In the coming weeks and months, I'm going to be taking steemit a lot more seriously than I have been up until now and putting a lot more effort and emphasis on creating and curating content as well as becoming a more active part of the community.
I've been here since April and in that time I've been trying to find my feet, not only in the steemit world but also in the social media blogging world, to which I'm still really new. It's taken me a little while to get to grips with all of the different aspects of these things but I feel now that I've reached a point where I can help to play a bigger and more active role in the community, which I'd like to see grow and become stronger.
So, 2018 will see me commit to spending a more considerable amount of time on steemit than I have been able to until now and I thought I'd begin with a little post to let anyone interested know some of the plans I have for the coming year here.
Writing
First of all, I want to do a lot more writing.
Along with art, writing was one of my passions when I was a young man but over the years, that passion had faded, almost to the point of extinction, until one day I found steemit and realised writing is something I still have the capacity for and I certainly have plenty of things to say. The difficulty I have in my writing is in my lack of confidence but this is improving all the time and I was really pleased with the response to my last written post, Message In A Bottle, which got some really nice comments and gave me a lot of encouragement.
Initially I plan to write briefly on my thoughts about certain subjects and combine this with my desire for a better understanding of the more philosophical aspects of our being in a series of posts I intend to call, The Big Questions.
I don't consider myself to be an intellectual by any stretch of the imagination and I know that I lack a lot in my attempts to think clearly on certain issues, so I plan to try and structure the posts in such a way as to encourage others to share their thoughts and perspectives with me to facilitate discussion which might help myself and hopefully others, rethink, reconsider and/or re-affirm our previously held positions.
I also plan on trying my hand at a little bit of fiction after coming across a post by 
As well as this, want to further my writing on issues I feel strongly about. I've already written a few posts in this regard but I have a lot more to say on certain issues and in truth, have been held back by the lack of confidence in expressing my thoughts as I want to that I mentioned earlier. From now on though, I intend to overcome this deficiency.
Art
Art is how I got started on steemit, by posting some of my portraits. It's been a while since I've posted my drawings regularly but I plan to do so more in future as well as expanding my horizons a little in terms of the work I produce. I have a few projects in mind for murals, which I'd like to do more of, so plan on recording the process when I do and posting it with the completed work when I'm finished.
Contests
Anyone who knows me on steemit will no doubt be aware that I like to hold the odd contest here and there and that will not be changing in the near future. :)
I really enjoy hosting contests on steemit and try to provide a little value along the way by encouraging others to improve their existing skills or learning new ones, for example drawing in my Learn To Draw With Friends or Daily Sketch contests or gaining experience of trading altcoins on the crypto markets with my Altcoin Trading Championship contest which has just ended, the winner of which will receive 120 SBD.
I think contests have become an integral part of the steemit experience and are a great way for newcomers to introduce themselves to the community. For me personally, they provide a good way of meeting new members as well as increasing my SP and also provides me with the means to give something back to the community by both rewarding those contestants for their efforts by way of the SBD rewards the contests receive and also in hopefully at times providing others with a means of inspiration to create quality, value adding posts.
So contests will definitely have a part to play in the future of my blog on steemit and I plan to introduce a new one in the coming weeks called, 'Comic-Con-Test'. I have a rough idea of how I want to structure the contest but will provide more details when I launch it very soon but there will no doubt be other contests over the course of the year and a second season of the #atc will likely be coming very soon as well. :)
Curation
In 2018, I pledge to spend at least one hour per day manually curating content on steemit. I feel that manual curation is something that the platform needs to try and increase and is often the only way that a lot of quality posts actually get seen. I've been impressed with 
I think for the time I've had available up until now, I've done a decent job of curating because I actually enjoy reading other people's thoughts and seeing their creative efforts but I still feel that I could be doing more, especially to encourage newcomers. I have tended to stick to my own feed for the last little while since it provides me with a lot of interesting posts to choose from but I think we should all do our part to encourage and support, so I intend to spend a lot more time curating the works of those new to the site in order to further encourage them to continue.
Gain A Better Understanding Of Steemit
I definitely want to gain a better understanding of the platform, how it works and why it works the way it does. I'm fascinated by a lot of the things I see happening on the site, even though I understand very little about them. SMT's for example are something I've heard about but have absolutely no idea what they are or do, except that a lot of folk see them as being a big step forward for the steem blockchain. I hope to find out more in time but there are a myriad other areas where my knowledge of how things work are lacking, which I hope to remedy.
I want to find out for example, how to put someone on an automatic upvote as there are a few members of the community whom I feel are doing fantastic work all the time and who I would like to support but until now have relied on finding their posts in my feed or manually checking their page.
If anyone could give me a quick heads up on this one it would be appreciated. :)
Increase My SP
I don't have the money to invest in steem and I can't commit to powering up all of my posts in future but wherever possible I'd like to increase my SP as much as I can, for a variety of reasons, one of which being I would like to be able to reward others with more than I can at the moment and also to help in the fight to counter any abuse that I come across in future.
Until now, I have never used my flag and from now on I intend to use it as little as possible since it deprives me of a vote that could have been used elsewhere for a positive post. If I see something I think is abusive or negative to the platform I'll try my best to bring attention to it and speak to those involved but if need be I want to retain my right to counter abuse by using my flag.
At the moment it would have little affect other than a symbolic gesture but hopefully that will change. I also want to increase my SP because I feel strongly that steemit is set for big things in the coming year and I want to be able to benefit from that success as I'm sure we all do, so I plan to earn my SP as I go and hopefully power up a little as and when the opportunity presents itself. :)
So,..
These are just some of the plans I have for going into 2018 with steemit but there will be a lot more besides.
I'm in desperate need of getting fit and improving my overall health, so some sort of fitness diary and writing about my health may feature at some point, in fact I plan to do a couple of posts called One Week Without which, as you can probably tell, will concentrate on my efforts to cut out some of the things which are more detrimental to my health, such as smoking and sugar consumption, two of my worst habits. :)
Also, as much as I'm a promoter of traditional skills and values, I have been known to enjoy the odd game of Fifa or Pro Evolution Soccer, so don't be surprised to see a few dlive videos of me whipping my brother, 
So, I'm really looking forward to this upcoming year on steemit a lot. I think there are big things ahead for all of us and I'd like to be a bigger part of that if I can. I want to try and elevate my position on the platform by being a team player and concentrating on the community aspect a lot more. I want my reputation to grow and be decided upon by individual members of the community based on their personal interactions with me.
I want to try and emulate all of those aspects of steemit which make this a great community to be a part of and help make the platform a better place for us all, so that we can concentrate on using it to make the world itself a better place. I have spoken before about the potential I see in steemit as a force for good in our world and I still believe strongly that this can be the case.
I want to be a part of that and will do whatever I can to help. :)
Thanks for your time everyone. See you all in 2018! :)
