Some Things to Celebrate
It's the holiday season and what a great time it is. We have so much to celebrate. Let's see what we got here:
☑ SBD at $13
☑ STEEM hit $4
☑ Cryptocurrency market is booming
☑ Christmas in a few days
☑ I reached 2000 followers.
Wait, what???
My first milestone was at 100 followers. That felt good. Second one at 500, felt better. Then 1000, felt awesome. And now 2000! Feels like WOW. It's a great achievement for any Steemian, it makes me very happy and demonstrates the potential of Steem. What a great gift for Christmas, I couldn't have asked for anything better. Thank you to all my followers and resteemers, without your love and support, I don't think I would have stayed on Steemit.
Beginnings
When I started 6 months ago I had no idea what I was going to do or which direction I was going to take with this blogging thing. I'm a very social person, as in: interacting with real people (yes I'm talking to you, millennials). I never believed in social media, like Facebook or Twitter, I find them disruptive to people's lives, on top of invading their privacy. How many hours a day do people spend on their Facebook waiting for more likes? My interest in cryptocurrencies led me to Steemit, it was often talked about on Youtube channels and crypto news, so I figured I'd give it a try.
I started small, like everyone else, posting mundane stuff, then I decided to use my scientific knowledge to share with the community about the practices of Big Pharma. It was my big break, it caught the attention of some respectable whales, which gave me a huge confidence to keep going. 
I met many new friends through the Minnow Support Project (
animation by
(https://steemit.com/inspirational/@rituparnaghosh/steemit-animation-on-motivation)
Something Called Karma
Steemit is a platform filled with a variety of social interactions, developers, scientists, artists. There's no shortage of diversity. Not only that, I appreciate the multicultural aspect that connects people from all around the world. Sometimes the language barrier is problematic when communicating with foreign users, but that doesn't hinder their desire to share their experiences, make friends and earn rewards. I can always sense it when people chat with me on Steemit.Chat or Discord. Steemit gives them the motivation to join and move forward no matter the obstacles. Although the rewarding feature of Steem is alluring, I always remind myself that many minnows coming from poor countries struggle to succeed so bad because $1 can go a long way for them. Perhaps we take our success for granted, but I think helping others is what we should all be doing. Steem provides that opportunity. I know it's annoying when someone messages us out of nowhere asking for an upvote, but what the hell give them that upvote, it's only a click on our end, and a big smile on their end. I believe in karma, it is a powerful force.
So back to my story, one thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was a witness, contributing behind the scenes to the Steem network. Becoming a witness has weaved a new web of witness friends, whom I appreciate and respect. I would like to acknowledge all the witnesses for all their efforts in maintaining the network, in particular 
The Path to Success
I'm not advertising that becoming a witness (like someone does) is a ticket for success, it's an enterprise that has its arduous challenges. What I'm saying is, do what you love to do, blog about it, and success will follow. Be yourself, it's a cliché, but it's true. What works for me won't necessarily work for you, and vice versa. Each user must find their way to success.
DOGE Giveaway
Those have read this post so far, I have a little treat for you. To celebrate success for all of us, I'm giving away 2000 DOGE to the first 10 users who will do the following:
- The usual upvote and resteem of this post.
- Write a meaningful comment why you think DOGE is a beautiful thing (after STEEM of course).
- Include your Dogecoin address in the comment.
Typing "Nice Post, I love DOGE. Here's my Dogecoin address. Gimme!" is an automatic disqualification.
Why did I choose Dogecoin? Well, I always liked Dogecoin, who can resist that snuggly dog? I've praised Dogecoin before, and I praise it again. It's one of the first cryptocurrencies, it's fast and has extremely low fees. Bitcoin could learn something here...
Tha dawg is trading at $0.0075 today.
That's a cool 10 x $15 = $150 giveaway.
If you don't have a Dogecoin wallet, I recommend you try MultiDOGE (http://multidoge.org). It's a lightweight wallet that won't require you to download the whole blockchain. And please use a valid Dogecoin address, I won't re-send your giveaway if you provide a wrong address.
RESULTS
The giveaway is complete, congrats to the 10 recipients.
Available & Reliable. I am your Witness. I want to represent You.
🗳 If you like what I do, consider voting for me 🗳
If you never voted before, I wrote a detailed guide about Voting for Witnesses.
Go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses. My name is listed in the Top 50. Click the upvote symbol.
Alternatively,
with cli_wallet : vote_for_witness "YOURACCOUNT" "drakos" true true
with steem-python: steempy approvewitness drakos --account YOURACCOUNT