Well, it finally happened.
Since my first post on April 1, 2020, I’ve contributed 105 articles to Medium. Some long, some short. Some cerebral, some crass. Most are rooted in my personal experiences and reflect my own process of drawing on my background in the comparative study of religion, my career as an educator, and my identity as a cis, gay, white man to make meaning of relationships, events, and encounters.
When an editor of An Injustice noticed my series last summer about Pride, I was invited to include the full series in the magazine, hoping it would develop a dialogue with others grappling with or processing similar experiences and encourage a few more people to follow me.
When the Partner Program popped up, it promised distribution and readership. Ok, maybe it didn’t promise these, but I sure got the sense from official promotions for the program and other writers’ examples that the Partner Program was akin to the Field of Dreams. “If you post it,” to paraphrase the overquoted quote, “they will come.”
I wrote and wrote and wrote, pouring (not to be dramatic, but really, it felt like this) my heart and soul, revealing things I’d never shared with anyone and barely admitted to myself.
I pushed links to my pieces out through my social media accounts, hoping friends and “friends” would read (or at least view) the linked essay, bless me with a “clap” or a reshare, and add to my followership.
I don’t make my living off of writing, and haven’t been terribly aggressive about gaining followers, even after Medium fired a few warning shots. Once in a while, I’d notice a new name on my list of followers and (prematurely) rejoice that now, I’d start seeing more followers, that now, editors on the platform would distribute my pieces.
When editors invited submissions for the Medium Writers Competition, I crafted a highly personal and, I thought, layered and poignant reflection on reentry. My story didn’t tap into sexy subjects like the pandemic or suicide, but I hoped that even tagging the story for the challenge would invite a few more readers. I mean, who doesn’t want to see Natalie Portman pop up on a list of claps? But days, weeks after I submitted my story, I saw no new followers and no acknowledgement that my story had even been seen. No shade to the winners — their and the honorably mentioned stories are great —and my goal was never to win. Instead, I channeled my hope toward the opportunity implicit in the contest: exposure and readership.
When that hope evaporated, I returned to my weekly-ish reflections with the assumption either that my submission was crap or that I’d mistagged the story in the first place. (I’m Irish-Catholic. We’re a people prone to blaming ourselves first for, well, everything.) A couple of months ago, I received a lovely note from another reader, praising my story and hoping to promote it along with other submissions overlooked by the judges, that reassured me that, no, my story wasn’t crap and that, yes, I’d tagged it right in the first place. Soon after, I got the first warning shot that I needed 100 followers to keep earning the roughly $2.73 per month that my writing gets me from Medium.
Today, I have 83 followers, prompting this morning’s notice of my removal from the Partner Program. So, I’m back to contributing cash, heart, and soul to the Medium platform and audience without any personal benefit.
Medium isn’t a perfect project — what is? Maybe the problem is me, or that mine are not the essays that people here want to read. Maybe there are too many writers and not enough readers. Maybe the problem is the platform itself. I’m baffled by the number of articles devoted to tips, best practices, hacks, and tricks to gain followers — who has time to write while sifting through all these machinations? Is this selfish? I thought the greatest benefit of a platform like this was to take the burden of navigating followership hurdles off of creators’ shoulders so that creators could, well, create.
Ok, rant complete. I don’t really care about making money here, so I may or may not rejoin the Partner Program some day, but I would like to see more folx follow me. If this article made it to your feed, if you’ve read this far, if you’re piqued by the kinds of stories I tell and the reflection I pursue, please follow me!
