WHEN YOU SHOOT FOR THE MOON

This is it! The golden day, the chance I've been waiting for, I got one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything I ever wanted, in one moment. Will I capture it? Or just let it slip? ^_source Will this post lead to that coveted Golden Ticket?

_{^{Yes, you saw that right, no source cited here. I made it myself, hoping @blueorgy will see the graphical design talent here... :)}}

My most loyal blog followers already know why I want to visit Steemfest². I've described that in this post. But this shot to the moon is not about what Steem can do for me. It's about my goals and what I can do for Steem!

I love this community, and I love being part of it! Nowhere else have I found so many kind hearted, selfless, helpful, willing people as here on Steemit, it's almost overwhelming. I find true joy in acting on these same principles, just helping out where I can. I like to make designs sometimes. I've made the Steemit's Got Talent logo's. Just made this golden ticket above. And also today I came in contact with @fatpandadesign, a very cool Steemian (recommended to follow, he's going to make it big here) who liked a visual I created for his discord member group, TheUnmentionables. The group's name made me think about the Expendables (or Deplorables), so I thought of this style, this visual is a work in progress, we're still collecting profile pictures of the members:

I try to read up on as many blogs as possible. Keep up with what's going on Steemit, but boy, that's sometimes hard! So many posts flow through this blockchain. Some are pure gems, some pure rubbish and a lot in between. I try to comment where I can add some insight, I do my best. I've helped Steemians find things and information sometimes, because all that reading does make me know things sometimes.

Also I have made mistakes and I try to learn from them. Learning new things is one of my highest priorities. Steemit articles encouraged me to fire up a Virtual Image for the first time in my life. Then I installed Ubuntu, NPM, Python3 the piston-libs and -cli from @xeroc and modified some scripts to automatically post comments on blogs with certain tags. This led to growing my follower base to almost 1.000 members (I was almost there!!). But then, steemcleaners came along, commenting me a couple of times that comment spamming is frowned upon by the community. I thought nothing of it, since I have never heard any spam commenting complains from a Steemit user receiving my messages. I'm still quite proud of the contents of the messages and think that they're quite excellent in terms of quality responses. (The building blocks for the messages can be found here, for the complete messages scroll down my comments section, you'll see my customized and personalized GIFs, my bitcoin haiku's and the core messages chosen for appropriate tags). This week steemcleaners then suddenly teamed up with blacklist-a to vote down my messages.

The moment I saw that, I jumped in my car, drove home, killed the virtual machine, which stopped automated commenting and upvoting directly. I felt beaten, destroyed and disappointed. Did I do something wrong? Were my actions really bad for the Steemit community? Should I be ashamed of myself? I searched the platform for answers and tried to contact @firepower via steemit.chat, no answer. My emotion told me that the steemcleaners account had no right, it's itself an automated bot, if I'm spam commenting so is steemcleaners, it was even upvoting it's own comments, while I was upvoting other Steemit members... But I have calmed down and this is my VOW to @firepower, for I believe he's in charge of steemcleaners, may this vow be verified by our witnesses and may this pledge be recorded intro the blockchain for all eternity:

If you still feel I do not add enough value to the Steemit community, let me tell you this, I have booked flight tickets to Lisbon to go there in November together with my stunningly beautiful wife. If I win this contest, I will bring her to Steemfest²! But, be advised, although I know that sharing is part of the Steemit culture, I do not share my wife. If I don't win this contest, there's a chance I'm doomed to go shopping with her for 3 days, can you imagine how badly I need this?

And there's more: I plan to do new things on Steemit. Curation might just be one of the most important things on this platform. Let's find those new talented authors and give them a boost. Let Steemit be known for it's quality content, for having the absolute best blog posts on the planet. I have the utmost respect for the Curie project, but still I think there's room for other curation projects, for a monopoly on things is never good. So I plan to help out @acidyo with his Operation Curation Delegation project and hope to get some more SteemPower delegated to that wonderful iniatiative and maybe in the near future have a OCD division for The Netherlands. As Dutch people, we tend to be able to express ourselves in English. But I'd like to do more to be a true representative of the Dutch community here on Steemit and contribute towards a Steemit flourishing in our country.

Before I close this blog post, I have a last long-term goal here. I say we should someday build a statue or a shrine for our most outstanding apostle, the bringer of the Steemit good news to the ignorant, the one who trotters the globe with his Steemit Roadshow to bring the abundant Steem blessings to those who still live without it, the one, the only @markwhittam, can you already see it, this monument standing somewhere he once told his tales:

So that was it, my shot for the moon! Here goes and may the Steem be with you!

PS I vote for @blueorgy as witness, and I encourage everyone to do the same!