After a good long while, looks like I've finally made it to Blurt. I mean, I've been crypto blogging for quite some time, but I have found it hard to juggle more than one platform. However, people have been saying such nice things about this platform, how can I resist? Of course, it seems like a bit of a wild forest when you start new anywhere, so I'm hoping you can help me find a path!

I guess there's two kinds of people here - those that know me, and those that don't. I'll write as if none of you know me, so if you do, and want to skip to the section labelled 'help me!' then go right ahead. And do comment, even if you do know me, so I can follow you can get this party started!

I'm writing on the ferry back from Tasmania at the moment. I'm an Aussie mainlander, but I'm totally in love with this island at the end of the world - well, the bottom end anyway - and have been scouting to move there. It's a perfect place for a girl in love with nature - the ocean, in particular, as I'm a surfer, but also the rivers, the mountains, the wild forests. It brings me peace that I find hard to attain due to anxiety and hypersensitivity. I understand nature - people, I struggle with a little.

Saying that, I'm a social girl - I love engaging on social media, particularly a decentralised one, as I'm not keen on being told what to do and what to say. Media platforms such as F*cebook and others I shan't name are affecting us in huge ways, influencing us on a cultural level like no media platforms have done before. Most of humanity doesn't even realise how much we're all in this massive bubble together, shaping our future. Whether or not places like this are the answer, I sure appreciate being able to speak my mind without being censored.

Back to off chain shenanigans. I'm an air sign (if you don't do astrology, that's fine - bottom line it's just a way to understand myself and others, and there's more than one system to do that) so I'm a little hard to pin down and tend to jump from one thing to another with gusto and enthusiasm. People often ask how I do all of what I do and manage a blog a day, but I find blogging a relaxing daily exercise and language helps me sort out what's in my head as well.

Currently, I'm super into mushrooms. I'm growing oyster mushrooms in a fruiting chamber in my yoga room (yeah, I'm a yogi too) and, given it's been Autumn in Tassie, have been madly running from shroom to shroom in damp fern gladed forests finding the coolest fungi ever. It'd be cool to make a business out of it, but I'm not sure how to go about it yet.

I'm not a vegan, but don't eat a lot of meat, if at all, and have never eaten much dairy. I'm more into conscious eating, really, but you'll find me posting plant based posts sometimes. I do enjoy creative cooking, especially using homegrown produce. I like to think of myself as a gardening rebel - gardening can be an active of resistance and resilience in an increasingly regulated world. I believe modern agriculture is responsible for half the problems we have with accelerated climate change and is certainly responsible for our health as well. There's much science behind how what we eat has an influence on our mental and general health, and soil health is absolutely the basis of nutrition, yet we strip it off bacteria and fungi and all the creatures that influence the taste and the nutritional value of our food. And don't even get me started on big corporations and how they influence every level of our society, including what we eat and how we medicate ourselves. So yeah. Gardening can be revolutionary and a gateway drug to true independence.

I'm also keen on herbs - I'd say more of a folk herbalist and a kitchen witch as I don't have formal training. Not that I think we need that - it costs nearly 50K for an alternative health degree here and that's bananas. Woman - and men - have been supporting their health with plants forever, yet we seem to have lost a lot of that knowledge in favour of big pharma. I'd love to go back to times where our go to is plant medicine, with western medicine second (I'm not against alleopathy, to be clear).

I also love writing a little short fiction, particularly dystopian and apocalyptic. I'm not a dark person by nature - but I do love the dark side. I'm glad to be at the time of my life where I'm not diving into the darkness so much but exploring the real light in the world, but that doesn't mean I can't go there with my fiction sometimes.

Help Me

And now, dear friends, future, current and past, please help me get started here. Starting a new journey can be a little daunting without people to help you through the forest.

A few questions - given what I've written about above, which tags should I be exploring or using, or what people do you recommend? How much BLURT should I invest in to get started and to make my vote count? What exchanges deal with Blurt - I'm aware of Ionomy but are there others now? Are there particularly lucrative or important tags I should be focussed upon or does engagement and followers matter more? What other tips would get me rolling and moving here?

I had to come back and edit after a look around, as I had a few more questions! Is there a draft saving tool here? Is this the only front end for the Blurt token? What are the best 'community' or interest accounts to follow? Is there any existing gardening accounts, for example, or contests and challenges I can get involved with? Does every single transaction cost you BLURT? What else do I need to know?

I must admit, like anything I get involved in from fungi to hoop houses to surfing and hiking, I'm pretty darn excited.

Love Riverflows!