The more I read, the more ideas I get for writing

This should be obvious to people with ability to think and consider, the likes of which I don't necessarily count myself into, so this is something novel, a discovery. The more you read, it turns out, the more inspiration you get to write more, and the more primed you get to write. Your skills as a writer improve the more you read, and the depth and breadth of your topics expands, and so does your ability to connect disparate concepts. I have been noticing this more recently as I've tried to write for the website and the work blog. The fear was, when I initially started out, that I'd run out of ideas to write on. There's only so many topics, only so many ways to say the same thing. My job is limited in scope, and it's not like I can do whatever. So, I thought, the writing would have to be forced, on topics I would likely not be very passionate about, and eventually I'd write on more far-off topics that would not be relevant to my coworkers.

That has turned out not to be true, thanks to me reading so voraciously in recent times. And when I say read, I also include the act of listening to audiobooks because ugh, that totally counts okay, I need that. It's been so pleasant reading one book after other, and thinking, hmm this connects with the other thing I was reading on the other day, ohhh and also the thing that's happening at my work, I bet there's a nice little article or an essay of less than a thousand words that would come off it.

You'd think people would be out of ideas and things to talk about after so much self-expression, so much online content, and so much llm-generated trash, but no. Our opinions and beliefs are our own, and we have so much capacity to create.