Reflecting on my Medium Journey, 150 Articles Later
Nearly five years in, I feel even more inspired to milk Medium for all it has
After nearly five years of publishing on Medium, I have reached a pretty cool benchmark: 150 published articles!
My Medium journey has been one of major inconsistency. Here is the breakdown of the 150 articles published by year of publishing:
- 11 in 2016
- 26 in 2017
- 16 in 2018
- 0 in 2019
- 69 in 2020
- 28 in 2021
That timeline perfectly represents the peaks and valleys of writing motivation I have had since I began writing as a freshman in high school. When I first published on Medium in 2016, I was a freshman at a local community college. I would spend time between classes putting together a giant weekly piece, which I called “My Circle of Life.”
Modeled after Peter King’s The MMQB — a lengthy piece published every week through Sports Illustrated — I wrote about whatever interested me that week. In the first edition, I wrote about a bunch of different NFL topics and made predictions for that season.
I also wrote about music for the first time, reviewing the new albums from Young Thug and Travis Scott.
I wrote six lengthy installments of My Circle of Life before it became just a little too much. I wrote a bunch of NBA thoughts and then this piece on Damian Lillard, the rapper.
After that, just before Christmas in 2016, I joined a cool NBA blog called 16 Wins A Ring that contained many really talented basketball writers — some of which have become professionals in the media world and even as members of an NBA front office.
It was great at the beginning, but people started peeling out rather quickly as other opportunities came along (the owner of the blog wasn’t the easiest guy to work with, either, and has since disappeared from the internet, as far as I know).
Over time, I proved myself and became close with the site manager, who elevated me to an editing role. I published twice a week for a while and edited throughout the week. It was a lot of work, but fun.
I did that throughout most of 2017. I published this article on the NBA draft and got a ton of recognition on Twitter for it from both random readers and professional writers alike. To this day it is my most-viewed article on the platform, nearing 10,000.
That site eventually shut down, but I kept writing my NBA thoughts occasionally, while also squeezing some NFL stuff in there as well. I wrote this — a 31-minute read, undoubtedly the longest article I’ve ever written — covering each team’s fantasy football prospects before that season.
I sporadically wrote more sports thoughts throughout the year. On December 6, 2018, I would publish my last piece on Medium for over 17 months, as other writing roles appeared away from the site.
In April 2020, I returned to write this, which would end up becoming a pre-precursor to my book, From One Young Soul to Another, on a girl I wanted to date.
Over the next few months, I wrote about music, books, and stocks before finally writing this in August — perhaps the most important piece I’ve written to date and the actual precursor to my book.
Two weeks later, I began the journey I’m currently on, writing about investing, business, self-development, and more.
It has been fun, this Medium journey. Writing is cool as it gives you a timeline of what you cared about at a certain time, how good of a writer you were, and even gives you some chances to reflect on old times. Scrolling through the 150 articles has shown me how far I’ve come in the past five years and even the past five months.
While I have certainly learned a lot about writing and building an audience on Medium, I have learned even more about myself. Medium has given me an opportunity to learn from others’ writing as well as teach others from my own experiences. It has given me a platform to express myself in an uncensored way, and for that, I will be forever grateful.
So thank you, Medium, for allowing these 150 articles to enter the world. And here’s to the next 150!
