Boost(ed)!
Surprise and Appriciation
It was a surprise indeed and not once but twice -:)!
Actually, the whole Medium experience was/is one big surprise.
When I joined, in early November last year, I knew very little, if anything, about the workings of the platform, let alone such things as boosts, top-writers, stats, and other assorted features.
I just wanted to write and share some of it with some living, breathing people… Because every writer needs a reader, even the most introverted amongst us.
Besides, I thought, it might help me (finally) learn not to agonise about every sentence I write. Which is what I do even now as I write these lines. Check, re-write, check again… No, can do better. Delete. Start again. On and on it goes. Alas.
When, in late November, 100 people decided to follow me, I wrote: Wow! Indeed … I couldn’t quite believe it myself when I found 103 followers on my profile this morning.
As is customary, I received an email and duly joined the Partnership Programme… Only to feel acutely uncomfortable with it after a couple of weeks, and abandoned it.
Amongst other strange beliefs (as my friends would say), I also hold a belief that words, like water, or air or bread… Are for everyone. Freely. My friends tell me it is puzzling how my mind works. Yes, it is even to me. But I still hold those beliefs even though I have recently re-joined the programme, still awkwardly.
I don’t check stats, or earnings, or any of those productivity tools. But I do check comments, claps and, as many as I can, writings of those that leave them. Because those things matter to me.
This is not to say that I don’t see value in monetary rewards, heck, I am not in paid employment anymore, only that I cannot help but value genuine human connections much more.
Of course, I too have learned about the tricks of trade; follow-for-follow, comment-for-comment, endless how to earn… (insert desired amount) in no time, AI written content and similar. They are the facts of contemporary writers’ lives.
Nevertheless, amongst all the clamour, there are still those that write as kids play — for the sheer joy of arranging and re-arranging words until they resemble what they feel, or they do (not) know. In my case, as the brilliant Flannery O’Connor said,
I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.
Quite so.
When, in mid-April an email arrived letting me know that I have been awarded Top writer in poetry, I wrote back asking if it was mistake. Nope, no mistake, Liz from Medium responded and Top writer in poetry appeared in small letters at the bottom of my About page and it is still there.
If that was not enough Liz sent me another email on the 26th of April to let me know that The Market has been boosted. That made me cry. I have read many stories criticising the boosting system for a number of reasons, mostly because it did not bring as many views and earnings as expected, but for me none of that matters. Especially not for The Market… A story special to me for many reasons.
Today Liz wrote again… To let me know that How I did (not) become a writer, a story Francisco Iglesias kindly published in his newest publication Inside The Mind Of A Writer, had been boosted. Oh, my I thought… Now we are nearing belive it or not realm!
Well, whether I believe it or not — it has happened and this time I know who to thank for the nomination… The lovely, kind and thoughtful Thomas Gaudex, long-time time poetry connoisseur and Scribe editor.
So, thank you very much Thomas, Francisco, Medium and all of you who read and engage with the words I wrote.
They are usually woven in the small hours of the morning in the Room with a Balcony, perched at the edge of an island. At the bottom (or perhaps at the top) of the world.
Only a few things in this life multiply by division… Words, like Love and Knowledge, are one of those — for more you divide it, the more there is.
Thank you ALL very much!
Room with a balcony
