I think this was the first time that I started to actually look up how to write up posts properly, using Markdown. I learned how to use headlines and bullet points. I wanted it to look as clean and polished as I could.

It was around the time that I met @c0ff33a who does an wonderful weekly blog about his weeks activity. I started to express interest in his blogs and saw the layout of them and how he was gaining a lot of interest in them, we started to comment on each others posts and he gave me some helpful advice to help me along the way.

The post was about what I had learned so far on steemit. About how steem and sbd worked, what voting power was and sp.
This generated more interest and I made a few more $$$ but had 11 comments whoa people are reading my stuff.
But the blatantly obvious, still had not sunk in at this time, whats the actual secret sauce was to doing well on the platform.

I entered a contest.

A few days later, I saw a contest about writing a supernatural experience which was being ran by Jerry Banfield. I liked the idea of the contest because it was running longer than 7 days, and he promised to reward authors with good content with steem.
The contest did not need to be about a supernatural event as such but you could also write about a spiritual awakening, so I though yeah what have I got to lose??
To be honest it did not matter whether I would have won the contest or not because this was a hard post to write, in fact I don't think nothing will ever compare to my writing of this post ever.it took me hours, I think I was up till 4am actually writing this.

I published The Scars I bear. The fear I conquered. (SWC)

This is not the easiest of reads to digest, it is uncomfortable.... it was just as uncomfortable for me to write. Because I never have written about the experience. But writing about it gave me a sense of empowerment, like a challenge I had overcome. I felt that I was able to reflect back on the then and now. So I learned then that writing posts is not just for reward but it helps with reflection.
I submitted it you will see it did not gain much in the way of upvotes or comments for that matter, but I did not care. I was just glad I wrote it down and it was out there.

I carried on doing videos.

They were not doing well at all which was infuriating me, it wasn't the fact of doing the video's it was the time editing them afterwards. And still I saw people doing well on Dtube and growing and I was mainly standing still.
Some videos had made a couple of $ but most hardly anything at all, some were just from people that have been on steemvoter. I found a little more success on Dlive by editing the video's live, but I didn't want to pursue doing those every day because I knew after a while the content would be boring because it was the same all the time.

Then I made the worst mistake ever.

So it was late one night and I was moody, sitting in the dark thinking about my activity. By this time I was talking to a few people on the platform. And I was angry thinking my word deserved more credibility than it was getting, possibly a selfish attitude to have I don't know.

So in the moment I decided to publish a video while I felt the way I did, I regret that moment something I would never do again.

So I made this video. I still cringe now I can't bring myself to watch it.

I got caught up in the moment, practically begging for views and support. Something I never ever should have one, I got recognition for the video but that was wrong. I got words of encouragement from people, but I instantly felt guilty after it.

So the next day I made a public apology about it promising it was something that I never would do again.

The turning point.

I was still consistently updating every day what activity I had posted and still I was getting fewer comments, but I was starting to speak to more people. I rejoined discord and got in with the guys at The Steem Engine which is run by @ethandsmith and his crew. I started reading other peoples content more and started to resteem other peoples work, leaving deep meaningful comments on their posts, some of them returned with long replies others just said thanks, it was ok either way they read my comment. Some were upvoted some weren't. I was starting to learn about true curation and its true power in the platform.

I was also on DTube's discord but it was not very active, and I feel I needed to speak to people because it can be lonely when you are doing this full time.

Then one day I thought right I need to know what the problem is with my video's. You see I was not depending on the votes of people, I just wanted DTube's upvote, because it had more value. I saw other people getting them so I wanted the same.

So I contacted heimindanger the developer and asked for feedback from the curators. I got it but I didn't expect the remarks I got. I was so in shock by them actually that I had to take a day to pause and think.
I spoke to the guys at The Steem Engine to ask for advice, because I wanted to do a blog post about it, and wondered if it was the right thing to do. The steem engine fully backed me up, and said I should go for it.

So I published this.

The comments I had received back were so shocking to me I feel that I needed to defend myself in some way to DTubes curators.
@awakentolife one of the mods actually did a post about it in my defence also you can read it here.

It was nice to see all the supportive comments from people, but one stuck out which caught my eye and got me thinking about what I had asked for. And that is when I met @sykochica who posted this comment.

That there and then really opened my eyes.....I had asked for feedback not constructive criticism and that is what I got, it hurt a lot but I needed to suck it up and do something about it.

Ok I am going to have to split the post into two parts because its really long..... I think this is a good break for me,so I am going for coffee and sunshine and will be back for part 2.

To read part 2 click on below.