Targeted for Termination
What Went Wrong & Why It Was All Good
Incident Report
My idyllic Medium world was flipped upside down on St. Patrick’s Day. The day started out routinely. Up at 5am to press publish on the post for March 17th. Read a bit, left a few comments and went to work. By lunchtime all hell had broken lose.
Real Talk
Unpleasantries had been exchanged between myself and another writer via private comments. Though the contact at Medium denied it, the trigger was evident. For the record, membership (since 2019) 176 uplifting posts and a host of long-term writers who spoke up on my behalf mattered.
Silver Lining
Being stuck in limbo was a blessing in disguise. The break forced me to step away from the site. Pressure to publish daily was off. It only took 48 hours to break Medium’s spell.
Reflecting
For a hot-second, I considered not returning. Then counterbalanced that thought with the value I’d found. Medium is a place to connect with like minded peers. Its a place to be seen and heard and know what you think matters. Its the place where the words of talented writers, lure me back like a bee to honey.
Takeaway
I decided to conduct an internal audit of each of the 176 posts on my profile page. Took me a little more than a month to get through all of them. They read like the musings of a directionless soul. They included a myriad of personal stories, answers to prompts, movie reviews, stat sharing, poems, pictorials, short stories, jokes, brain games, recaps, holiday and historic happenings, special day shout outs, listicles, one random rant, a tribute to activists and Black comedians, a smattering of biographies on famous folks as well as an explanation about ARTivism.
Conclusion
I was lost. That reality hit me like a ton of bricks. Writing served as an unconscious mechanism to help me find my way. It also helped me feel less alone. The result of the review caused me to delete all of them. They still exist. In fact, I will draw on (pun intended) them to craft future posts. They serve as important reference material to write the next chapter of the story of my life.
Pushed Into My Purpose
Deleting those posts opened a neural pathway illuminating my next steps. Everything I write from here on, will create space for that story to emerge.
