I Took a Day Off From Publishing on Medium

Here is what I learned.

I got lucky right out of the gate on Medium. In October, I renewed my membership for the first time since 2017. I started a 30-day challenge on November 1. I decided to rework one of my best posts from my personal blog about the blessings I experienced in my past year with cancer. Within two hours, it had been curated in the health category and the day after that, I was asked if I would like to include it in a publication. I knew this was based on the nature of the post and did not expect to get so lucky again.

I was correct in my thinking.

Even though I didn’t necessarily have any expectation over the following days, I still wrote with curation in mind because this challenge is a learning experience. I continued to publish each day and knew that what I was publishing was not my best work. I felt disconnected from it — like I couldn’t get the thoughts from my brain onto the page. I was frustrated and discouraged.

Day 10 rolled around, and I fully intended to publish. I wrote three different pieces but…I just couldn’t come up with anything that sounded like me. Everything sounded stilted and disjointed and I just couldn’t make myself hit publish. So I totally bailed on my challenge for the day.

Instead of feeling bad, I felt relieved.

Here’s the thing. I don’t want to publish just to publish. I want to publish writing that means something. That I connect to. That I’m proud of. And I can’t do that if I’m just hitting the publish button to be able to say I did it that day.

This morning, like every other morning, I got up, coffee and red journal in hand, and wrote pages upon pages. Then, like every other morning, I opened up a Word document and wrote 500+ words. And an amazing thing happened. I didn’t feel disconnected anymore. On the contrary — I had at least three topics to expand on and had trouble choosing which one to go with. And that’s when I felt the need to just write this instead.

This is a reminder to do this for me.

Because ultimately, when I do this for myself, I open my heart and mind up and the words that come out on the page help me. And maybe, in helping myself, I also help someone else.

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