I am a full fledged witness
About 24 hours ago, I got my first block. This happened while I was in the middle of donating plasma to pay for my server, so I didn't even notice it until 
So now that I have witnessed my first block I am showing as an active witness on https://steemian.info/witnesses and as of writing this update I am sitting at an active rank of 124.
Community Involvement
Like I mentioned in my Witness Announcement a few days ago, my goal as a witness is to build up communities and foster positive growth within those communities.
Helpie
I am active in several communities here on Steemit, the main one outside of the Military Veterans Community is the 
Helpie is a new and unique educational community within Steemit, designed to help users that are creating quality content grow on the platform. We do this through a variety of ways including;
- Lessons designed to help users navigate the steemit network and teach them how to get the most out of it. (ex. GINAbot Tutorial, Growing Your Following On Steemit, and Markdown Challenge
- Daily Steemit related trivia and contests
- Mentorship from established Steemit users in all different categories
- A place to discuss ideas, collaborate with other members, and build your personal community
- Daily upvote from Helpie for vetted members
- Weekly Curation of great quality content. We have a wonderful Fine Arts Curation Report in addition to this Homesteading Curation and hope to add more categories in the future.
There are a bunch of awesome and talented people in the Helpie community and I am proud to be one of the witnesses that are supporting their community.
Photography Contests
Another thing I have been doing to reward the Photography Community here on Steemit is a few months ago I created my Deranged Photography contest. I have two themes a week and they are announced on Wednesday and Friday and it is open to all skill levels and everyone competes with photographers of the same skill level.
Here are the most recent Photo Contests that I have running this week if any of you are interested in find out more about entering or seeing how it is structured:
Deranged Photography Contests! Repaint the Sky Theme!!
Deranged Photography - Stop and Smell the Roses
Thank you
I want to give a big thank you to all of my voters and to anyone that is considering to vote for @derangedvisions witness. If you are not familiar with me, you can see from my blog that I am an active member of the platform and I am not planning on going anywhere. I am in if for the long haul here. I have very high hopes for Steem and the Steemit platform and I am looking forward to running a successful witness server to help ensure the longevity of the platform.
