Detaching My Writings from the External Rewards of Medium
When I first started out on Medium, courtesy of Zat Rana’s philosophical articles, I didn’t know that the platform could be monetized.
I spent 2 months just reading every article that interests me until I decided to migrate from my dead WordPress blog to Medium last August (2019) and I’ve been writing here almost every day since then.
Here’s one of the articles I exported from my WordPress that I wrote when I was about 18 years old:
The Burnout
Aside from writing on Medium, I also have personal clients as a freelance writer. I’ve always thought of writing outside Medium as a business — most of the time it’s pure facts and no emotions, which is fine, I like writing that way as well.
When I figured out how to monetize Medium, the screws in my brain loosened up a little more and went crazy overdrive.
I thought,
“I can easily figure out how this platform works and make the same bucks as those who are successful on Medium.”
and truth be told, the confidence to think that way seeped from my narc self but nothing I thought didn’t hold true.
Here are a few tricks, if you’re interested:
but as what I said on the article, I don’t encourage anyone to do the same — your life, your call.
Taking a break from Medium
I’ve been planning my weekly schedule on Medium — how many articles to write and publish, time to promote them and whatnot but these past few weeks, I’ve been so burnt not just from writing but from life in general.
If you’ve been reading my stuff, you’d know that I’m an advocate of good mental health — I suffer from chronic depression and anxiety:
Becoming a full-time freelance writer is something I’ve aspired for years but I didn’t think that it can result to the amplification of my internal struggles; I think it’s mainly because of being holed up in my room to write all day.
I’ve decided to take three days off of Medium and I’m super happy I did. I went drinking with friends and didn’t worry how I’m going to be productive with a hangover the next day.
Heck, I almost got laid!
Knowing myself, that’s huge!
One of those three days was spent as a ‘just me’ day — self-care for people on a tight budget:
The external rewards of Medium
I’m a very reward-driven person and it’s both a blessing and a curse; it gives me a good reason to work hard in everything that I do but it also cancels out why I started writing in the first place:
because I love it and I hate it, because it calms something within my mind when I concentrate on a piece, because I’m not verbally articulate and the only way I can be released of the things I want to say is to put them through written words.
The monetary rewards on Medium is a cool motivator, I almost managed to be at the 7% on my first month writing on the platform:
but I never realized that I’d be semi-obsessed looking at my stats everyday. If a piece doesn’t do particularly well, I felt like it was an attack on my writing — it’s a very toxic thing to be obsessed about.
Especially since writing on Medium gives us freedom to write about almost everything and get paid even a little for it.
Regaining my composure as a writer
Quite frankly, the three-day break I took from Medium is to assess what kind of things I want to put out on the World Wide Web.
I felt like the external rewards of Medium heavily influenced the things I write about and I wanted to think things through:
What kind of writer do I want to be?
I know for all you chill-writers out there it may seem that I overthink and take things too seriously — it’s just my programming.
I’m glad that I reassessed myself for three days and if I’m being completely honest, I’m still unsure about a lot of things but I’m freaking ready to figure out the answers and grow as a writer and a person along the way.
Check out my other works?
