Hello Medium!

Hello? Anybody out there?

Is this thing on?

In the spirit of Mary Wilkinson’s lovely “Writing on Medium is like digging in sand”, and Gutbloom’s funny and oh so true “I’m standing with my champion donkey at a horse track”, I will now try to define my recent feelings here on Medium.

Yesterday, out of the scope of millions on the internet, in the span of 24 hours, with dozens of pieces that are built of little tiny chunks of myself, I had 38 views. All day, over the landscape of everything I’ve written.

38

Was there a major outage yesterday? Solar flare, global upheaval, giant party? Was I the only one looking at this stupid machine? And 38 is not an unusual day for me, honestly. I should be grateful, I suppose.

Thank you, truly, to all 38 of you. I’ve made meals for more, you should all come over some time.

Here’s how it feels.

It feels like I’m painstakingly building, piece by carefully considered piece, little architectural marvels built of words, thoughts, ideas. Tiny houses made of language that you can visit, sit in for a bit, stimulate your brain, your heart or something else for just a moment and move on, hopefully a little better for it, a little happier, brighter, more self-aware or questioning. Something like that, anyway. A structure, with room inside for you, just you.

This is my hope, my aspiration, my ‘calling’ (though that sounds just awful and pretentious and probably not even true — my true ‘calling’ is just to get through the day safely and bring my people with me, hopefully with good food and a laugh). I know, I fail often at this aspiration of mine. Often my little houses are shabby, or seem hastily built or just fall down around your ears, ugly and flimsy. Sometimes they’re drafty, or uncomfortable, or stinky. But I’m trying. And we’re talking about views here, not reads and definitely not recommends — no one is even looking at my house, not even through the windows.

Meanwhile, the landscape is peppered with great big gaudy houses, McMansions, with blinking neon signs and free cookies. People are milling about in the front, yammering on about tech this and morning that. When you visit those houses however, you realize that some of them are not structures at all — they’re facades. You can’t go in and sit, you can only walk through — straight through the big fat screaming façade of colors and noise and distraction.

And, meanwhile, I sit over here in my bargain lawn chair just waiting for a visit. I’m a kind host, I have more lawn chairs, I probably won’t scare you away or tell you what time you should wake or how to code. You can sit for a bit and I’ll tell you a tiny story, sometimes I’ll try to make you laugh. I’m friendly, usually. I don’t have any cookies, though.

Or maybe this image is better.

Medium is a giant auditorium — truly massive, like a stadium. Anyone can say whatever they want, it’s sort of democratic that way, and anyone who chooses can wander in and listen.

I’m over here in a small dark corner, they’ve given me a box to stand on and a mic, though on closer inspection I realize it’s not a box, but a smallish dictionary (an old college dictionary perhaps) and someone has cut the power to my mic. I spout off, standing on my small book with my toy microphone and occasionally, if I’m yelling, someone stops and listens for a moment and once in a while they like it and they tell a few passersby and I have a small audience very briefly and am warmed by a great invisible sun in this cavernous echoing space for a fleeting moment in time.

Across the way, I see that there is a stage. A grand stage with banners and streamers and lecterns and mics that work (they have electricity over there). Giant colored lights are sweeping the area like the circus has come. I can see the tech boys and girls over there and all the people who were up at 3:30 this morning. The how-to gurus and the newly minted zillionaires. They’re broadcasting numbers and words like ‘actionable’ and ‘habits’ and ‘Uber’ (is that a word?). It looks like James Altucher is pissing everyone off, but they love him anyway.

It’s a big party, most of the population of the auditorium is over there, huddled like ants around a bowl of sugar water. There’s a buzz and a hum and they take turns trumpeting with their mics and their megaphones. And they have cookies. Of course they have cookies.

It stays pretty quiet over here and I generally like that better but maybe I have something to say and it gets a little lonely. I smile and wave at the three dozen or so who peek in the window or crack the door, and then I watch them mosey away with their little recommend stickers, off in the direction of the circus.

And now, even though I sound like a whiny, attention-seeking loser, I will, for some unknown and quite possibly ungodly reason, continue to build my wee structures and furnish them humbly, I will stand on my book and say things about myself or about the world or about ideas like some tousled madwoman on a city corner and if anyone would like to stop by I’d love to see you, I’ll thank you heartily for your visit and if you choose to say something nice to me my little heart will jump like joy itself in my bones and you will have done a very good deed, indeed.

Keep writing, keep reading. It’s really all we can do.