My First Post on Medium…
Little idea what I’m doing or what will come of this, but that’s the fun of it?
However you ended up on this post is a wonder to me. This is my first Medium post and I am stressed. Plastering my thoughts on the world’s public, digital bulletin board (the internet) for all to feast on makes me uncomfortable. The grammar police and meaning mafia are always in pursuit of novice writers with no posse to back them up or credibility online. There are those who attack others for putting themselves out there while they sit behind their screens in anonymity. The voice of one negative comment has the potential to outweigh ten positive ones — it’s called the negativity bias.
Writing in public feels like changing your clothes in the middle of Times Square with your flab and stretch marks in full display. It’s intimidating. What if I look dumb? Are people going to judge me? How many of my friends or former colleagues may stumble across my writing? Will I get myself in trouble or make myself look bad? What will I write about that people actually care to read? Why should anyone listen to me? Even while writing this, I feel like I have fallen victim to significant imposter syndrome.
For more background — over the last year, I have done a lot of writing. It’s been solely for my own pleasure — no audience in mind or theme; whatever came to mind, I would put pen to paper. I’ve known that at a certain point I would want to shift everything into the public domain, but that fear of failure kept pushing this off. I’ve been too complacent at the bottom of some self-doubt chasm and find myself electing for comfort rather than risking a fall climbing the ascent. If you don’t try, you can’t fail, right? Well, no..wrong (so I say on Day 1…). It’s better to try and fail than to not try at all. However, I am finding it important to remind myself that success or failure is really what I make of it.
While my ego may be dying to be disappointed if my first few posts get no views, I’ve come to terms that this is completely okay. The only way to actually get better writing online is through the trials and tribulations. Writing something you are very proud of only to fall on deaf ears or just get shot down is the name of the game. If each post I write can have a positive effect on one person — this will be a success in my book.
Given this is my first post, I find it important to give a worthy shout-out to who ultimately got me here. Tim Denning (his website here) is undoubtedly my favorite author on this platform. He is relatable and such a talented writer in the most natural of ways. He doesn’t use fancy words you need to look up in a dictionary or pretend to be someone he’s not — he is as refreshing of a storyteller as you can find. He cuts to the chase and did a lot of training to get there. He self-proclaims his early posts to be cringey and is happy to admit it — this wasn’t a natural talent for him and he is confident anyone can pick it up too. After all, every writer starts at the bottom. This vulnerability is part of why me and so many others like this guy so much. It is through his essence, I will also be unapologetically candid in my writing — maybe to the point of self destruction? Whatever that means? We’ll see.
My primary two purposes for writing on Medium are to 1. Meet new, interesting people and 2. Hold myself accountable to becoming a better writer. From this day moving forward, I am setting a goal for myself of publishing a post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the next four weeks. Maybe, I will do more, but I will not do less — and now that I have written this promise into the world, I will obey it like my life depended on it. Publishing content online is one of the best things someone can do for themselves (says every personal development creator I follow), therefore, I am forcing myself to follow through with this despite the skeptic on my shoulder telling me not to. The first step is always the hardest — this is that for me and given you’re reading this, I am proud to say I have taken it.
And you know, in the spirit of putting money where my mouth is, I am going to. Punishment is more compelling for me than any reward system, so help me make a deal. If I break this schedule, I am going to give $100 to someone who wishes me good luck or shares any encouragement in the start of my writing journey from the comments on this post. (Let’s not create a conflict of interest between wanting me to fail to hopefully win the bet and me succeeding — many thanks!) Also, In case you’re thinking I may bail on this promise — it’s etched in stone now so I assure you I will follow through. Not based in the U.S.? I’ll find a way to get you the dough. Doge?
This post means more to me than just publishing some thoughts on Medium — it really is a symbolic step toward building in public and I am so hyped for what’s ahead. If interested in seeing where I will take this, I’d love if you followed along. In my upcoming posts, I will share more background on myself and what I plan to do with my Medium, but for now — thanks for starting this journey with me and reading until the end.
Let’s see what happens…
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**EDIT ON 08/27/2023: Ladies and gentlemen, we did it (screenshot below from this post’s comment section)
