What Medium Did for Me So far

Dindo Purto
Aug 8, 2017 · 3 min read

How long I stopped writing? A long time ago. I attempted for umpteenth times—sitting before my monitor, watching my cursor blinked, begging for words—but nothing came out. Motivations, I had. Inspirations? They didn’t come. And no matter what I did, it just didn’t work. Where the hell did my creative juices go? I desperately let it go, yes, my writing…

Deep inside, I know I miss something I always love to do—writing. I mean, many of my colleagues were asking me a long time ago about their writing. To give honest comment. To critique their topic. To edit their work.

And now, I am here. Stuck. Maybe forever.

I do not know. But one of them, really, made it big. It’s just enough to make me drool in envy. He submittted his articte to one of the major newspapers, and bingo, he instantly got published. He was the talk of the town then. And he was even offered a scholarship. I just stood at the corner, looking at him, reaping the harvest of his hard labors.

Scrolling over my feeds on Facebook and Google did not help me. Until one day, I saw something in Medium which kept bothering me. It woke the hell out of me. All those keywords were enough to make me see the connection. One to the other. And Medium Missions which I followed delivered me a message which became pivotal in my writing comeback. Medium points me to these significant signposts.

  1. Stop consuming. Start creating. Yes, how many times do I spend my time browsing my FB page and scrolled my feeds for hours without me knowing I lost my precious time. When this Medium post popped in, it was a like a conscience constantly nagging me for confession. “Stop consuming. Start creating.” It was mind blowing. Ironically, I consumed his article first before I realized I had to make my own. How long have I been to Medium and yet I was not able to contribute something that would be of help? Thank you, Josh Fetchter for allowing me to see better.
  2. Then, begin writing. I know. It is difficult to begin. But here I found this article helpful during the first stages. I just modify it a little, though. You Only Need 10 Minutes to be Creative. Sorry Larry Kim for the modifications. Ten minutes can be very excruciating. But I was kind of telling myself, maybe five would do. I tried to condition myself to just spend “five freaking minutes” to sit down and write everything I will have to say. Then, there. The supposedly five-minute mark became fifteen then twenty until I didn’t realize I was sitting for almost an hour. Or more? I didn’t know. But your advise really worked. All I really have to do is to write. I read this somewhere: The only way to write is to write.
  3. Then this article blew me away. As a consistent journal writer, I almost jumped over the window when I read “How to Turn Journal Ramblings into Viral Articles”. “You gonna be kidding me? My journal? No way. I write in my journal not for anyone else but for myself. No one will ever see or touch it.” But when I read this post I seriously went over my pile of journals and saw that some of them can be useful in the process. For sure, some of them were rubbish, but some helped me pass through the dark stages and found a new light…

Certainly, there are more signposts in Medium. I call every article in Medium as a signpost because a sign always points us to a direction, a destination, or even a person. I can click a post and find a new path leading to a certain destination, and when I reach there, I will be surprised to see myself, waiting for me to come home.

Dindo Purto

Written by

redeemed.renewed.restored.redefined. life is a cycle. one time, down, the other, up. succeed or loss, each one has a purpose.find the dark, then go to the light

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