Hello! I Am Blogging Again Because This Website Will Give Me Pocket Change for Saying Basically Whatever.
I think Medium made me hate writing.
The act of writing, everyone else’s writing that I quietly thought sucked, and especially my own writing when it wasn’t any better.
I joined this site back in April as a contributor to The Riff, part of a noble effort to corner Medium’s scarce music-blogging market. I was excited and hyped it up to everyone who would listen: family members relieved that I finally had what I heavily implied was a real job, social media mutuals who only followed me for silly little quips or out of polite acknowledgement that we know each other, my dog, your dog, anyone.
I can thank my parents for posting my first piece to Facebook, bringing in enough traffic to just about cover the $5 monthly fee for my own premium Medium membership. And I liked my piece! I love talking about Tom Petty, I love getting paid, and I loved that one thing could lead to another.
I don’t know if my wording morphed into saccharine poor-me platitudes in a subconscious effort to fit Medium’s general overly-personal style, or if this site gives me brainworms that really earnestly want to tell you about how this Julien Baker song or that Bruce Springsteen lyric make me feeeeeel. Either way, four sappy, increasingly desperate posts later, I hated absolutely everything to do with everything I wrote.
I grew obsessive. I’m still impulse-bookmarking every front-page screed telling me “Here’s How To Make $129,485 From Aimlessly Slapping Your Own Keyboard, Idiot” against my better judgment. I’d been told I was a “good writer” since I first learned to put words in anorder that would make teachers and my mother grateful, that if they had to read a child’s nonsensical word vomit, at least this child knew what they were doing, kind of.
There was a formula. Smarter people who’d found success in this post-apocalyptic word desert espoused their scripture to their legions of wannabe entrepreneurs: here’s how to crack it, word for word. I was following the rules, bending my words, hating the shapes they pulled. I was selling out, and no one was buying, least of all myself.
When I hit “publish” over and over again and found that what I had to say really wasn’t any better than the rest of these losers shouting into the online void, I had a breakdown. I had just spent the past five and a half years in dogged pursuit of a journalism degree. How did blogging give me imposter syndrome?
I have a dozen saved drafts I’m likely not ever looking at again. Ideally, I’m not even looking at this post once it’s out there, and just starting the next one like this one never happened. No one is proofreading this to maximize potential viewership, as with all my previous stabs into the vast darkness of freelance rambling.
I’m getting this out there because I’m over it. I never want to think of running my mouth for my own entertainment as the job that I suck at.
Since that last post over two months ago, I’ve cancelled my premium membership along with all the other monthly fees pandemic joblessness wouldn’t let me afford. Opening the app gave me guilt pangs: I should be writing! I could be building an online following earning both cash and validation! Free money, baby!
I retreated to familiar grounds. On Twitter, we talk about how no one wants to listen to your shitty podcast or whiny Soundcloud, lean back and laugh while the likes pour in. It’s cool to be already good at what you do and externally successful for it; any public attempts at achieving this status when you’re a nobody is cringe. I gladly unpinned a link to the Tom Petty article, ready to join in on the mockery of self-proclaimed “writers”, penning nothing to no one.
But I couldn’t bring myself to hate it. Every now and then, I’d get an email notification: some lost soul had stumbled onto my post, followed me (surely by mistake — what were they expecting, a new post? From me?) or commented something sweet. I’d Google search an arcane Mountain Goats reference, and find a years-old piece that touched a spot in my heart these big publications couldn’t quite reach. Or maybe I’d read a rant that I can no longer find about how hard New Girl jumped the shark after Jess and Nick got together, one that had me screaming “Yes! Thank you, someone gets it!” from my brain to the screen.
I came back no longer the cruel critic, convinced of failure because I wasn’t constantly grinding away at my One True Piece Of Writing that would earn me money and praise and solve all my problems, but now a normal person who likes talking sometimes, but now understands the peace in just shutting the fuck up for once.
It is unbelievable to me that unlike any other social media I’ve joined, Medium is less of a community and more of a get-rich-quick scheme. I know shit-talking the site graciously hosting your content regardless of its quality is both taboo and ever-popular on here. But again: I’m over wringing my hands about what the millions of people not reading my shit think. This is for me. And there’s a good chance I’ll make an honest nickel off of it regardless.
