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This is my personal Thank you to @fulltimegeek for including me in the Stewards of Gondor for the past months.  It has been an extreme honor to be trusted to hand out upvotes worth several dollars to the posts I come across on a daily basis!  

Now that the delegation has been removed and @fulltimegeek is powering up to do battle against the Steem Trolls who have plagued our fine platform, it is a time to reflect on what these months have changed.

<center><h3>In the beginning</h3></center>

I created my account on 9 August, 2017, a touch over six months ago.  I had very little knowledge of what Steem was, or what I would do here.   If I had given myself expectations, the way things have turned out has not been anything like what that expectation would have looked like.

Over the Past 6 months I have grown my account through post rewards and buying Steem to 2300 SP, which is not a ton, but is what I would consider "healthy growth".  I could have grown it more, but I opted to diversify by taking the majority of my Post Rewards to the exchanges and build a portfolio of crypto assets.  Without Steem, I would not have a crypto portfolio at all.

<center><h3>The Delegation Effect</h3></center>

The Delegation from @fulltimegeek allowed me to create a new community curation project, @thefreshfive.  This project was built to encourage new Steemians on their introduction posts with a good vote and an invitation to engage with the community through the Daily Fresh Five Posts.  Bringing people together to support each other as they work to climb the great Steem ladder.  With the delegation from Geek, I was able to delegate the majority of my main account SP to @thefreshfive for that account to have a decent upvote to give out, I was also able to follow The Fresh Five account with my own upvote, ensuring the people we were featuring got a nice reward.  This, I think, is the signature product I was able to create out of being a #StewardofGondor, and is the thing I am most proud of.

<center><h3>The Fresh Five Thanks @fulltimegeek</h3></center>

Without Geek, without the Stewards, there may not be a Fresh Five initiative.  So thank you Geek for enabling me to create something I think can be a great service to the community!

I have acquired the services of @aussieninja who is the primary curator for @thefreshfive, and my hope is to expand the efforts, and continue to build on the successes we have had.  I will not be removing my delegation from @thefreshfive, leaving the majority of my own SP in the secondary account's hands.

In the coming days I will be writing a proposal to @budgets and @jerrybanfield in hopes of getting some additional SP support to the Fresh Five initiative.  The goal is to build something fairly similar to the OCD model of curation, but specific to the Introduceyourself tag.  I hope to expand to include several additional curators to expand the reach and engagement that the Fresh Five is able to reach.  In order to do that, I will need to grow the account, not only to give bigger rewards to new Steemians, but also to have the SP to be able to offer rewards through upvotes to the Curators who will join the team.

This will be my focus for a bit, though I have a hard time keeping on one track and may diverge a bit between now and the time I am able to post my budget proposal, but The Fresh Five is my Steem Child, and I want it to become a pillar of the Steem community.  

Whether Full Time Geek is ever able to reinstate the Stewards of Gondor or not, whether he decides to include me once again or not, I am immensely thankful to him for my inclusion thus far, and the ability it has given me to find and create something that I can claim as my mission in Steem.  

The Key Word for me is Retention.  Getting in front of these new Steemians and giving them the support and tool they need to succeed on the platform.  The number of accounts on Steem is inconsequential if they are all dead fish.  The goal of the Fresh Five is to encourage engagement and retention so that the talented new Steemians joining us each day do not go unnoticed.  

<center><h3>Final Thoughts</h3></center>

So this post has meandered a bit away from the original intent,  which was simply to thank @fulltimegeek for his delegation and the good it has allowed me to do.  I have said, and will continue to say, I fully support the mission laid out to flag the trolls!  This is important work, and our Whales need more examples like Geek willing to do the dirty work that will preserve our investments in Steem moving forward.  

The quickening has begun.  As of this morning, the delegations have been removed, and in 7 days @fulltimegeek will go to battle!  I regret that I have but one delegation to give to this cause as it is righteous and good.

Take the battle to them Geek!  I look forward to the progress you are able to make!!!