Community post

I am excited

Hello, dear Steemians, who read this!

First, let me not apologize for my English, but tell you I am not a native speaker. But I do my best in showing my respect to the English language while writing this. I let go of all my fears about not having the perfect English skills. Instead, I follow my excitement and my curiosity. It's just much easier to connect to a geat, international community through the English language. To all the German, French, Slovakian, Dutch and Spanish speaking people reading this...

Ich grüß dich, salut, dobrý deň, goedendag and hola!

That's all I can scratch together.
The reason why I am so excited is: I just discovered Steemit. Well, to be honest, I didn't. My lovely partner @kemane introduced it to me. And I couldn't believe, that a fair and creative platform like this would exist. Here, I feel like every artist is being given the chance to be able to be as free and expressive in his creativity like he or she was as a child.

Me at age 10: Attempting to emulate a contemporary
self-image of magazine women

For me, it feels like that. And I compare it to a huge and colorful flea market. I tried to sell a lot of stuff on flea markets already. And even if there was not much financial outcome on every one, I loved the feeling of being free and able to sell my stuff without having to learn how to retail properly or without having to overcome a lot of bureaucratic borders. I could connect with people, speak to them and learn about me and others while gaining some income.

So here we are now

and I have this same feeling of being allowed to be a human being.

Without having to learn this and that or becoming a "finished" person. Because we are never finished, and this is what I learned. In the past, I tried hard to satisfy this illusion that was implanted by school and society. So I tried to study 3 majors; Journalism, English, and History. Not at the same time. I always gave up on one, as I felt it was just not working for me. However, I still wanted to become a "finished" person so I tried the next one. Soon I entirely gave up on the idea of studying on a university. I tried to learn the great and honorable profession of midwifery. After being traumatized by german hospital hierarchies I couldn't handle the 3 years of apprenticeship and gradually accepted my quirks.

![thumb_IMG_1384_1024.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmaeqgnmSDQhMeh17o2BdagBQ8c9xVL5ouSUQXypzvxjyT/thumb_IMG_1384_1024.jpg) *I stopped forcing myself to fit in all of these formats and just saw that I was whole already.*

I saw, that I already made a living, working as an actress and voice actress , in theatre, tv, and film since I was 14. All of that without any official education. I just learned it by doing it, having fun. And the most important: Being excited and curious. So the best thing I could do is just to follow that feeling.

The first thing I did after this awakening, was making a baby.

Sorry, that sounds like I just had Sex. What I really mean, I consciously received my wonderful daughter. (to put things into perspective, you have to have sex for that, so of course. I had.)

Screen Shot 2018-01-02 at 3.02.59 PM.png

My daughter is now 2 years young, and I just turned 27

After the huge adventure of the last 2 years, where I experienced more than I can process: I feel, I'm ready to dive back into my creative space and share it with the world!

I am writing since I learned how to write. I wrote all kinds of stories. When I was around 20 I started to write poems, and I do it since then. Also in the beginning of my 20s, I started doing some poetry slam and experimented with different styles of writing. Currently, I'm blogging a lot about being a mother, a woman and traveling the world.

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

I'm looking forward to sharing more content, to process my experiences, connect with people, inspire or just to entertain. Nice to be here!

Clara

Find me on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/immerclara/

![thumb_IMG_0838_1024.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWwT3UoZNiit16QBVGzrr4kR6pWG4twGUc13fnTFyE9td/thumb_IMG_0838_1024.jpg)

Replies (29)

Welcome! This is a wonderful introduction. I love to people watch as a PI, so I often go through introduceyourself posts looking for new and promising accounts. Yours qualifies! It's a pleasure to meet you, and I will add @kemane as well.

Webpages

There are a ton of other webpages to help you with Steemit. Here are some of the best for beginners:

https://steemd.com/ (This site is used to keep track of your voting power and other stats. You do not want to run out of voting power, and you only get so much per day. I keep my voting power around 80% for example.)

https://steem.makerwannabe.com/ (This site will tell you who follows you, who unfollows you, and who mutes you. It is great for meeting new people too. I regularly check it to see who has followed me to see if I should follow them back.)

https://steemit.chat/ (This site is the official chat webpage for Steemit. There are Discord channels too, but I usually stick to the official site. Come in to network and meet new friends. You can directly message people there too, so it makes it easier to communicate with your closest friends.)

http://steemtools.com/ (This site is a comprehensive list of valuable tools.)

Bots

There are a lot of bots on Steemit. Some are useful and good, and others are not. If you see a cookie cutter reply, especially to your intro post, it is almost certainly a bot. Check the account's reputation. If it is low, I would recommend just ignoring them. Everything is public on Steemit, so you can go look at an account's comments and replies. Are they all the same? It's a bot.

Sourcing and Adding Photos

Adding photos to your account as a new Steemian may be confusing at first too. The easiest way it to click to "Submit a Story." Once in there, use the built in Steemit tool to upload an image from your computer. Below the posting window, you will see "Insert images by dragging & dropping, pasting from the clipboard, or by selecting them." Click on the blue text. Once the image is uploaded, you can copy and paste the link into your account settings.

Here's a link to a Google Document I made to help with the coding:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NlAoGnP8q7ZAxGsEnvza-qotUGkoaae4SwXdubAhi2g/edit?usp=sharing

Account Verification

Verifying your identity is very important because it will get you more support and people will trust you more. The best way to verify is to link back to your Steemit account by using another public social media account.

For example, I share my Steemit posts on my @finnianGC Twitter account. Another way would be to add your Steemit information to your Facebook account. Some people will even post a video of themselves writing out their account information since that cannot be Photoshopped.

The more famous a person is and the more valuable their content is, the more important it is that they verify.

Security

Do not use your owner key to log into Steemit.com to post. Use your private posting key instead. Keep your owner key offline as much as possible, and only use it when you must.

Per the advice given by Arcanage, you should only use your owner key to:

Recover your account.
Change the other keys.
Give a present to your children a few minutes before dying.

There have been some scams in the past. If you click a link to a site that prompts you to log into it, be extra careful. Double and triple check the address to make sure it is really steemit.com. A recent scam was using "lsteemit" as the domain name, and people were entering their owner keys to log into it. That allowed the scammers to take those user's accounts, empty the money from them, and then ruin their reputation by using the newly hacked accounts to further the scam.

If you find or suspect a scam, please report it in the #steemitabuse channel on steemit.chat.

Don't Lose Your Content

Make sure you are copying and pasting your post content often as you write it, and put the data into another document to avoid losing it. I'll copy and paste my content into a Google document as just one example. Some people use Markup editors to do the same.

Definitely keep a backup copy right before you post it too, for some people have come back the next day to see half or the entire post missing even though the day before it displayed correctly. Make sure you copy and backup your long replies as well, for they can vanish immediately after clicking to post them.

Again, welcome! If you have any questions about getting started, look me up on the chat site or reply to this post.