Happy to be saying "Hello Fellow Steemians!" from my perch here in Australia...
I know, that makes me sound like a budgerigar. And we'll have to live with that curious notion.
When I was a kid, I used to have budgies but that was a long time ago. Since I'm 70, it must have been a really really long time ago.
Right?
But who's looking back?
Not me.
I'm looking forward to participating in this great community. Already I've got some pals here.
Pals
I love that word "pals". It reeks of time shared together, of friendship and shared interests.
My pals that I see here already include @katebenzin @joannereid @peggyhazelwood and more yet to be discovered, I'm sure.
I must include the gal who first mentioned Steemit to me. It was an email from @joanaltres where she mentioned a Udemy course by @joeparys that is info-rich and was free at the time. Thank you, Joe, I'm still learning from that training.
Later, Joan put me onto an informative PDF by Helen @hopehuggs. I bought it and it opened my eyes because at that time I hadn't started on Joe's training.
Helen got me moving!
And if you haven't yet had the joy of watching @jerrybanfield, he's a hoot. An entertainer-cum-teacher who's striding upward through the Steemit galaxy, enjoying every moment of his journey.
Kindle refugee or recovering perfectionist?
As I traveled the long and winding road that led me to Steemit, I read about the benefits of becoming a published author on Amazon Kindle. Wow, a "published author". Sounded great. Better still, the royalties would accrue to my children and grandchildren.
I was hooked. I bought the course. I studied. I learned. And I wrote.
Ah, that — the writing — is the bit that took me ages because I'm a perfectionist. These days, I'm trying to be a recovering perfectionist, but the very idea of publishing anything that is not my best work just doesn't sit well.
So maybe I'm not a recovering perfectionist after all.
"We'll see," as my mother used to say. Which usually meant no.
Talking about my mother...
She was a farm girl, with two brothers. One inherited (or bought?) the farm. The other eventually bought a hardware store. Both did well financially. Both contributed significantly to my early memories. I have pleasant memories of visiting the old family farm when I was young.
It was in "the wheat belt" of WA (Western Australia). Winter mornings were crisp but we'd go out and collect mushrooms for breakfast. There, I'd forgotten that until telling you my story just now. So thanks for listening with such interest.
No wonder that my favorite TV viewing these days includes programs about rural life in Australia. Landline on the ABC is a fixture every weekend, exploring the issues that matter to farmers. And farmers are, as I hope we all know, mighty important people. They grow the food we eat. What they put on their land... and how they grow their animals affects our nutrition. For better or for worse.
We'll be talking about FOOD and NUTRITION in future posts, because as you may have noticed in my header blurb, I'm very much into NATURAL HEALTH these days. It's a passion of mine...
...which reminds me to share this link with you. http://plrgary.com/about/
That's where you'll read more about my passion for natural health.
Kindle revisited
As I was saying, I tried the Kindle thing. And to this day, I still earn from the Kindle fiction I wrote. The biggest payment last month was $2.48, if memory serves me.
"Mabel, we're rich!"
Not really.
Pat Wilpenter... who?
That, my friend, is the androgynous pseudonym I chose when I was writing my "Doctor Tess" series of Kindle stories.
It's worth visiting this page PatWilpenter.com/about just for the cute picture of my dog.
Well, not my actual dog. Just a stock photo of an adorable Golden Cocker Spaniel, which Goldie was. She was my childhood companion, along with my younger brother.
You'll also learn a bit about my Dad on that page. He was a good bloke, as we Aussies say.
En route to discovering Natural Health, I spent some time advocating green living
With a background that had injected a love of the country and farming (though I don't have a practical bone in my body and they'd never let me manage a farm), it's no surprise that I was attracted to green living.
I wrote for Going2Natural.com for a while and even though I've not contributed lately, they've kindly kept me on their team page. My brief collection of G2N contributions are listed here.
Of course, "living green" ties right in with natural health. And you'll be hearing a lot more from me about that wonderful, amazing, little-understood way of thinking. (Yep, in case it's not obvious from all those adjectives... I'm passionate!)
