The Steem Dream: How Does One Achieve It?

Greetings Steemsters,

So, I've been on Steemit now for about 5 months, and I'm honestly still working on getting my head around how it all works. I've got the posting, voting and commenting - curating in general - down pat. I now spend more time here than I do any other forms of social media. But, I find I'm still in the dark in many ways about how the financial end of this system works.

One aspect of Steemit that is odd to a new comer, is the amount of Steemit, blockchain and crypto-currency related posts. I read them in vain. I have absolutely no idea wtf they are talking about! So, I will be educating myself on how all of that works, and how to best use them here in this ecosystem.

Quite honestly, I would normally keep my ignorance to myself in regards to not really grasping this stuff. Or simply not care and try to make my way around without bothering to understand it. But, it actually seems to be an important part of properly functioning here on Steemit. And, clearly, I am not the only one overwhelmed by certain aspects of being involved with this platform. So, not only am I going to be educating myself on the crypto-financial side of Steemit, I am going to be sharing what I learn, in case it is helpful to others. And I truly hope it is! I have come across a few posts here that explain how things work. But, they only scratch the surface really.

By committing to posting about this, I am also committing to actually doing the courses that I paid for 2 months ago! Udemy was having a sale on courses, and I bought a couple by Joe Parys. Many of you have probably seen his blog, as he's a bit of a powerhouse here on Steemit. If you haven't seen his stuff, you can find him here: https://steemit.com/@joeparys

Joe teaches his students many different aspects of being successful here. Personally, I am getting to the point where I am getting into committing more and more time to not just posting my stuff, but thinking about what kind of posts I could do, and how I could them. So, I really want to check myself against the advice of an expert here to see how I rate in terms of possibly being able to make Steemit my primary form of income. I've been an artist my entire life, and have had periods of doing art for a living. But economic changes have always dictated my ability to survive that way. And I would really like a bulltproof system for staying afloat in the sea of potential the internet provides. And I look forward to learning something completely outside my comfort zone to achieve this!