It’s been a good run for awhile
Since around July 2023 (or was it 2022?) I’ve been writing on Medium. At first it was pretty good, authors were nice and had good writing, and I enjoyed the challenge of writing an article a day to earn extra money during college.
However, there was something that I didn’t quite like about Medium though — inconsistency. Whether it was the authors expectations of people reading their work (read mine & I’ll read yours), or Medium themselves choosing looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooong paragraphs over short, snappy ones (which most of us have time reading), and even the publications themselves having strict rules that sometimes didn’t make sense. Even so, I still stuck around because of my enjoyment of reading and writing.
Since then, however, there have been changes to Medium and myself that have changed how I write here.
Priorities
How mine have changed
I’m not the kind of person who likes routine. I know… shocker! My branding has been around “Building a routine that energizes — not exhausts.” While I still love this motto, and many were in tune to this when I was marketing on X and here, I just get bored when sticking to a routine.
Sure, I still brush my teeth in the morning, if not that’d be a real shocker, but other parts, like the time between 9–12 and 1–5 have changed drastically, and I like it. One of those changes have been reading physical books, and since then I’ve put on a new lens to how authors on Medium have prioritized their writing.
Think, an author spends a year or even more writing a single book and then (maybe) wins out in the long-term by having it get so popular that it gets turned into a movie. Yet, here on Medium, most writers prioritize short-term gain by writing a short piece every. single. day that may earn a few hundred dollars overall when adding them all together, but most likely won’t have as many insightful insights as long written-out books do.
Overall, as my favorite music producer DJ Pygme says as his motto,
“I compose music that motivates me according to each stage in my life.”
I’ve rephrased this for my own application,
I create routines that motivates me according to each stage in my life.
While I’ve actually regretted his motto now that he created a new name for himself and ditched being Pygme… I think it’s still good to stick by.
How Medium has changed
While I can’t know exactly how much change a huge company has been through, I do know one thing for sure, is that after Google was declared a monopoly, Medium’s revenue dropped fairly steep— and so have writers revenue. After all, from a Medium article I read a while ago (I could be wrong) Google gives Medium money despite there not being Ads on Medium. In fact, the same seems to have happened to non-profits like Firefox who are now adding telemetry and AI for the first time ever, as far as I read anyhow!
Overall, Medium was a great opportunity for me to earn $150 over a year of writing every day. Even so, their changes, in addition to mine, have caused myself to drift and land into a new adventure.
What I’m trying now
My mind has always worked like an Obsidian graph —
Image from Reddit
making connections between completely unrelated topics and seeing a lesson in them. Since I’ve discovered a wonderful tool named Quartz, I’ll be copying (not deleting) all my writing here on Medium and into the domain name Loomlett.com (it’ll be available within 6 months :D ).
Not only will I still be writing, but I feel it’ll make me feel more connected to what I write rather than being hyper fixed on the amount of views I get on an article.
Conclusion
I’m sure that Medium is still working out for some people, and perhaps they don’t mind the changes and still write because this platform makes it easy to. As for me, I’m moving on to the next stage in my life. I encourage anyone feeling the same to follow along my journey and try a new direction themselves, I’ll post updates on my work here for awhile before making the switch permanent.
Thanks for reading!
(Psst I forgot to mention that the beginning “Free to the world” means my articles won’t have a paywall after January 10)