(this post started off as a chat comment in the 'welcome' chat, but it got to long & i figured i'd put it here)

hi all .... i've only been on here a very short time & fascinated & excited by everything steem... amazing possibilities... i spent some time trying to figure out 'rules' here, and am discovering that, other than 'don't forget your password', there doesn't seem to be too much in the way of 'rules' - other than common sense... i like that... There is something really exciting about this whole thing... i'm soaking up as much as possible about how it all works before making my first post... it seems like it's an evolving system that is evolving in tandem with the users... Am i right in these assumptions? this all seems so new, it looks so brilliant in so many ways... Is there a limit to the size of the first post? How important is verification vs anonymity? does it just apply to honesty and 'being who we claim to be' - i.e. showing that we are who we say we are... i've held back on social media for so many years, simply because i felt so uncomfortable with it in so many ways... I did try Facebook, but in the end, it just makes me feel, well, unwell i guess is the only way to put it... so much junk & clickbait on FB .... 'Steem' seems different, as a working economy, a community, and just a true alternative to the mind-numbing lunacy of so much of our modern world... Have we finally arrived at something that will truly bring to fruition everything that the internet seemed to promise when it first emerged way back in the 80's? i really hope so, the dirge of so much online these days has truly made me wonder if we'd ever get there... I know that there's tonnes of really great stuff on the internet, but ... well, i guess i will leave that for future posts.... I've high hopes for Steem, a little baffled at how to go about it, so new, and getting the feeling that the best thing to do is to just go ahead and create posts... I've tonnes of questions, but i guess i will answer those once i take the plunge and get participating... Can we edit our posts once they're out there? (I guess there's little point in that?)... Do we get to preview our posts before they're published? forgive me if the answers to all this are obvious, everything out there seems to be in the form or articles on Steem... I'm really excited about what you guys are building here ... Seems like the internet is about to blossom in ways that we have absolutely no idea about... Facebook 'felt' so horrendous ... as if it was vacuuming up our collective life force and shoving it all into some big nasty database in the sky - a dupe, a con... Steem feels so very different .... It seems 'good'! - Ha! .... I've just realised that i might just have written my first 'post' right now... I guess i'd better 'post' this as a first post, rather than put it in the 'welcome' chat, as it's now way too long for that... I guess this is a test post... but at least it's answered some of my questions!! :D ha ha! I can see the preview here... Well, 'hallo world'! Very very glad to have found Steem... Now ready to really get my head around how this all works...

aarnold