No way I can go to bed today without saying this

This is only a brief note but I hope you, the reader, can feel how it's almost exploding from positive emotions and experiences such as gratitude, appreciation, campanionship, and support. I felt and enjoyed all this and more today thanks to steemit and discord (what a discovery), and more specifically to @welcomewagon and @dreemsteem.

You see, today was an extraordinary day for me and I just have to say a special:

@dreemsteem tells me that it's not much that she's doing for me but I see it differently. I tend to take a long time to try new things and she made it so much easier and opened up a whole new world for me in just a few minutes. And it was fun, SO MUCH FUN. I'm now a proud member of the @buddyup and @steemitramble channels, as well as T.A.N.Z., which is a channel for Aussie and NZ folks. This last one is thanks to @andysantics who just happened to be on @buddyup when @dreemsteem showed it to me. We had a conversation that involved a lot of cyber laughs and even our words made in a little comic. It was hilarious. The two ladies recommended to check out @poetrybyjeremy, and so my afternoon included taking in some beautiful poetry as well. So much talent!

I had a really hard time tearing myself away from all the fun but eventually had to go and pay the other half a bit of attention too. It's so tempting to just ignore everything around you while you're at it. I was told the key is balance. Yes, I like balance. I usually have a lot of balance in my life, but right now, I have lost it a little. Oh well, it will come back soon enough.

What else?

Apart from the warm and fuzzy socialising , I also learned a rather essential lesson. See that picture above? It's from pixabay.com, one of many sites offering pictures through a creative common which can be used without permission and often even without acknowledging the source. I pledge that from this moment, I will only ever use pictures from such sites or taken by myself in my posts. Never again will I copy and paste any random picture from the internet. Before today, I was of the misguided opinion that if I stated the source, it would be okay. Doh. I'm so glad I was corrected in my erring ways before I could do too much damage to myself. And for that @dreemsteem deserves another big thankyou!

In addition, I learned more about voting power which I didn't understand entirely before, and just general things about post style etc. @dreemsteem recorded some audio files for me to listen to, which we then chatted about, and she sent me lots of useful links. I think I said it before (pardon the repetition): I just can't believe the amount of support I'm getting and how much time and effort some people are willing to invest in helping new people get comfortable. It is a truly humbling experience!

Last but not least

While I'm at it, something else that made me feel warm and fuzzy this morning was reading two accounts of a meet-up of steemians, including many witnesses. Head over to @katrina-ariel and @rhondak, and read their respective posts about this. They both include photos and videos of witnesses (such as @sircork, @enginewitty, @anarcho-andrei and many more). It was great to see the actual humans behind the funny names, and they obviously had engaged and productive conversations aimed at improving steemit even more.

So much to be grateful for, I could go on and on...