Lean Into Your Weird So the Cool Kids Can Find You
My decade on Medium: A retrospective.
I remember the end of my “normal” life. It was July 4, 2014. At the time, I had a solid middle-class office job as a junior copywriter at a global tech corporation — not one of the sexy ones. Some evenings, I’d kick around local dives in Austin, Texas, playing and singing songs for six people to hear. I wore polos and khakis and spent my free time listening to sports talk radio. My favorite food was pizza. I suppose I was a political moderate.
That evening, after a long day out on a friend’s boat, I would break up with my girlfriend and end the longest (official) relationship I’d ever had. I wasn’t anticipating I would; something just snapped in me. I would spend some time stewing in sadness; I often do after breakups (and there’s more to come about that).
To self-soothe, I opened a Medium account, started a draft, and typed. I penned a boilerplate self-help listicle called “10 Pieces of Advice I Wished I Learned Earlier in Life.” It’s gone now. I deleted it after scrubbing my older pieces that weren’t “up to code”. That was July 27, 2014.
I’ve now officially finished my first decade on Medium. Ten years. Just shy of 25% of my life. That makes my time at this platform my longest tenure anywhere—and thus worth…
