I'm not big on the whole self-congratulatory "woo-hoo, look at my latest milestone" posts. Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge anyone their right to a bit of celebration.
Inspired instead by a post on 
2000 Followers: It Has Been Just Eight Months
Skated past 2000 followers without even noticing!
Eight months, almost to the day, since I started blogging on Steemit. It says I joined in January, but I didn't actually post anything till February 2nd.
That's typical me-- poke around for a few days to get the lay of the land and gauge "how things are done," rather than just jump in at the deep end.
The 2,000th follower joined the crowd overnight sometime while I was sleeping... I don't know who you are, but thanks for the vote of confidence!
And, of course, thanks also to the prior 1,999 of you!
I'm privately excited about this milestone, as well, because of this tidbit:
In Eight MONTHS on Steemit I have gained more followers than in Eight YEARS on twitter!
A random cat on a chair, at a random sidewalk cafe in Amsterdam...
That says something, because I actually have a "real" twitter account that I use-- mostly to promote my writing and my web sites.
Says a lot about the "stickiness" of Steemit, as a social content venue.
Closing in on 7,500 posts
That's quite a lot of writing!
Enough to recently be flirting with the top-100 on SteemWhales, in terms of number of posts.
360+ of those are original blog posts; the rest comments. Given that I also write a fair number of comments that are almost blog post length, I sometimes wonder just how much text that is.
I have written something almost every day, since starting here. For me, that IS a milestone worth noting... I have not blogged that steadily since "the old days" on Xanga... where I went for close to three years straight, before losing steam.
The Beauty of Social Blogging
Connectivity and engagement is one of the great characteristics of Social Blogging.
Prickly pear cactus in bloom, Joshua Tree, CA
Because "Social Blogging" IS what we're doing, here on Steemit.
Well, maybe that's an overstatement... but those who get anywhere on this platform are into social blogging.
I hardly ever use Facebook, anymore-- it's just for birthdays and pictures of events, these days. Here's a "fun fact" for you-- even when I was at my most active on Facebook, I almost never posted anything that got as many comments as posts here on Steemit.
The level of engagement here, continues to astound me.
And-- without sounding TOO elitist-- the average level of intelligence in posts here is head and shoulders above any other social media currently out there.
Which suits me fine... I had grown really tired of "stupid content."
Yeah, maybe I am elitist.
Looking Ahead
Don't really have any great plans and goals for my ongoing participation here... aside from "I'll continue to contribute here!"
Trying to develop a system (mostly using browser bookmarks) that'll enable me to more effectively keep up with my favorite Steemians.
Red fall leaves
To that end-- I'm also sorry I do NOT "follow back" automatically. It's hard enough for me to try to keep up with the 400-something people I am trying to follow, let alone 2000+-- even if many of those are "ghosts." According to SteemReports, I've only upvoted 178 of you in the past couple of weeks...
But here's the thing: I curate manually. If you get an upvote from me, it's because my human eyes actually looked at and read what you had to say. Which is also how some of my rather wordy comments are born.
I'm also going to be spending some more time working with our 
We were recently invited to join the 
But no worries, there will still be plenty of time these pages! At least that's my intention.
In the meantime, thanks to everyone who has taken the time-- at some point-- to read my ramblings! I hope I can continue to earn your trust and interest.
And do leave a comment and let your voice be heard, if you feel so inclined! Interaction is always appreciated!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 171003 22:40 PDT