30 Posts in 30 Days Challenge
My Medium Challenge: 30 Posts in 30 Days
Wait a second… I’m not the first one to do it?
Two days ago, I started a Medium 30-Day Writing Challenge. What are my goals?
- Stay busy, stay working — I’ve lost my job and will take on this opportunity to make the best of the free time
- Become a better writer — quantity leads to quality, doesn’t it?
- Get new followers — I hope to double my follower count from 93 followers to 180 followers
Now, did I think I am the first one to ever do a challenge like that? Most likely not.
What prompted me to start the challenge? My friend Stephen Paul Taylor, who is a great musician — even better live! — who is currently finishing his own challenge. 30 live streams in 30 days. Go Stephen!
What else? I logged onto my Medium account, which I had not touched since December 2022 and saw a steady trickle of engagement, followers and read articles. Hm, I thought. We could mine that.
Why now? Well…
A personal note
It’s January 2024, a new month in a new year, a time when people love to embark on their path towards self-improvement.
Dry January. Veganuary. Gym challenges. Sugar-free January.
There is no shortage of these on- and offline.
I was in the middle of my dry January when I got a work call. Bad news. I got fired.
Time for a beer. Goodbye, dry January!
Sadly, this is not the first time I’ve been let go. We all live on the Internet and transparency is a thing. Especially in my profession, which is Content and Copywriting. So I feel no shame admitting that I’ve lost my job twice within a little over a year.
I’ve been with my previous employer for half a year and produced some valuable work (I thought so). You can check it out here if you understand German. But that’s not my point.
While I spent most of 2023 looking for a new position, the reality was, I had a lot of free time on my hands. Time that was not occupied by job-hunting, CV-tailoring and interview-skills-mastering. Time I could have spent better.
2024 is the year where I grow. Hence, the challenge.
If you are still reading, thank you
Seriously, thank you.
It’s easy to overestimate your importance and your talent as a writer. David Majister wrote an anecdotal piece about it.
David, I am talking about you, because you were the one who came up with the 30 day Medium challenge in 2021.
Your idea was to submit 30 articles to 30 publications, get 250 followers and $250+ in income. (I am good at quoting, aren’t I?). Along with his original article that outlined his vision, he passed along a call for submissions for other writers to join his challenge.
So David, without knowing you, I have joined your OG challenge two days ago, even if my rules are a bit softer.
I want to thank the Academy…
Going into this, I had no rules. My only objective was to keep my mind and my fingers engaged, and to publish one piece on Medium, every day.
I would love to get back to writing film reviews.
As a lucky Berlin resident I have covered the Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale) twice in the past. I’ve also been a staff writer (unpaid) for the Berlin Film Journal, so this is a great excuse to watch all of the movies I’ve missed out on in the last year.
So I will start by reviewing the main nominees of the 96th Academy Awards. The ceremony will take place on the 10th of March in L.A. More than enough time to watch and share my two cents.
Here are the main categories, in case you forgot, the Big Five.
- Best Picture
- Best Director
- Best Actor
- Best Actress
- Best Original Screenplay
I will also review a couple of other nominated movies and short films that I’ll come across.
A challenge is only a challenge if you do something you haven’t done before. So I will experiment with new styles. I will send my pieces to some editors and publications at Medium. I will eat rejections and grow my profile, hone my craft and emerge a better writer.
What do I expect from this?
It’s easy to forget what I came here for. I want to practice the thing I love, the thing that I do best: writing.
While I’ve mostly been professionally employed as a Copywriter, what I really love to do is to leave Marketing aside and to try new things.
Be more creative, more flexible.
Push the boundaries.
It’s easy to lose track of what’s important and to start doing it for the ‘gram, for the likes, for the engagement (your cue to mark this line and clap).
I expect to have some hard times.
I expect to get side-tracked.
I expect the feeling that tells me to quit.
I expect to hear the inner critic.
I expect the frustration of my articles not getting enough views, claps, traction.
But I hope to take away some resilience from this exercise. Among other things, like, the opinion on every important movie of 2023, lol, and sore fingers.
What I am not expecting is to make money out of it.
I have yet to make a single cent off of Medium. More power to you if you get paid doing this. For now, I just want to generate some steam, to get my reps in.
Welcome aboard!
I hope some of my future writing resonates with you in a way.
Please leave a comment and let me know what you enjoyed and what you will like to see more of.
If you are a writer on Medium, I will be sure to check your content out. Let’s link!
Here are my first two pieces for the challenge:
See you — hopefully tomorrow!
xo, Anton.
