For those who haven’t been keeping up, Hayley and I are flying out of Sydney on Wednesday afternoon (AEST) and heading down to Melbourne until Saturday. For a bit more detail, go and check here.

As a result, I’ve been working my tail off all last week doubling my efforts to ensure that while I am away and away from my PC, the articles keep coming out and my Steemit space is maintained to a high standard.

Over the last few days, I’ve been allowing Streemian to post on my behalf by setting up scheduled releases. All have worked perfectly, except for today.

I jumped onto Streemian and had a look at what was pending release. All the articles were all still there, as I was still counting down the final minutes until my most recent one was posted. Finally, the time came and the most recent left the pending list, but never appeared on my blog page. I kept refreshing and waiting, but to no avail. So I’m left in a slight predicament.

They’re all up waiting to go at their specified dates and times, so if they don’t perform the same monkey act and don’t disappear, all is well. Now, I have had the foresight at least to have backed all of the stories up TWICE – the second in a specific file for those releases, so if they don’t get released while I’m away, I can do them manually from my PC upon my return.

I know one week isn’t a massive deal and yes, I’m not suggesting I’m Stephen King with a worldwide following, but half of being taken seriously is taking the work seriously. Sharing creative works (artwork, writing, music, videography) is as valuable if not more valuable than a lot of the rubbish that news presenters are being paid quadruple my teachers' weekly income for producing. The goal isn’t to fluff about here and make six cents, it’s to develop a following of readers who appreciate the stories, both fictional and of my own life with an aim to encourage other writers to pay greater attention to their own work and be better at what they do.

I regularly invoke the mental strength and commitment of writers I grew up in my late teens reading.

I'm not speaking of writers of another age or high-brow authors who have reported on and investigated war crimes. I’m talking about writers that aren’t that much older than me who can tell fantastic stories of fiction. The author I think of most is Matthew Reilly. While I haven’t read much of his work lately, I have read most of his novels and his novella – Hell Island. At seventeen, I was first introduced to his work by a friend of mine at school. That book was Area 7. It was the first book that gave me the confidence to read substantial books outside of school. My last years in high school were unpleasant and I really didn’t care much for learning at that point --- isn’t being a teenager awful? It certainly was for me.

The point is, we need to look up to those writers better than us to inspire us to become great. I could have stayed in my quagmire of self-pity during my end years of high school. But having something to take me away from that place, mentally, gave me an out while at the same time introduced me to quality writing that would form a part of my own repertoire (we mimic those we learn from - think of your accent!).

It’s fascinating how a simple Streemian annoyance can end up being somewhat of an opportunity to share some of my ambition (and history) with you all.

As always, thanks for hanging about and being a really good listener.

Nick.

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