We are a Family

_{Photo by Yannick Pulver}

If there's one thing every writer hates, it is having writers block. I remember the countless times I've had to stop all I'm doing and just go be in a little corner, thinking hard, all in a bit to come up with something to write. Most times I ended up giving up and not writing anything because my brain wasn't giving me the results I wanted.

Luckily for me, all of that changed last year when we introduced the Hive Learners featured topics. You see, right before we started the weekly featured topic contest, I always thought all I could write were fictional stories, but the featured topic changed all of that. It taught me that you could write every day without ever running out of topics and ideas, and that having something to write is easy, you could write literally about anything, even about the food you ate last night, you just have to make it make sense in some way, give it a meaning that people can relate to.

The featured topics taught me how to look at things a little bit differently and then all of a sudden, everything seem like an interesting subject to write on because I've learned to make my brain to stop ignoring some of the simplest things that I normally would ignore, things like a group of elderly men drinking alcohol early in the morning, or the fact that I'm very indecisive when it comes to picking what to eat.

I never saw any of these things as things I could work on and make a beautiful piece of writing out of, but due to the various topics we get weekly from the Hive Learners community, I've come to learn to not ignore those things, but instead study them and really work on them.

Another thing the featured topics did was make me see people's different point of views on the same topic. I get to learn about different ways people think and how they would all handle the same situation but in their own unique ways. It's an interesting thing to see when you really think about it.

And then there's the engagement. One of the rules of featured topic is to be big on engagement and everyone got the memo because all of our engagements has increased more that a hundred percent from when there wasn't a featured topic and now that there are featured topics. And one good thing about engagement is that it helps us connect more and also makes us become more than just a community, and more of a family.

I guess at the end of the day, all I'm saying is that the featured topic really helped me in connecting with people on-chain and also on becoming a better and more consistent writer because every time it seems like I'm running out of ideas, the featured topics is always there to back me up. So a big thank you to everyone out there who has made all of this possible for me and every member of the Hive Learners family.

God bless you all.