My freelance writing days started...
...with writing 750 words for the princely sum of $4.
That's right. As the first step on the ladder at Upwork, I accepted a writing gig that paid that giddy fee. I worked very hard on those early articles, getting a 5-star rating for every single one of them.
Bit by bit, I climbed up through the levels. "Rising star" was good. "Top rated" was even better. When I'd made it, I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about how I became top rated on Upwork.
No need to be impressed. Anybody could write as a contributor. That's what I did.
But it worked out well. When Upwork learned about the HuffPo piece, they asked me to write a version for their site, shorter than the original 2400 words. I gladly did - and it's still there.
HOWEVER... the financial rewards weren't commensurate with the amount of work I was putting in. And each client had different topics. That meant a fresh batch of research to write each topic.
Plastics manufacturing in China
Staff recruitment in the UK
Resume writing
Wordpress technical content like parallax web design
Debt collecting
Interviewing for a job
Timber flooring
You get the idea...
Each writing gig was SO DIFFERENT that it finally forced me to see the benefits of specialization. The benefits of FOCUS.
But what to focus on?
Ironically...
Years earlier, I had created NicheMarketingExplained.com to help web beginners see the benefits of going niche and helping them explore the possibilities. By the way, that domain is no longer in service, in case you were wondering.
That led me to create a course and a set of resources to help people choose a profitable niche. This became the foundational material for FindHotMarkets.com. That's another domain that I maintained for years until I finally let it go several years back.
As it turned out, I was better at dishing out that advice than following it
...which meant that I was now seriously asking myself:
Where do my interests lie?
What is my passion?
What would I enjoy researching and writing about for many years to come?
It took a while but the answer came:
NATURAL HEALTH.
And you'll be hearing more about that from me in the days, weeks and months ahead, because very little in this life that is more important than our health.
Your health.
My health.
The health of the nation.
So... THANK YOU FOR THE TIME YOU SPENT HERE WITH ME TODAY. AND I LOOK FORWARD TO CHATTING WITH YOU AGAIN.
Verification notes: For those who're interested, you'll find my name and picture on several sites I own and manage...
And also on several social media sites, though I confess to being highly inactive with these... which is all the more reason to love Steemit because it's so different:
Need health to enjoy the wealth!
How right you are, Richard.
Gary
Good introduction well said, now I'm very interested to read more of your blogs about health and I'm so happy to hear that even your on your 70 you can still manage to do the things that you wanted to do. =)
Glad to see you and good luck happy steeming! =)
Thanks, purepinay.
I'm keen to get on with writing about health, so I very much appreciate your enthusiasm for the topic too.
Gary
Welcome, Gary! Glad to meet a person who is into health! We are in the same boat ;) Best of luck. Followed
I am into motivation, psychology and healthy lifestyle, in case you would like to visit my channel :) VALUE guaranteed
Ah, there is so much involved in Health, isn't there? Your focus on motivation and how the mind works is so important, along with nutrition and avoiding health hazards - one of which (vaccines) I addressed in my latest post.
Love your "thinking cat" meme. A joyful photo that made me smile.
Gary
I see you're using several bots. Which gets best results for you?
You joined last month and already you've got super impressive stats. What's your strategy? Please do tell.
I've followed you ... of course!
Gary
You are Pat Wilpenter. Well, I never knew that. Great post. It's good to get to know more about your past. I knew of your interest in natural health, also an interest of mine. But -- you're Pat Wilpenter. Well I never knew that!!!
Yes, I chose the name Pat because Pat can be a man or a woman, whatever the reader feels more comfortable with imagining.
And the surname Wilpenter. That came about after I read of a great way to come up with pseudonyms. It's the SLICE AND DICE method. Think of two surnames. Cut 'em in half and recombine the bits. So it was Williams + Carpenter... which gave me Wil + penter.
After a quick search in Google, I knew there was nobody else by that name and so it was that Pat Wilpenter "burst" onto the scene.
Gary
So nice to learn more about your background, @garyharvey! I look forward to reading your natural health posts here.
