Medium Is My Home, My Family. A Grateful Perspective I Use To Help and Protect It.
Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.
When I was 35 years old, my father came to me asking for money. His firm was bankrupt, and my father didn’t have money to pay his monthly costs. I was shocked at first. What always happened in my young life was that I asked my father for money. I never thought that one day the opposite could happen until the day it happened.
My father and my uncle ran a photography company with more than 60 years of existence and managed to destroy everything my grandfather built with sweat and tears.
In the small city where I live, my family’s name was a matter of talk on the streets, and my father stopped taking the street out of shame.
I had to deal with the negotiation process with the workers, paying suppliers, and closing the company without owning a cent to anyone. We had to sell family assets to clean up my grandfather’s good name. This process made me immensely fragile. Having to help your father financially is a strange situation, to say the least.
I realized that life is more complicated than it looks. I realized that businesses sometimes have to die because digital technology decimates everything analog.
On the other hand, I realized how much my father loved my mother, sister, and me. Although my father was destroyed in his self-esteem because he felt responsible for the bankruptcy of my grandfather’s company, he had the emotional intelligence to give everything he could to the family. And since he had no money, he showed love and dedication.
My father never stopped apologizing to me, he never stopped helping us in what he could and knew, and he maintained a friendly relationship with the former workers, who recognized that times change and companies are not eternal.
In this challenging time, I discovered the power of love and family. I found that there is nothing that can destroy a united family.
When life changes to be harder, change yourself to be stronger.
Last month, I read many painful articles with people sharing their surprise, bewilderment, and even anger about Medium changes. Writers saw their earnings cut abruptly, and in a way, I felt that there was a loss of confidence in this platform.
As I started a short time ago and I’m experiencing a sustained and slow increase in my earnings, I didn’t feel much of a difference. Only in March, the gains were maintained, and I expected that they would continue to rise as in the previous months.
I was tempted to write about it, but I thought it would be better to let pass a little time and think with my mind clean.
I’ve been compounding my earnings with articles I’ve written 3 months ago; I have been learning with other writers how to build my business, and with so many strategies and tools given to me by other writers for free, how could I be mad with Medium?
You may think this article’s title is a kind of false flattery, but it’s actually my feeling when I click on Medium.com every day, at 7 AM.
Other writers fill my soul with in-depth articles, funny ones, and some that make me really think seriously about a particular matter.
I read other writers’ articles all the time, everywhere. Usually, my daily work is finished by lunchtime. I go for a walk in the afternoon, and I read one to two articles while I walk. If I’m waiting for some friend, I sit down and read two more pieces. I read 6 to 8 articles per day from other writers, and I love it.
So, what can I be complaining about?
Champions never complain; they are too busy getting better.
I don’t complain for years.
My painful life lessons helped me understand that complaining doesn’t do anything in your life. I mean, really anything, nor good or bad, just a vacuum.
About these recent Medium changes, I read a lot of complaining articles, but I kept writing and working on my journey. What could I do about it? Nothing. I’m not Ev Williams; I don’t know the challenges he’s facing. One thing I know. He loves this Medium family as I do. So, why the hell would he want to hurt us.
I always believed Ev wants, like you and me, to make this place a better one. If you read about writers that started writing on this platform a few years ago, they didn’t even earn any money. There was no Medium Partner Program, just the pure joy of writing.
If you lose the pure joy of writing, I don’t know what you’re still doing here. I always loved to write. I have four journals since my early 20s, I wrote a novel, and I’m struggling to end my second one. I’m a reader addict with an insatiable curiosity about everything that surrounds me, and I love to share my thoughts, life experiences, pains, and memories.
Medium is the right place for you to start a beautiful journey too. You don’t have to try a full-time writing crazy trip like me. You can just start with a 500-word article and see what happens. Before you realize it, someone is sending you a message in your Medium box, and the magic starts there.
When we have each other, we have everything.
As I’m writing this article, Sinem Günel is making a live masterclass on 6-Steps Framework To Succeed on Medium (100% free).
In one of her articles, Jessica Lynn spoke about an online course from Jon Brosio about Create a Money-Making Blog.
In another article, Tim Denning shared a recent online course about LinkedIn by Justin Welsh (Build an Incredible LinkedIn Brand). Tim shared his success on LinkedIn and how you can also have a strong presence on that platform.
So, just by reading Medium articles, you receive free information you would have to spend thousands of hours searching to catch the best places for you to improve your business.
Medium family shares their achievements all the time. Successful writers do it because they respect the trust of their readers. This kind of social sharing interaction is what makes Medium a different place to stay.
An intense family fight for surviving, and somehow, this sharing philosophy is what makes this platform so powerful. The best strategies are available everywhere. You just have to follow the process that fits you. But with consistency and willpower, everyone can be successful on Medium.
Final Thought
Only the ones that focus themselves on writing can succeed in this competitive world. Yet, in my ignorant beginner experience, I see a lot of writers thinking only about Medium.
From what I have been investigating and learning, the world of content marketing and brand journalism allows us, content producers, to develop numerous tools to get our product to all potential readers globally.
If I have a website with a lot of traffic, a LinkedIn page that brings me more readers to my Medium profile and increases my email list, if I leverage other social networks to channel more readers to the content I produce, the Medium platform will be highly benefited, just like me.
It is a relationship in which both Medium and I gain from the process.
It was only a few years ago (2016) when this market was hovering at around $216B. Today, that market is growing and it is predicted to be at $412.88B by 2021. And the trend is only getting better. Countless research firms have verified that the amount of businesses that invest in content marketing nearly doubles every year.- [arlie] PEYTON
Medium is the perfect medium for your purpose; it’s a platform that can help you grow as a content producer, but it’s a means to an end. If you see Medium as an end in itself, you will always get frustrated every time the company needs to adjust its strategy.
In the digital world, everything changes constantly. Google’s SEO rules are changeable, Facebook Ads rules are continually evolving, some use TikTok to reach more audiences, and more platforms will appear to catapult our digital businesses. But this is an ever-changing world, even more so in an era of complete technological disruption.
We will not wait long until we have platforms integrated into different blockchains and pay in various cryptocurrencies.
As in my family, and perhaps yours, changes come when we least expect it. Changes are tremendously painful, forcing us to play a deep game, but if we don’t embrace the pain of change, we will never be prepared to embrace abundance.
The path is made by walking, with an open mind to change.
Defending the family is the only pillar we have left in a world full of uncertainties.
So, open your eyes, and walk, always without looking back.
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