_{Food for thought Source: Pxhere}

_{This post is mostly, but not exclusively, for the ever-growing SteemSTEM community}

Wow, it's been a long time since I did my Tree of Life series. But seriously, It's been on my mind almost every day since I stopped. Along with the others of course, but mostly Tree of Life. It's so close to completion. I think.

As you probably guessed, this was due to a 2 week vacation/visa run back in England, and I've been catching up with life and jet lag ever since. But thanks to one night of alcohol, that has been set right back to normal and we can now continue my blog with a heavy dosage of science-y awesomeness.

But first, today, I want to talk about what I'm actually doing here, how and why.

So where were we?

A month ago, the last episode of the Tree of Life series was super fascinating to me, diving into (or out of, I suppose) the prerequisite evolutionary steps that were needed for us to figure out breathing on land. In case you don't remember, it's a lot more complicated than it looks.

Although every second of reading about it was indeed fascinating, I had to dig deep and sweat it out through the grinding details of numerous papers and other sources:

But, the hardest part of these posts for me is not the trawling of papers and deciphering of complex lingo. I'm a science communicator more than a scientist, obviously, and to be able to transform these papers into a single 1,000 word post that's easy enough for a child to understand, and even more, to be interested in? ...

That is what takes up 75% of my time and effort.

I think this is something that many users posting under SteemSTEM fail to really comprehend about what we're trying to create. At least, in my opinion.

Steem is a social media blockchain.

It's also a place where everyone is free to post whatever the hell they want. But what do 'the people' want?

Well, aside from the money which is likely about 93% of why anyone bothers at all here, the other 7% reason for being here is to read entertaining, personal, enlightening, funny content from familiar and likable users.

This should be obvious, and although subjectivity is obviously a thing, I still trawl through mountains of technical data on here that has an incredibly tight target audience.

Again, this is fine, but I personally don't think one should limit themselves to write about the thing they happen to be an expert in or a student of.

I'm not an expert in Evolutionary Biology, or Chinese medicine, or politics, or geology, chemistry, history and so on. I never could be. Nobody can be an expert in so many subjects. But by approaching such a wealth of diverse information, a much richer and appealing series of posts can be created.

Nobody here, on a social media platform expects us to be absolute authorities on a given subject. But for SteemSTEM, they do expect us to be correct. If you can use critical thinking skills, do proper analysis and deciphering of content without being misleading and most importantly, convey that in a factually accurate manner, this to me has more value than publishing your University notes or a complex meta-analysis on a particular enzyme in the Western Sarahan Cactus Needle.

But even more valuable to me is the - very much learned - ability to make it interesting, making people want to actually read more and go google for themselves further information. Making people laugh inside as they read, making them feel like they know you as a person.

To be honest, I think it's more valuable if people follow YOU for who YOU are as a person, rather than the content you create. Nobody follows Justin Bieber for his music. They follow because they either want to see his dong slip out or get updates about his latest drug scandal. People listen to and perhaps maybe even enjoy his music as a side to that.

Especially when it's remixed back into the 80's:

This to me is the crucial concept. Aside from that 93% of greed for money you're putting yourself through, is that 7% remaining there for more money? To show people how much knowledge you have? to lecture people about the knowledge you have? Or, to be an informed online personality who people trust and enjoy the virtual company of?

For me, the latter is by far my priority. I like to think it's 93% of why I'm here, but who am I kidding, eh?

However, it's win-win for me. I'm not passionate about the one thing I could hope to call myself an expert in. I'm passionate about ALL KINDS of things in all areas of study, all over the world. So much so that, as I said at the start, I even think daily about when I'm gonna get an opportunity to learn more and write more about a subject. I'm passionate about the Steem blockchain and its place in my life and the community and the friends I've made here. Surely you are too, and we all get to express our passions freely and get paid for the trouble!

So sure, write about what you know, obviously that's a great thing, but don't get trapped with tunnel vision. Spread your wings. actually learn something new as you go, rather than regurgitate what you've already hammered into your brain through rote memory and brute force for the sake of graduation or a salary.

And have fun.

Besides, You'll earn more MONEY that way

See you tomorrow, when I post the return of the TREE OF LIFE series, yeahhh!