And a little advice, nothing's perfect so... give it up! Said with kindness, because I'm the same way and would get nothing done if I didn't let a few things go from time to time.
What do they say? "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".
I wasn't sure of that exact quote so I looked it up. Can you believe it? Wikipedia has a page about it. And so does Entrepreneur.com! Their piece is by the legendary Neil Patel. Here's the link... https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/249676
Great intro, Gary. I particularly love that you remembered something while you were writing. Isn't that just one of the greatest benefits of writing - memories just pop in and remind you of things that you'd supposedly forgotten.
Thanks Kate.
This turned out to be "stream of consciousness" writing. I've not done much of that in the past but this was SO ENJOYABLE. It suggests that writing for Steemit is going to be easier and more fun than I was expecting it to be.
(I was expecting it to be the usual hard work that writing often is. You know, research... draft up a list of points... write each point... review the overall result to see if it holds together... edit the bits that dont work... proofread several times. Phew, I'm tired just saying all that.)
And in the process of stream of consciousness writing, I imagine that other serendipities will come to the surface. Thanks for your comment.
Gary
Welcome to steemit @garyharvey - I hope you have an enjoyable time!!! Please feel free to follow me as I share stories of weightloss and farming. Also You may want to check out @kiwideb as she is into natural health also!
Hi Andy.
It is Andy, isn't it?
So you're a Kiwi. We lived in Auckland and Wellington for 7 years last century. That makes us sound really ancient but it was back in the 1970s. Love EnZed and we were back there last year for a reunion with other couples also married in the 70s.
Cute piggy photo!
And I will be following you as soon as I figure out how to do that. And the same goes for your friend Deb. Can you enlighten me about how to follow here? Please. I know how to follow on Facebook, but FB doesn't pay you to write so I know Steemit is going to grow, grow, grow as the word gets out.
Gary
Hi again Gary - Yes it's Andrea or Andy :) I was born in Wellington but have lived all around the North Island - now I'm rural small town. If you click on @andysantics48 it takes you to my page. In the top right corner there's a button which says follow - click the button simple as that :) So that you don't get into trouble while you're learning the ropes @kiwideb has a blue box at the bottom of her posts which gives you an idea of the basic do's and don'ts on steemit :) hope this helps. Feel free to leave comments on peoples posts but if you do be sure to upvote as well - that's the first thing I learned.
Thanks Andy. As it happened, I stumbled across that 'Follow' button shortly after asking you. It's kind of you to respond as you did, thank you.
May I ask one more question. You noticed my comment quite quickly. Does Steemit notify you of replies to comments you've posted? I haven't found that yet. Or were you just on the ball? - probably.
Good point about upvoting the posts that I comment on. Haven't always been doing that. Appreciated!
I'm off to read Deb's pointers.
Gary
You may ask anything you like - I had Deb (she's my sister) to help me when I first started - she's been here a long time so she knows her stuff - Most people aren't that lucky and as you say stumble around blindly. Ok so at the top right again where your face is - click there and you will see feed - that's where the posts that people you follow are. Then there's blog - that's your stuff - then there's comments and replies - comments is what you say and replies are when someone answers :) hope that helps
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Really a great introduction post, Gary. Good to have you here my friend! :)
Ah, Joan. It was YOU who first introduced me to this amazing Social Media platform.
Many many thanks for doing that.
Always in your debt.
Gary
Very good introduction Gary. Good content and information. You have all the basic fundamentals to become a success on Steemit. I will follow your journey closely. Good luck
Hello Jason, the ENCOURAGEMENT contained in your words is very much appreciated.
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I look forward to seeing your future comments too.
Gary
Welcome mate, and I'm glad to see you've stepped into the Team Australia community on Discord as well. I'm looking forward to seeing your posts about health here. :)
Thanks, @mazzle. I'm still figuring out how to use Discord but it's good to know there are Aussies on board... in the same time zone.
Re my other posts, normally I put a list of them in a post footer but didnt feel that was appropriate for my HELP post.
Gary