![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmU5fb33AGw6sbtGsEycngk3jXwhSxnCrxiBTEhVxCxfeF/image.png)

<a href="http://thebluediamondgallery.com/a/achievement.html">Image Credit</a>

I was hoping to be able to celebrate both my reputation reaching 60 and having gained 1000 followers at the same time. But I seem to be 38 followers shy of 1000 and the number of my followers has been increasing so slowly in the past month or so that I think reaching 1000 will probably take another month or longer at best. 

Out of those two, reaching a reputation of 60 is clearly more important as reputation is a straightforward consequence of getting upvoted (minus downvotes).  For the details of how reputation is calculated, see <a href="https://steemit.com/steemit/@arcange/what-is-steemit-reputation-and-how-does-it-work">this article</a> by @arcange. Reputation as a function of upvotes (minus downvotes) is logarithmic which means that your reputation increases easily at first when you start out with a reputation of 25 and becomes gradually more difficult to attain when it grows. I started on Steem in February 2017 but did not write anything but my introductory post until early June 2017. It has essentially taken me a year to go from 25 to 60.  

I have always upvoted my own posts like the most people here but never my own comments. Nor have I ever bought votes from bidbots or from any other larger account, which means that all upvotes I have received have been organic except for upvotes given by @suomibotti, a project of @apsu, that has been delegated SP by @acidyo (~ 5,000 SP), @gamer (~ 300 SP), @tarazkp (~ 350 SP) and @apsu (~ 150 SP). (Thank you @apsu and all delegators to it for this project to support the Finnish community for free!) 

I owe special gratitude to @gamer00 who onboarded me in the spring of 2017. I'm also very grateful for his ~ 1,000 SP delegation that I have received from him. There is no question that he has been my most important supporter so far. Another important supporter has been @acidyo, the champion of manual curation, to whom I'm very thankful for appreciating many of those of my photography posts that I have taken some care to craft. I also want to extend my thanks to all the rest of those who have supported me during this journey!