Notes On Making Medium Work for Me (and How You Can Make It Work for You)

This whole Medium thing has been a trip and a half so far for one very simple reason. I've been earning a full-time living writing for many years at this point, but as anyone who's been here long knows, I'm a ghostwriter. I've probably penned hundreds of thousands of successful words for my clients (or so I've been told.)

Meanwhile, my personal writing done under my real name has mostly gone unnoticed. I had a decent-sized audience of fellow kooks on LiveJournal back when people still wrote over there, as well as on DeviantArt during my brief stint as a fantasy artist, but that's about it. Beyond that, though, I've simply gotten used to being an unknown and just doing whatever it is that I do for my own pleasure and not much else.

I sincerely didn't expect Medium to be very different from any of that when I first signed up for their partner program toward the end of last year. I knew my experience writing for the web likely meant I'd do OK over there, but I didn't expect to truly get any attention or earn any real money. Perhaps just a few loyal readers who didn't mind listening to my drivel, just like on LiveJournal, and maybe a couple of hundred extra bucks to help out with bills now and then. That profile blew up quick, though.

Yes, I'm earning for sure, and I'm getting a lot of praise for my work. I'm also getting a lot of mail from strangers who want to know more about me and -- in some cases -- learn how to do whatever it is that I'm doing these days. Companies are messaging me, begging me to mention them in future Medium posts, sometimes in exchange for money (which I don't do, by the way.) People are adding me to their networks, hoping I'll lay some more golden eggs for them to discover and take with them in their travels. It doesn't quite seem real, and I am most definitely not used to it.

On How Retail Prepared Me for My Career as a Writer

Le Principe du Plaisir - Rene Magritte (1937)

A friend of mine was posting on her Instagram earlier all about the twisty, winding path she's taken in life to get where she currently is. Today, she has her own highly successful wedding photography business, but years ago, when I first met her, she was a waitress.

In her post, she talked a bit about why she was a waitress for so many years despite hating the job -- the easy money and the way food service requires you to "hustle" a bit for your supper. She also touched on how being a waitress back then prepared her in many ways for what she's doing now, as the two businesses are a lot more alike than they probably seem at surface value. 

It got me thinking back on the many years I spent in retail. Aside from an extremely brief period of less than a year where I worked as a vet tech, pretty much all of the traditional time clock jobs I've had were ordinary retail jobs that are a dime a dozen. Like my friend, I absolutely loathed what I was doing, and just thinking about doing it for the rest of my life depressed the shit out of me. I don't know that I'd be as good at working for myself (or at writing) as I am without that as part of my background, though.

A Very Big Win for Cat

So earlier in the month, I felt a little bit inspired on a random Sunday morning and popped off a new Medium article after weeks of just focusing on my freelancing for a while. It was an advice article aimed at younger people in their 20's, filled with all the things I wish at 44 that I'd understood at their age. It did pretty well initially -- enough to make me happy. It got curated, as well as picked up for publication by The Post-Grad Survival Guide -- very cool things that I was proud of and grateful for, but nothing that hasn't happened to a bunch of my other articles so far.

Then a couple of days ago, the damn thing started going bananas and blowing up all of a sudden. At this point, it's accumulated tens of thousands of views, reads, and claps. It's even eclipsed the initial success of that first article I published over there -- the big "beginner's luck" win I've been trying to duplicate for the past six months -- so I'm super excited. This means a very badly needed chunk of money in my account next month, as well as plenty of exposure for my work that I probably need even more. (I am trying to make fetch happen, after all.)

I think the most gratifying part of this may be the feedback I've gotten from other people. Sure, there are always a couple of trolls who feel the need to swoop in and criticize what you wrote or just be salty in general because they're big mad they're not in your shoes. The great majority of these folks who reached out to me were kind, supportive, and sweet as far as the things they wrote though. People tweeted me, they emailed me, they added me all across all my social media platforms, and they thanked me for what I wrote because it resonated with them. That sort of thing is very humbling and validating for someone like me, as all I've ever wanted in life was to be heard.