Pat! I'm so glad you found this!

I love that you found normal folks on your journey. I strongly believe that's the majority. Not the craziness that the MSM wants us to believe.

A few tips to start:

Tags are important
When you click home you'll see a list of current blogs (probably not many if you aren't following anyone yet). To the right is a list of tags. They are in order of how much money they have currently. So, the higher up your tag, the more people that will see it. A lot of content goes undervalued and completely missed at first. I'm not sure there's a way around that... except trial and error.

I would have tagged this TRAVEL (cause it's huge), NEWS (also pretty big), INTRODUCEYOURSELF, BLOG, & LIFE.

You are allowed to edit your post within an hour of publishing. After that, it's permanently permanent. 🙂

That little number by Your Name
That's your Reputation. Everyone starts at 25, but you can go negative. The trolls do. 😲 The higher your number the more 'weight' to your voting power. You increase that number in several ways, but firstly, by interacting: upvoting and commenting.

The UpVote
Do this a lot, but mean it. Steemit is essentially mining for money. It's constantly coming in. When you vote you are using the mined currency to reward others. You can also reward yourself. The more in your Wallet overall, (more on that later), the more currency your account creates.

Comments
Read posts and make well thought-out comments. This gains attention from the Whales (we are minnows). The Whales have lots of money backing their accounts causing their mining rewards to be higher. So while your vote currently is only worth a fraction of a cent, I'm currently up to about $0.05 (at full power), but Whales may have a vote worth $150! Just one vote. So, as you can see, you want to make friends with these folks. Then, if you create content they like- you get paid big.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Oh! Don't vote on posts older than 7 days. The pay out is done and all it does is reduce your vote weight without rewarding anyone.

One last thing: I'm so tickled that you just jumped right in. I love that! I was not so brave, but am excited I finally waded in from the shallow end. Hugs!

Welcome and good luck!