What am I doing on Medium?
What am I doing here? I log in to Medium and instantly feel intimidated by the plethora of many and varied talents, their creative banners, their glossy pictures, their published works, their witty and polished pieces, their successes.
I’m here 4 months, one piece a month I promised myself, so far I have managed to publish that much.
I am a fledgling writer, new to even thinking of myself as a writer. Clearly, I am going to have to get over myself. I have bookmarked many of the advice articles about how to create a presence on Medium and how to write a decent piece. There are many of those so I can’t be the only one in this particular boat.
But my stuff seems so different to what I’m seeing. It is story telling about experiences, feelings, thoughts. I am a Conservative, middle-aged, Christian, white, Irish (yes, I grew up there) woman. Not to put too fine a point on it, no one else seems to fit that category on here. The Christian cupboard is practically bare, there is not a Conservative in sight. Perhaps I have found my, very unpopular, niche.
The pieces I am reading are stuffed with lessons and take-away points. Why does there have to be a take-away? A point? Can’t I just read a well written piece that exposes the mind and experience of the writer so I get to know them a little? Of course, there are those on here I have encountered to whom I can relate: Aimee Gramblin, Eve Arnold, Kelly Corrigan, Edward Riley, to name a few. I follow them, like what they write, learn from them.
Then I have to log off, my feelings of inadequacy overwhelming me.
But sometimes I log in and am hard pushed to find something I want to read. Is it the titles? Or the content? Or my mood? Maybe my lack of time to spend scrolling the vast library. Working full-time, living in two places, being a part-time wife, having older teenagers and pursuing cycling as a new sport all take up a lot of my time. I just bought a laptop so I can whip it out where I am comfortable and write, and read. My phone, though invaluable, wasn’t doing it for me all the time, and the desktop at home certainly wasn’t doing it for me.
I wonder at some of the content too. Why so many “X ways to fill in the blank”, “7 Xs that changed my life”, etc. I even tried to write one of my own. No one read it.
I guess I just have to keep plodding along, reading, following, clapping, commenting, and looking at my pathetic stats, or not.
The life of a new writer.
Here goes.
