Thank you! It gives me such pleasure to read that people enjoy my writing.
Yes, I can be blunt, but that's me... once I embrace something (like Steemit) I become very protective of it and don't like to see others perhaps being taken advantage of.
As I said, the people I introduce to Steemit are told not to expect payouts to begin with. I looked back at my first post... 2 upvotes and one of those was mine! But I built on it, I figured out how to make my posts better and more inviting to the readers of Steemit (it's a different way of setting out a post to every other blog site I've used). I'm STILL learning, but I hope I'm also helping others to learn faster than I did.
To me, Steemit shows what a community can do when brought together. We have such a diverse and eclectic mix of skills, it truly is mind-blowing!