She arrived on Steemit only six months and six days ago, on August 10, 2017. She started her Steemit account from scratch like most of us did when we just arrived. With continuous dedication, in those first six months, she already managed to raise her account to almost 2,000 SP with over 1,200 followers. She is a living proof anyone and everyone can succeed on this platform with the right approach.
Image Source: Own derivative work with the image from Pixabay. Credits to jplenio for sunset-lighthouse, used under the CC0 Creative Commons license.
So, no matter if you just arrived at Steemit or have been hanging around for some while, she is one of those Steemit members you surely should have at least on your list of the following members if not even on your auto-voter.
Let me introduce to you this wonderful, genuine and selfless hard-working woman, great Steemit members' helper and inspirational supporter! Ladies and gentlemen, she is
@mariannewest,
a valuable Steemit member you should know!
The day she arrived at Steemit, in her very first post she made a simple, short and modest introduction of herself to Steemit community.
From that post, we found out that Marianne is co-host and producer of the Sustainable Living Podcast, and as well the director of the Bancroft Center for Sustainability. That gave us some clue what kind of content we might expect from her in the future.
In her second post, the next day, she told us a bit more about her Podcast that she runs with her co-host Jenise. In the following posts, she shared some of her previous podcasts with us, but she didn't stick her articles to that topic only.
I would say, in those first two months being on Steemit, and besides learning the platform itself, she was trying to find her place under the 'Steemit sun,' as well as trying to find her 'Steemit voice.'
Image Source: Image from Pixabay. Credits to pixel2013 for rail-girl, used under the CC0 Creative Commons license.
Inside her first posts, you would find her talking about the struggle she had with proper or better formatting of her articles (the trouble more or less every one of us has been through); how to embed videos and many other things. But her posts were never complaining ones. No matter what the issue was, she would bring it up in some cheerful and funny way, eventually asking for the help or guidance if some random passerby/post visitor might know the answer.
At the very beginning, she didn't publish daily, but as the time went by, she became more and more frequent. She tested it all, from random posts several times per week up to several posts per day, but I never saw her publishing more than three or at most four posts per day. In other words, she never abused the platform or tried to rape the reward pool by excessive publishing.
Image Source: Pixabay. Credits to Clker-Free-Vector-Images for mail-spam-message, used under the CC0 Creative Commons license.
As well, you would never see Marianne begging or even just asking for votes or follows. She is not a spammer by any means!
On the other hand, if you are a blogger even just a bit worth to be followed, she wouldn't think twice to hit that follow button on your blog.
And that's not the end of her contribution. Even if you are not on her following list (yet) but somehow she ended up on your post and find it worthy, she wouldn't hesitate to reward you not only by upvoting it (with the best vote she can give in the particular moment) but as well by leaving her comment. It's not a rare case that she would even resteem it.
In short, Marianne West is not some selfish taker or even less some unscrupulous plunderer, she is a selfless, generous giver who would never ask you anything in return!
Accordingly, you would never find her scrolling through the Steemit.chat, Discord or some other same or similar site or app, hunting other Steemit members through private messages, just to hit them with her post promotional links after eventual first few courtesy words of "Hi!" "Hello!" or "How are you?" (some members would even skip that courtesy part and blatantly just paste their post link). She would never intrude your privacy that way! She has manners!
She would never pretend to be a big friend or fan of yours with almost every day "Good morning!" "Good evening!" "Good night!" and "How is your digestion today?" kind of private chat messages just to scrounge and wheedle from you another upvote for some her newly published article. She would never try to insult your intelligence that way just to feed her interests while some members don't have the slightest problem with such or similar, more or less very transparent hypocrisy.
As I already said, Marianne West is an honest, kind, sincerely willing to help person with good manners! Even if she would feel, see or understand something differently than you do, or even maybe entirely disagree with you, she would know how to speak her mind and still never be rude.
And if there wouldn't be anything else she does to contribute this community, just for having around such a remarkable person as she is, she would, from my point of view, deserve all our appreciation. But that's not all.
