I keep posting here? Sure, why not. I originally had dreams of Steemit being able to fund my travels, which I can then post back to here, and then raise more for the next set of travelling as a result. However, due to the MASSIVE crash in the crypto market, that is barely an idea anymore. Even withdrawing my entire Steemit account wouldn’t be enough for me to take a flight to a city an hour away.

But hey, maybe it will all recover.

With that said, let's hope 2019 has great things in store. I'll still be sticking around here for a while.