FIX MY PROFILE PAGE, PLEASE

Okay, Medium. Enough is enough.

I want to separate my responses from the rest of my work.

Now.

I’ve worked hard on some of this stuff, I care a lot about some of it, but when I look at my profile and imagine other eyes — eyes that don’t yet care and aren’t willing to dig — I see tiny, out-of-context response after response after response. A lot of scrolling and digging and caring has to happen before these imaginary eyes would even find the stuff I consider my work. My art, for whatever it’s worth.

I realize that changes have been made. I like the way we can now follow response conversations and the way they are linked. It seemed, for a fleeting moment there, that things moved in the right direction with the small, seemingly insubstantial responses further down the pile. That, however, is mysteriously no more.

Now, the wee chat is jamming up my oeuvre! (Thanks, by the way, for the opportunity to use that splendid word in a sentence about myself — that was brilliant fun!).

Example: just a little way down my profile, one finds this gem —

This is my complete response to Mary Wilkinson’s lovely poem ‘Heart’. In and of itself, my response is a nothing, a trifle, and therefore has no place among my oeuvre (shivers!). It was, however, important for me to write as a response because I love the poem and I wanted to give it the proper applause by calling out to Mary and to anyone else who may be lurking.

Another —

— my couldn’t-be-briefer response to Michael H. Rand’s essay that resonated with me enough in the moment to warrant such a thing.

I love responses. The conversation aspect of Medium is one of my favorites and I relish the opportunity to respond immediately to things that move me. But I’m here to build a collection, to work on my stuff, my oeuvre (last time, I promise). These little asides and rejoinders are separate and should be separated.

This is not a new issue. Writers have been complaining about the mucking up of the profile for as long as I’ve been here. So let’s get on with it.

Give me the power to decide what my profile looks like.

Not just the ‘featured story’ — that’s a nice thing, but it’s not enough. The stories, poems, and essays that we writers craft carefully should be easily found in our profiles. If we write responses that we’re proud of, we should have the option to make those part of our profile, as well. But lining up everything we spew chronologically does not serve the issue of discoverability around here, which seems to be the biggest problem (for us ‘small authors’, anyway — some who shall not be named don’t seem to have quite the same problem with discoverability).

Let’s go, Medium. I love you and everything, but my profile is pissing me off right off.