How Writing on Medium Killed My Love of Writing.

I gave up writing and my life got a whole lot better.

…and yet, here I am writing about giving up writing. Weird right?

But, let’s back up a little bit.

It’s 2020. The pandemic is in full swing and that’s when I discovered medium.com

I read an article by Tim Denning where he talked about making 11K in 30 days.

I was hooked.

I had always loved writing. I’ve written an award-winning book and published another.

Being able to write online and get paid for it sounded super easy and fantastical in the literal meaning of the word.

As soon as I decided to “write for money” I found myself struggling with motivation or even what to write about.

The article that inspired me also set me up for “unrealistic expectations.” But no biggie. I’m human.

I also noticed that the most popular stories on Medium weren’t stories at all. They were tips and hacks about how to make money writing, how to go viral, and shit like that.

I had no interest in writing such stories because all they do is create a content-based pyramid scheme.

After writing only 65 stories in a whole year, I really wanted to stick with it (as one should) and hopefully realize some form of success in some distant future, but every cell in my body was screaming at me to quit.

Not to quit writing overall, but to quit writing on Medium.com in the hope of becoming a successful content creator such as Tim Denning or Sean Kernan, or Justin Welsh.

But the “Sunk Cost Fallacy” wouldn’t let me. If you don’t know what that is, read this.

After a few months of NOT producing any content, I read an article online about Business Systems, and before I could finish it, my heart literally started beating faster

I had accidentally stumbled upon “Business Systems & Process Improvement”

It would go on to completely change my life for the better.

Never in my 53 years of life had I felt what I was feeling at that moment.