I’ve been toying with the idea of getting into the “Writing For Medium” game. I know it’s a little late, but it still seems to be where the action is. Quora is hardly a thrill anymore. It would be nice to get Top Writer for the 4th year running, so I probably should take some time to hunker down and write a bunch of answers, but it’s not exactly a riveting challenge. The killer audience has left.
I’m now wondering if I can build more of an audience on Medium. I had a couple of pieces really take off. My Mean Girls piece had over 29,000 views and was shared by some pretty prominent people, which was cool. I’d like to recreate that if possible. Yeah, I think that’s what my motivation is. I managed to write myself into the top 5% of Quora (in terms of reads/votes/follows, not necessarily in terms of actual quality). I’ve been moderately successful as a content marketer selling referral marketing to online retailers. I want to get better at that too, but that’s what I do every day for a living already. And I’m doing these word vomits, which are nice in the sense that they give me “volume practice” and let me refine my voice.
So earlier I opened up Medium and started writing the first thing that came to mind. I want to do some content thought pieces on Medium, but I guess because it’s late at night I wanted to do something simple. And so I started with “Write For A Specific Person” – which I framed as “Open Letter To New Writers”. On hindsight, “write for a specific person” would be a better title, I should’ve gone with that.
I suppose I’m feeling a bit of performance anxiety, which is funny to acknowledge. I’ve been literally writing hundreds of thousands of words. I’ve gotten hundreds of thousands of Upvotes. I’ve even done well with some Hacker News comments and submissions, and we all know HN is one of the hardest to please groups in the world. (Actually, not really. Just be hyper logical, and use a bunch of citations and footnotes, and science language.)
I know I’m good. But somehow I’m hesitant and perfectionist, as I always am. I suppose there’s no getting around it. I should just write and ship, write and ship. I guess I’ll start with Write For A Specific Person. Or maybe not. But if I do want to play the Medium game, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and just start shipping things even if they don’t give me the stratospheric wins I subconsciously feel like I must deserve. I don’t deserve shit. It’s a whole new medium (hurt hur).
Anyway, I switched to writing this because I haven’t met my target for today yet, and I want to just get that out of my system. Maybe tomorrow I’ll publish something on Medium. I know I have literally hundreds of thousands of words of work to extract value from.
In other news, it’s now 2 am and I have 500 more words to blaze through before I can shower and go to bed.
I guess I’l talk about what I’ve been talking to people about. I was telling a friend recently that I don’t really understand friendship. I know that sounds weird, but that’s because the words “friend” and “friendship” are shorthand for much more complex ideas that I’m not sure if I can represent right now. This friend in particular is someone whom I’ve had a few interactions with over the years, have spent a little bit of time with, have had a few good conversations with, but mostly we live separate lives that don’t really intersect. I wouldn’t typically call or message him on a daily or weekly frequency– it’s more like once every few months, maybe.
It’s interesting how there are all these different timescales and variables and yet we don’t really seem to have a nuanced vocabulary for talking about the many different kinds of friends that we are all likely to have. Or are we all equally likely to have them? I have no idea. I can only make sense of my own experience, and my experience is sort of weird.
Anyway I was telling the same guy today– or wanted to, at least, he hasn’t replied my message and is probably asleep- that I thought it’s quite funny how, while I don’t understand friendship, I simultaneously tend to fall deeply in love with some people. Here again love is a bit of a problematic word. But I can be really drawn into a person… I think especially if they have taste, if they care about something and it matters to them, that gets me all warm and fuzzy inside. It’s just nice to be in the presence of somebody who gives a shit about something. We all want to be given a shit about. We want to use tools that were given shits about, we want to eat meals that were prepared with the love of someone who gives a shit. Right?
Yeah. So I guess that’s why I’m drawn to people who care about things. It’s just beautiful to witness. It’s life-affirming. It’s hope-creating.
And I was telling another friend– one of the people that I’m falling in love with (I mean this phrase in a very different sense from the classic “I am experiencing attraction towards this person that I would like to see culminate in kissing and touching and tender nicknames” sense)– that it’s… so strange how we get caught up with things like Dreams And Ambitions, like some sort of prim and proper little stock statement we’re all supposed to have. It’s all posturing.
Uhh. I’m sleepy. 40 words to go. What can I say that I’d like to read later? What would I like to remind myself? Hey, Visa… go and bathe, then go and sleep. You’d like to read that you tried to be responsible.