My First 6 Months on Medium

Never a dull moment.

I stumbled upon this cool thing a few weeks ago (on Facebook, of all places), that Medium put together to summarize your year on the platform. I only joined this past June, so for me it was my “6 month highlight.”

I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty surprised by my stats. The most shocking one to me was that I wrote 96,924 words in 6 months (and November and December were pretty pathetic in terms of production). Enough words for at least one full copy of The Hobbit? That’s insane to me. One, because I never really intended on writing that much, and two because it wasn’t even difficult. I’ve been wanting to write a book since I was 5 years old, and I’ve always put it off because it seemed too daunting or intimidating. I now know that I can easily accomplish this if I just change my mindset. (The prologue to my book was posted on the Medium homepage under “Drying Out” a few days ago, if you’re interested).

After seeing the visual representation of my journey on here, I began to reflect on my 1/2 year a little more.

There have been so many gifts that Medium has brought me.

The most special thing Medium has brought me is people. I have met some beautiful, brilliant, talented, and exceptionally badass writers on here. The sense of community that I’ve experienced in my short time has really changed me. I’ve gained support, as well as given support (to the best of my ability). Even people that I’m not in a ton of contact with on here — our small interactions have been profoundly comforting. These are seriously irreplaceable experiences.

I’ve grown as a writer. When I first started, I had no idea what my “Medium identity” would be. I didn’t even really know I needed one, shit I was still trying to figure out the formatting…But my writing style on my other blogs was not fitting for this platform (I found that out through experimentation and exploration). My style in the past had a thicker wall built between the author/writer and the reader/audience. I was used to writing TO people…which worked for me in certain areas. On Medium, I started to feel as though that was impersonal, and that I should start to write FOR people, in the idea that all of the authors on here are also the readers. Of course I write for myself, but Medium pushed me outside of my comfort zone a bit — my writing on this platform is more raw and vulnerable. The connection to other writers helped me stay motivated to keep current (except again, the past two months I’ve been failing miserably), so I was producing more work, and because I was eager to produce good quality content, I edited a lot. How do writers become better writers? By writing. There is no shortcut to putting the work in (well, there are I suppose, but I don’t really believe they work). I was used to writing about mental illness, but I branched out into writing more social justice pieces on here — a fire was lit inside of me that I never even knew existed...It was exhilarating.

Medium has opened doors for me. My first piece was mentioned in a USA Today piece. Huffington Post contacted me and requested a cross-post on two of my other pieces. (I hadn’t gotten published on there in a year of blogging on my own, and they approached me within two months of writing on Medium). I’ve had an Editor’s Pick and two other pieces featured on the homepage. These helped me gain followers both on Medium and on my other social media sites. I do not write solely for followers — if you read my work you’ll see that I am passionate about certain topics, and I am passionate about writing. Part of having a passion, though, is the beauty of sharing it with others. Part of my healing comes from telling my story. If I didn’t have feedback from other human beings, it would be a little bit harder for me to want to do it — I’m not saying I wouldn’t write, because I wrote for 20 years without an audience, but at this point in my life, for me there is no replacement for human connection or for feeling heard, validated, and supported. Just being honest here.

I’ve grown as a person. Like I said, writing about social justice has helped me connect to topics that I am passionate about. I discovered something that fuels me and keeps me going other than dysfunction. I’ve reconnected to that unabashed, uncensored, borderline pissed off version of me that I’ve stifled for years. It’s been extremely terrifying, but also refreshing and enlightening. I’ve also developed thicker skin, because there have been some seriously fucked up, flat-out mean people on here. For real. I’ve spent a couple nights soaking my tears and a few more red-faced and furiously pounding my keyboard. (I’m not the type of person to let things go, and I never will be. I only learn how to deal with them more gracefully and self-soothe more effectively).

Thinking about growing thicker skin leads me to think about the dark sides of Medium. (Spoiler alert: these stories all start and end with trolls).

The (proven to be) fake profile who wrote elaborate versions of sexual abuse, and practically broke Medium by splitting up writers based on whether they believed it or not.

The MRA and anti-feminists who create fake profiles and comment on everything I’ve written about rape culture (I guess some of my topic choices make me an “easy target”). They get their profiles shut down, and then create new ones just to bully people.

Some of the comments on the Editor’s Pick I wrote about the night I was raped — reading those night after night had to be one of the hardest weeks of my year, to be honest. I still occasionally get notifications on that piece — last week a woman baited me in a comment on my profile, and when I went to her page I saw that she wrote horrific things about rape survivors. After I saw this, I quietly blocked her (because do I really need to subject myself to that?), and apparently she wrote an entire piece on how I blocked her. Sweet. That is the kind of shit that makes me want to leave Medium sometimes. I haven’t really been the same on here since that piece was featured. Some of the things I want or need to write about, I’m either too afraid, or too exhausted to deal with the few hurtful things that might be said to me. That is where Medium differs from (my experience) with WordPress or the other personal blogs I write for and manage, is the unexpected number of rude responses and/or really unstable people. (I’m not including Huffington Post in that one, because comments on there can definitely be brutal). I worry about reactions to my pieces way more on here, which in all honesty may be the reason why I’ve drifted a bit. I know I need to work on that, but I’m only human. After a few months of what seemed like constant drama, I think I just subconsciously bowed out. It’s taken a bit of time and energy to find motivation to keep going.

I stay, because the first three months on here were absolutely amazing, and the subsequent months (though a little more trying), have taught me a lot.

My goals (NOT resolutions) for 2017 on here include writing more steadily, and also using it to help me write my book (aka post excerpts and/or chapters). I may branch out into more poetry. I want to keep challenging myself, and I definitely want to keep connecting with more writers — that has been one of the highlights of my Medium experience, but also one of the highlights of my year.

In closing, thank you Medium for being the original, inviting, flawed, intriguing, and sometimes glitch-prone platform that you are, and thank you friends, followers, and fellow writers for teaching me things I didn’t even know were important. I’m excited to see what this year brings.