Welcome to steemit! There are a lot of writers, travellers, foodies and artists around steemit, I can only welcome you from my perspective though .

Here is my post about the basics of steemit. I was in similar position to you when I was struggling to grapple with this massive ecosystem. I hope it helps to speed up your learning curve.

Follow your frequent commenters and leave them a feedback/ up-vote from time to time. Keep participating in creation and curation. The best way to prove yourself here is by putting good quality posts and over time your reputation will grow. Good thing about steemit is that you continue to keep growing simply by staying active in other people's posts as well as yours.

Join steemit.chat and get into at least one Discord forum. Please feel free to use the links in my recent post to understand how you can use some of the popular steemit services and the various discord communities of steemit. Good luck to you here @awakemi!