The struggle of not being able to approach all the subjects you desire

I spent the last 15 minutes thinking of a new article to write for today. I started working on all kind of projects lately and I'm having a decently hard time thinking about things to approach when it comes to Steemit. One of the main reasons this happens is because I start to think I'm talking too much about work, productivity and things I already mentioned in past articles.

That made me consider talking about other things, subjects approached by other people and discuss new ideas. There are, for sure, writers who feel some kind of anxiety whenever they want to write something new, to approach a new subject, because they are not sure they will be able to create any high quality content with those new ideas.

That's pretty much what I'm experiencing right now. I wanted to write several articles approaching different subjects, one of them being what may happen after we die, explaining a small "theory" that came into my mind after watching an interesting video. I may be able to write that article really well, but that doesn't mean I'm not insecure about doing it.

The main reason is that I spent my last months and years learning about how to work, how to be productive, how to make as much progress as possible in order to make a living online and how to make money using the Internet.

Because of that most of the knowledge I now have is related to how to make money online and how to be a good freelancer. I am able to give advice about how to upload design packages on Graphic River or Creative Market, how to use certain methods to work faster and better, why it's easy to learn how to use tools like Photoshop or Illustrator for free, and so on.

I know a lot about those things but sadly, I don't know a lot about other subjects that may be interesting to a lot of people and may help me create better content. It's an annoying situation that could make anyone scared or confused about the future of their profile or blog in case people will get bored of their content.

The simplest solution I found, that could work in most cases, is content consumption. I know I mentioned this a lot of times, but it's one of the simplest solutions you can find to this kind of problem. Not being able to approach multiple subjects to talk about in your articles is a problem every writer will encounter at some point in their life.

You learn a lot of things in one area, you write about those things for a period of time and then you find out you don't know anything else and you already shared most of the things you know. You don't really have anything left to share, so what can you do to keep publishing?

Learning new things, reading, watching videos, movies and sharing your opinion towards the things you consume. Those are the easiest ways you can get to know a few things about different topics, maybe even enough to write a different type of articles.

Here's the biggest problem we face when it comes to consuming content in order to expand our understanding and knowledge - when we want to watch a video, read a book, an article or consume other types of content, we keep reading and watching videos featuring the same things we already know.

For example, if I go to my Medium bookmarks right now, most of the things I saved there to read in the future are about being productive, become a better writer, stories of people who made it into the programming world, of people who got rich and managed to get their dream job, and so on.

Reading all those articles may make me feel like I'm learning new things that I can talk about here, on Steemit. However, I'm just learning about the same topics I already know, and the only thing I'll get from this is being able to approach new ideas about the same subjects.

How to solve this? Learn how to consume types of content that you were never really interested in. Start reading articles or books approaching different subjects, like love, sex, perversity, communication, drama, personal experience, fantasy, horror and so on. Watch movies you didn't think you may enjoy, like drama, action, horror, comedy, mistery, sci-fi, romantic, sexual, etc.

As you already noticed, I mentioned "sexual" or "sex" above, and I did it for a reason. I realized a few days ago that one of the main reasons I don't consume different types of content is because I am comfortable with what I consume at the present moment, I am happy that I read or watch things that relate to me, more or less, or that make me feel good about myself or the future, and I avoid things I don't think can teach me anything.

I've been so focused on the thins I enjoy that I forgot there may be other things out there that I may like and I ignore everything I don't know just because it's new and I didn't experienced it before. A person who loves comedy may avoid horror movies just because he or she will think "Well, I don't like those kind of things, I want to laugh not to be scared". A person who loves romantic movies may never watch anything related to sexuality because "it's gross and people should love each other not think about sex all the time".

There are all kind of reasons to avoid different types of content, and I agree with some of them. You shouldn't force yourself to read or watch something if you don't like it. However, you should try new things and experience new types of content. Especially if you're a content creator.

For example, let's think of a writer who just ran out of ideas, and never played video games. That person may say "I played one game a few years ago and I didn't really like it, so I avoid them because they are a waste of time". I could agree if that person would have a job that doesn't involve a lot of creativity.

But as a content creator he is just avoiding interacting with a type of content (in this case, video games) that may give him a lot of ideas, that contains a lot of inspiration and amazing life lessons that can actually help him in his work.

We may think "Well, that's kind of a stupid thing to do, right?", and I would agree, but we do it all the time by avoiding different types of content just because we think "Nah, I won't like that", without even knowing it. We're content creators, we need creativity, we should be explorers who try new things in order to enrich our experiences and knowledge.

I'm not saying you should spend your next 8 hours watching horror movies or get on Google and watch porn after porn to see if there's something new to learn. I'm saying that you should start, little by little, to consume different types of content that may give you a little more insight into areas and topics you never really thought about before.

Do you see a movie somewhere featuring a haunted house or a scared girl? Get one less comedy or action movie and get that horror movie to see what is about. Do you love romantic movies but you see one that features two girls on the cover kissing and while it's romantic, it may involve sex scenes you're not a fan of? Buy it, see it, experience it, see if you get new ideas and move on.

You may think "How can that help me come up with new ideas for my work", and the best answer I can give you is "By asking yourself questions about what you just experienced". For example, let's say you just bought a movie featuring sex scenes and you hate that about the movie. You don't understand why someone would watch something like that and why they exist. That's when you can ask yourself "Why do people watch porn?" or "Why do people watch romantic movies?" or "Is pornography an important part of our day to day life?" or "Why is sex so overrated?" Those are just a handful of questions you can ask yourself that can easily become entire articles.

One of the main reasons I chose a "sex" movie for the example above and not something different is to show you how some people (and maybe even you) can feel repulsion towards that topic, not because they consider it ugly or bad or gross, but because that's how most people consider it and it's something you started doing as well, maybe subconsciously.

We, as content creators, shouldn't be restricted to consuming just the types of content people consider it's "okay" to consume. We shouldn't stop ourselves from trying new things just because people say it's wrong and we should not avoid certain types of content just because we won't feel amazing about consuming them.

I always avoided romantic movies because I don't really like anything featuring love. It makes me feel uncomfortable and it doesn't resonate with me at all. However, a few months ago I watched a movie called "The Words" featuring Bradley Cooper, and while it has a lot of romantic parts in it (or at least featuring romantic scenes), I really enjoyed that movie, even tho I was sure I'll hate it.

It's time we step out of our comfort zone when it comes to content consumption and we start reading and watching things that we don't think we may like. Sometimes we'll be right and the type of content we'll consume won't be interesting at all. But we may find, from time to time, that the romantic, sexual, horror or comendy movies or books we so much avoided are actually amazing and we start consuming more and more and more until we get to a point where we even start writing about it.

As content creators we should allow ourselves to explore, to experience and to see something new all the time. It's the best way I can think of to improve the content we create. If we limit ourselves to the things we like and consider "good' or "acceptable" according to other people, then we limit our creative potential and we reject every amazing thing we may be able to create.