On Discovering My Competitive Spirit

Untitled by Vincente Romero

So, I finally heard back about my application to Medium's new fellowship program. I did indeed get in, so once I receive my contract and get that all signed, I can expect a nice little minimum payment guarantee for August, September, and October. That's great because the more I can count on making through their platform every month, the more time I can actually justify spending over there. 

As always seems to be the case with every online platform, many writers have their gripes with Medium, but I've really been pretty happy with my experience so far. The type of writing I like to do is exactly the type of writing that does well there. I've been flexing my blogging muscles more often and can tell they're getting stronger, as I've been finding it easier to post really engaging content more frequently. And much to my surprise, I even seem to fit into the community there, and fitting in has never been something that came easily to me.

Medium also announced a big Vocal-style writing contest to close out the summer a few days ago. There are four prompts, four hefty cash prizes, an even heftier grand prize that will go out to one lucky writer, and a generous handful of smaller honorable mention payouts. I don't really kid myself that I will actually win anything, but I'm still looking forward to participating. The prompts are all totally my speed and sound like a blast to work with. Plus, you never know. Somebody wins those things.

Granted, it's taken me most of my life, but it's been nice to find things to do with my time and my talents that actually inspire a little healthy competitiveness in me. I was considered very gifted as a child and allegedly had a genius-level IQ, but I hated everything about it -- especially the way I was expected to enjoy competing with other kids for so-called honors that didn't mean anything to me. In some cases -- as with scholarships, apprenticeships, and opportunities to be shipped away to summer school in some other state -- I actively didn't want whatever the prize was. (Anything that added up to being ripped away from my home and being given a ton of extra work to do honestly felt more like a punishment than a reward.)

Even becoming a freelance copywriter didn't do much to change my attitude on that front. When Elance was still a thing, someone from their team contacted me about some feature they were doing on their top earners' secrets to success. Apparently, I was a high enough earner for them to want to interview me for this, and my reaction was to basically roll my eyes before completely ghosting the rep who had reached out to me. I really didn't give a shit. Plus, I didn't see myself as the kind of person Elance should have been holding up as some example for other people to follow. 

As with school, I always had a kind of a love-hate relationship with freelancing. While I do genuinely like quite a few of my clients and have enjoyed many of the assignments I've had over the years, copywriting isn't really something I'm personally invested in, nor is it my dream come true as far as my writing career goes. I just needed money like everyone else, and copywriting was something I could do without working too hard or having to show up to some office five days a week. I didn't have any secrets, and I wasn't really trying to succeed. I just kept my head down and did the work. 

The weird thing about the writing I'm doing now under my own name is I want to succeed with it. I'm trying to succeed with it. I truly wanted the bonuses, and the fellowship, and all the positive feedback I've been getting on my work, so I cared whether or not I received them. I also care how I stack up against other writers in that regard, and I've been discovering how fun it can be to engage in a little healthy competition when you're really invested in what you're doing. 

As it turns out, not only is giving a shit about what you're doing not so bad, but it's something positive that's been woefully absent from my life. If I'd felt this way about high school, or college, or copywriting, or any of the jobs I've had over the years, I probably would have stopped spinning my wheels in life a lot sooner. But better late than never, I suppose.