It’s All About Me(dium)

… Catching the NEXT Boat

Some might argue that it’s hubristic to write in the first-person.

I (me, myself and … ) disagree.

What I would argue is that the first-person, as a narrative form, should be retired. This would limit, if not eliminate, all the posers, pretenders and Starbucks dreamers who “share” themselves like drunken cheerleaders. It would also pretty much lay waste to the “blogosphere” … this, arguably, not a terrible thing.

Several decades ago— before our Facebook, cut and paste, “open-source” world — there were older siblings … also scribbling, pos(t)ing dreamily, into Barnes & Noble “journals” the size of granny panties … or contributing to Fray.

Now to me, this was the wave that killed the first-person … although I completely missed this wave. While struggling to keep jobs and apartments back then, and a marriage more or less intact, with regrets and recalcitrance rearing up on determined hind legs at every turn — plus an afraid, douche-y dilettantism which sidelines and holds me at bay, to this day — I avoided the fray.

Instead, I declared the first-person “dead”, and missed that whole boat! Like telling the Beatles guitar groups are out, I turned myself down — didn’t bother to show up — at countless auditions and opportunities …

I was stupid.

I’ve always considered myself a writer … Writing! No more shitty gigs! No odd job mental patient lot, no theater, theayter … NOT! I’m never gonna work again!

… But when life interferes, when you’re forced to make choices, it’s easier to think those words than to be them. Writing came easy … The living, less so.

So in missing the first-person boat first time round, I declared that I never really wanted to sail.

Then into this self-pity party, stepped Medium. As an unfettered, unadorned platform for writing, there’s at this moment, in my estimation, no equal. Any genre — save maybe the fevered erotics of (my) especially wet dreams — seems fair game here … and automatically “accepted” for publication.

This is huge.

And with seemingly built-in SEO, Medium serves, for me, a dual purpose: It not only gives me a chance to throw my own “I” into the ring (though fifteen years or so late to that party) … but it also affords me an audience of readers.

Type a little, bop and weave words, save and enter … BOOM!

“Jeff Glovsky” is in your “reading list” — the 21st century equivalent of a humble and early (wet) dream of mine: to see my name on a bookstore shelf.

Alas, should I care that my “read ratio” on Medium, on average, tends to hover in the 50/60% range? Probably. In the end, though, do I care? While a 60% read ratio is vaguely irksome, the real answer to this, for me, is, Not much.

As a Writer, exposure is the metric I crave …

So thanks, Readers. Thank you, Collection Editors. And thank you to Medium … for giving me (myself, I) a second chance.