What to do after failing to join the Medium Partner Program

Should you still continue to write if you weren’t successful in joining the ranks of the Medium Partners? If you are writing on medium and participating in ‘follow-for-follow,’ and find that you’re unable to amass 100 followers to join the ranks of Medium Partners, should you call it quits on your writing passion?

Dealing with the realization that you are mediocre at writing, when you felt you were quite good, can be hard for some. Learning to cope with failure is important. We need to fail and learn how to deal with failure to better ourselves. But what if you’re just a bad writer?

I have recently been asking myself this question. After joining Medium, I was excited to find a place where I could post my work, and it made me want to start writing again. I was confident that I was going to excel at this and that I would find a passion in blogging. Unfortunately, after putting out some diverse content, participating in follow-for-follow, and following over 100 people, I found myself returning to that question. Am I a bad writer?

That’s when I quit follow-for-follow. I decided to linger here despite my anxiety over social media, and take the time to read the work of the people who follow me and follow only those who I deem good writers. I’d love to read them all, but, as a non-paying member, I do not have access to all the articles Medium features. My plan was to pay for the membership once I amassed my first 100 members. Each day went by, and few people were reading anything I was writing.

Sitting here shy of 50 followers, I feel like I lost the popularity contest. My writing isn’t that good, and I have a long way to go before I deserve 100 followers. Should I somehow amass 100 followers, I will feel no obligation to participate in follow-for-follow because, although I don’t even have 50 followers, I know how hard I worked for those followers, and I sure did not earn them via follow-for-follow.

Yes, you should continue to write even when you aren’t good enough to join the elite Medium Partners. You should write like you don’t care who’s reading because you’re all the audience you need. You should write because you love it, and you think you’re pretty good at it. And when you finish writing you can publish, edit, or delete it because you’re the creator and that writing is your baby. You love your baby.