Scientist here, there's a few reasons why I blog, and why I do so Steemit.

First, I am curious about so many things. This shouldn't be surprising, given my profession. Blogging about whatever has my curiosity provides a structure and an impetus to really understand it. It is nice to get lost on a random wikipedia walk, it's even nicer to realize I have learned about something well enough to write halfway intelligibly about it.

Second, I firmly believe that the ability to communicate science is as important as the ability to do science. If you cannot make your research available to both your peers and the public, there is very little value of doing it. As with so many things, communication is a skill and I use blogging to (hopefully) continually, mindfully practice.

As to why I blog here? Of course, there is the monetary reward, but it's relatively minor - I try to write for quality first and if I get a little bonus money, that's nice. It does however, provide just enough of a reward (and a nice psychological metric) that it helps get over that little 'activation energy' bump that it takes to get writing.

Beyond the money, however, I've found that Steemit has a very strong, tightly-knit STEM community (shoutout to @valth, @mcw, @sco, @@@mountain.phil28, @steemstem, and oh so many others). I've truly enjoyed discovering their content and interacting with them over the last month. It's particularly nice that there's so much breadth of expertise - many scientists get so entrenched in their one tiny area that they and their colleagues get tunnel vision. I like having a breadth of knowledge (and I assert that it makes me a better scientist), and it's refreshing that there are educated, eloquent STEM writers I can interact with outside my own discipline.