I just hit 100 followers today. That is fan-freakin-tabulous!!

I joined on March 26th, but didn't make my introduction post until April 6th. So, I have only actually been active 12 days. (Full disclosure - I'm on my 13th day now - this was written yesterday!)

I am so excited about this milestone and everything that has transpired in the past couple of weeks. I have learned a lot, but have discovered there is soooooooooooooooo much more to learn!

The first thing I discovered is that this really is a wonderful community, full of people that actually care about others on the site.

(There's a lot of crap, too; but I don't like focusing on the negative!) 😎

So lemme start off with a...

📣 Shout Out to Awesome Steemians

Out of my hundred followers, there are a few that really stood out and stepped up to make my first week or so pretty amazing, so I'd like to give them each special shout out for how awesome they are.

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Steemian	Why They Rock	Last Post
Hive account@omitaylor	Super chill, helpful, and REAL. I've learned a ton from her posts.	Steemit Mastermind Group Blog Post Roundup 2 (And Things I've Learned)
Hive account@wolfhart	'Discovered' me and included me in a post for the #payitforward contest. An all around great guy that will go above and beyond to help you succeed!	Winner of - Week 2 - Pay It Forward Curation Contest
Hive account@thedarkhorse	Runs the #payitforward contest. This is a great contest to be in, as you can help promote undervalued content that deserves more love!	Winners - Week 2 - Pay It Forward Curation Contest
Hive account@asapers	Another benevolent Steemian working tirelessly to help Minnows succeed on here. (After all, we need all of the help we can get!)	EXTRA EXTRA, READ ME A.S.A.P! Issue #38

If you are a minnow that's struggling, I highly recommend you take some time and go through the people's posts above. You will find many of them in Discord as well, so if you haven't joined, get on it scooter. You'll be glad you did.

That brings me to the next section...

🍴The Kitchen is Open, and You're Invited. (Yes, YOU!)

Speaking of Discord, Hive account@wolfhart and I are cooking up something special. You see, the niche I fell into here is food-related. I love to cook, and was trying to figure out something that I could write about on a regular basis. Enter food holidays.

If you don't know what food holidays are, well, it's pretty self-explanatory. National Grilled Cheese Day, National Pecan Day, you get the point.

I love this site and interacting with people on it, so when Hive account@wolfhart suggested a much-needed space on Discord for cooks to gather and share and learn from each other and asked if I'd be interested in running it, I jumped at the chance!

We aptly named it The Kitchen, and everybody with a passion for cooking is welcome to join here: https://discord.gg/TqWMC72

The Kitchen is a part of the Steemit Greeters Guild (Hive account@greetersguild) run by the one and only Hive account@terminallyill. This is a group of super-cool people with one goal in mind - to make new minnows feel welcome and guide them to success.

Don't just take my word for it though, check out what Hive account@sparrowbernard had to say in his post about them:

STEEMIT GREETERS GUILD IS NOT JUST A DISCORD COMMUNITY, ITS A FAMILY AND AM HAPPY TO BELONG.

And that's what all this is really about, right? So consider this an official warm welcome to join the family!

🍴 Be sure to stop by the kitchen, too - I'd love to meet you! 🍴

You should go directly to the kitchen room, but if not, look at the different rooms on the left. You'll see a dropdown entitled SGG LEARN. Click it to open it if it isn't already, and look for # the-sgg-kitchen. Introduce yourself and let us know what you love to cook! This isn't for link drops right now, but I will be making a pinned post all about that soon. We're definitely going to be supporting one another!

I'm Hive account@ambrosia there too, so feel free to add me as a friend. I'll be around to help you in any way that I can. Plus, it is the perfect way to let me know if you have a post that I could promote in one of my #foodholidays compilations. - you can send them to me through direct message for now. (Check out the previous ones by clicking the tag.) 😎

I've already written a book, so I can't possibly fit everything I've learned in my time so far here or this post would be astronomically long. While there's a lot already available here on the site, it took me a lot of digging and time to figure out what's still relevant and put it into something that I could actually use.

So in Part 2, I'm going to lay it all out in terms someone brand-spankin' new can make sense of. This will cut your learning time down immensely, I promise - I'll come back and link to it when it's done!

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Before I go, I also want to give a special thanks to some Steemians that weren't mentioned above. Through your thoughtful comments and awesome interaction, you've really kept me motivated to keep doing this:

✒ Hive account@bleedpoet - Great stuff, except I'm jealous his dog has a better typewriter than my computer. 🐶

✒ Hive account@kiwideb - She writes, judges poetry, stays busy with family and lives in New Zealand. Plus, she sparks some really thoughtful conversations. (BTW - If you read this, consider this me spurring you to get on some recipes 😁)

✒ Hive account@yogajill - Amazing lady, just one of those people you can just tell has a great heart.

✒ Hive account@cryptocopy - Loves food as much as I do, especially cheese! Plus, as I was looking for the username I found I really owe a debt of gratitude for a sponsor into SBI. Coolness!

To all of you that have made this community great, helped out, and to ALL of my followers,

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✔NOTE: Edited to update an incorrect link and put the source in for the last Giphy.