I joined Medium a long time ago and I'm back after quite an absence. I'm back because I want to be challenged, inspired, educated and possibly most important, learn something new.

Daily doom scrolling on either social media or news outlets which are all the same; unfiltered nonsense and informative scaremongering.

So Medium, what do you have to offer? Well maybe it's the algorithm but it feels different this time around. It may not be dreaded AI infiltrated articles, but there's definitely a lot more long 'short form' writing that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Now I'm no expert, so I'm not sure what's driving this meandering style.

At first I thought it was related to sales funnels or blatant sales tactics; like "I did this but you can buy my hack/template/subscription/solution here to jump straight to success and enormous wealth!" But then I spotted a number of stories which all just told me about something, rather than involving me in them. I realised this was what I was missing.

Medium was a place where I would come to be challenged to think, sparked by insight, emotion and dare I say it, individual opinion. All human traits where the writer puts themselves out there and invests themselves by sharing a piece of their heart and mind.

I don't want to be just informed. I want a human perspective, sharing their opinion/feeling/truth.

This reminded me of one of the most important lessons I've ever learned about photography (which I dabble in). Don't take a photo of something — take a photo about something.

This makes all the difference between a passive consumption of a picture, and an active interest in what you are looking at, asking why and how? I guess that's all that art actually is; something which sparks your curiosity in a healthy, growth orientated way.

I've spent a quarter of a century working in the corporate world, being conditioned to be objective, diplomatic even. And I'm sad about that. Life is for expression, opinion and debate and even sometimes to be wrong. To be human is to be vulnerable — I want that as a Medium reader. So I'm going to try and be that as a Medium writer.

This is my first post in hopefully many where I put myself back out there. I will always try to be respectful, but I hope I make you stop and think.

WorkOtherwise