About a year ago or so I receive an email from Medium.com that informed me that finally I would be able to publish to the platform. I would be part of the cool new “in” crowd, as it were, closer by a few degrees of separation to some of the bigwigs of the Internet Age, like the platform’s founder, the legendary Ev Williams. As a guy who has done some writing in the past — both the usual personal dreck that most who dare refer to themselves as writers spool out of their oh-so-creative minds, as well as some freelance work for a horror role-playing game publisher in large part responsible for the recent, and still lingering, fascination with and popularity of the dark fantasy genre — I felt like I had won a few bucks from a scratch-off lottery ticket. Cool.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to write. This has been my lifelong curse as a writer. I always have about two to three awesome ideas, but after writing a few lines or pages of one of them, I question the viability of it and believe that one of the other things is what I should be focusing on. Rinse and repeat. In the end, little ever gets completed. There are worse curses in life, of course, so I’m not crying. I don’t pay the bills from my prose, and despite how wondrously romantic that seems like it would be—sitting at the oh-so-trendy cafe, sipping my trendy drink, dressed in the most relaxed and yet notably chic fashion, sunglasses on, simply pondering the next chapter of my next incredibly successful novel, no longer remembering what it is like to actually “go to work” — I’m okay making my bank doing some of the other things that I am rather quite good at, and even enjoy.

But here I was, now empowered to deliver my creative works to the world via the newest thing in semi-curated publishing, so I had to publish something.

To not get stuck on account of my cursed indecisiveness, I chose to grab something from my past, something I had already written, and simply put it up. Oh yeah, problem solved! I had a whole slew of stuff, some of it stuff I had published on one of the many serial incarnations of a personal blog that I had occasionally maintained over the years, some of it older still, or just bits and pieces of writing, begun, but left a mere unfinished fragment, perhaps never to be completed.

I finally settled on a piece I wrote, one that was complete and humorous. It was an absurdist horoscope somewhat along the lines of Steve Martin’s early career humor, especially some of the stuff from his first published book, Cruel Shoes. It was just a brief blurb for each sign of the zodiac, prognosticating the most non-sequitor, silly, and rather dire consequences for readers. Given the age of the piece, I had to do a rewrite, updating certain cultural references and simply polishing it a bit.

The horoscope ready, I copied it into Medium’s text editor, gave it a title, created a Collection to house it, and…voila! I was a published author on Medium.

A few days later one of the Medium staffers, Kate Laurie Lee, commented on the work, offering some editorial suggestions. I took them, and she recommended the horoscope as an Editor’s Pick. Wow. I was mini-famous.

The horoscope got around. That first one garnered thousands of views, probably the most read thing I had ever published, besides the freelance work. I floated about an inch above the floor for an hour or so. Kate asked if I could do another one each month and she would offer her editorial powers to ensure it was as good as possible. I agreed, flattered at the request, of course.

And so, for a year or so, I produced another horoscope each month. I would write it over a few hours time, whenever I could steal it from the many who I obligate so much of my time to, already. I would send it to my amazing editorix, and she would slash and burn until the piece was ready for Medium. On the first of each month I’d hit the Publish button, and then sit back and glow in the knowledge that people everywhere were enjoying what I had wrought.

The second horoscope got even more viewers, but notwithstanding the promotion by myself, mostly via Twitter and Facebook, and Kate, via Twitter and Medium itself, the audience continuously diminished. Last month, the thousands of readers had dropped to less than ten. As much as I enjoyed doing the horoscopes, I feel it was no longer worth publishing. The time I did spend on it could be time spent with my family or on a project that could prove far more profitable than the horoscopes, whether personally or financially (or both). I notified Kate and thanked her for her help, and then sighed. I was done. My days of zodiacal prognostication were over.

So, there will no longer be a horoscope each month. For those of you who continued to enjoy them, I do feel a pang of regret, but hope you can understand. Obviously, no one else cares, so that’s that.

I do intend to publish other things here, despite my aforementioned curse, to the best of my ability. My writing varies, from the absurdist to the dark and horrific, with much in-between. Maybe I’ll even publish fragments of one of those novels I keep wanting to write, perhaps in serial fashion in order to motivate myself to finish one, but no promises.

Thanks for reading, readers.

PS: If today is your birthday, you will unfortunately be left without a horoscope. Lacking this information, focus on finding a new pair of shoes, eat a bit less tripe, and consider back-stabbing your coworker, because she’s already doing that to you.