Image Source: Image from Pixabay. Credits to wilmapolinder for chicken-hen, used under the CC0 Creative Commons license.
As I already mentioned before, first two months on Steemit Marianne was searching, researching, trying, testing and exploring this platform. As we all did or even still do, she also went through some errors, mistakes, and failures. Although, I would say, minor ones.
Through those first two months of her posts edition, besides her podcasts articles, she wrote some posts by participating in several challenges (the color challenge was her favorite one). She celebrated with us some achievements in few her milestone posts, shared with us some simple, personal everyday stories like the post about strange ant's gathering on her door was.
With different stories, she introduced to us her chickens or as she calls them her "backyard flock" who was once even convicted guilty as charged for Marianne's phone being out of work. Poor defendants didn't even have a chance to file the appeal as Marianne was playing all the roles from prosecutor to judge and jury.
We also met Boya, one of her dogs that follows her around every step of the way and who has issues with all sorts of couch protection dedicated to taking them all off and no matter how many layers of sheets and blankets Marianne would put on to protect the couch.
Full of life Marianne brought to us in her cheerful, optimistic and funny way almost her full daily life from many different aspects. Although all her stories were an easy read, I assume she must have been facing the problem (as we all do at least from time to time) called lack of idea for our next post or just pure writer's block. And there, through some brainstorming with @improv, she came out with the solution and the plan that would help not only her but many other Steemians.
Image Source: Own derivative work with the image from Pixabay. Credits to Mediamodifier for paper-messy-notes, used under the CC0 Creative Commons license.
Four months ago, on October 20, 2017, she launched the "Introduction to the Daily Prompt 5 minute Freewrite" announcing it as "Writers or wanna be Writers Wanted!!!! Be Free! Freewrite!" All the rest is history now.
However, from that day on she was writing every day new prompt ideas to motivate, inspire, encourage and help other members to start writing.
Marianne West's Freewrite is not a contest. It's not even a challenge or at least not in the form we most often see other Steemit challenges. I would rather say, it's some exciting and inspiring game you may join whenever you want, stay in it as long as you want, leave it whenever you want and being able to come back whenever you would feel like it again.
To participate, you don't need to follow her, don't need to upvote, neither resteem nor even comment her post if you don't want. No strings attached! I told you before, Marianne is a giver, not a taker!
But if you give her a sign that you joined the game and participated by writing your own freewrite on some of her prompts, you can bet she would reward you (sooner or later) with her visit and at least with the comment if not even with the vote.
If you have never tried to run something like this or some contest and challenge, you would hardly believe and understand how much work, time, and dedicated effort does it take. It's a huge job and a huge obligation!
Despite that, the fact is 20 days ago the "Day 100" of Marianne's Freewrite saw the daylight! The milestone of hard, continuous and dedicated work worth of celebration more than anything.
But 5 minutes Freewrite is not the only project she started and run. Weekend Freewrite, a short story project each weekend on different default starting topic in the form of the first sentence prompt which is followed by the given interference prompt and final dramatic twist prompt, is the whole another fun, inspiring and encouraging writing game that she started to help other members to create new and original content.
Having all that on my mind, sometimes I'm wondering, asking myself, where from she draws the energy and find the time, besides all her other obligations, to continue both projects of her Freewriting work with all that accompanying selfless support that she shares around, left and right to all the participants?!
But that's Marianne West, one of the rare and most selfless Steemit contributors I have come across being here for over a year, and a precious member of Steemit community you should know about.
Image Source: Image from Pixabay. Credits to PIRO4D for lighthouse-glow, used under the CC0 Creative Commons license.
In the end, I can only say...
Dear @mariannewest, as first thank you for being You and for bringing so much light and brightness to this platform and its community in general, and a special thank you for the cheerful, optimistic support you gave to every single member that you managed to touch by now! God bless you!
Posted on Friday, February 16, 2018
