My 400th Blog Post on Medium
Thoughts on caring & sharing as a diary of an author’s life
Medium as a platform was recommended by my girlfriend/wife back in June of 2018, under circumstances worthy of their own blog posts, of which this retrospective is the first of many to come. The urge to write after a long hiatus into adulthood had long been percolating — along with my desire to finally become what I’ve always wanted to be, a dedicated writer.
For the next several years, blogging became my go-to creative indulgence, and a vehicle by which I began to hone the craft. Blogging continues to be my artist’s palette, practice pad, and distribution channel. I rant daily on Facebook, pontificate and tell stories here on Medium — and recently on Substack. Four hundred blogs and counting, I’m coming into my own.
My first blog post remains my most popular, suggesting that I haven’t learned anything at all about writing for a wider audience since I began blogging here. At about ten thousand reads, “From Sperm Bank to Vasectomy: The Story of My Sexless Marriage” got me hitting the ground running, and I’ve been steadily sprinting, but mostly alone, ever since.
Devoid of context, suffused with beginner’s luck, I assumed audiences appear automatically, and was a bit disappointed that my next post on suicide in America garnered 1/40th the engagement. Sex sells, of course, but assuredly good writing alone should carry the day? Of course, it did not. My next post on hating arugula bounced back up ten-fold — humor helped.
I started experimenting, posting a combination of what I felt like writing, and what I thought might trigger more readership. Another almost-viral post, “My kids are spoiled brats, and it’s all my fault” got boosts from a social influencer friend’s share, and my own marketing efforts on Reddit and in Facebook groups, while my sexless marriage sequel had legs, too.
Several other posts took off, too, including the complement to the spoiled brats post, “My kids are racists, and it’s everybody’s fault” — while in retrospect, a milestone proved to be “The Dangers of Cognitive Fatigue,” a tale about that terrible yet transformative year, and how shedding my agency skin enabled me to find true happiness, and my scrivener calling.
During that tough time, across a dozen posts, and amid wildly oscillating metrics, I came to a few obvious realizations: 1) content alone rarely if ever draws a substantial audience; 2) marketing blogs well is far more impactful than writing blogs well; and, 3) I nonetheless love writing for writing’s sake, and find the marketing tedious, tiresome, and to an extent, disingenuous.
These simple truths opened me up to writing more openly and frequently about myself, which, as Thomas Pynchon has observed, is essentially what (introverted) writers do. No longer entranced by engagement metrics I found boring and distracting, thinking about pulling the plug on the firewalled Medium Writers Program, I went gonzo and wrote for fun.
A high school shenanigans post poured out, “Trippin’ With Fran & Ed” — and despite my throwing in the targeting towel, it ironically became multi-thousand reader popular. For that I thank a tweet from my super influencer NYC friend Nick Gillespie, whose libertarian ideals were well matched with my early and ongoing attitudes toward freedom and psychedelic drugs.
Just before the pandemic, my roman à clef-style blogs reached a new level of intensity with Greg’s Gift, a mid-90s compression of numerous personal experiences into a whirlwind 48 hours depicted through relentless storytelling action. A fan, Nick tweeted this novella-length post, too, and it gained its own traction with nearly a thousand views, kudos going round.
Building an audience was still largely irrelevant for me, as the plague killed thousands per day in NYC, sirens blaring outside my Stuytown apartment 24/7. In lockdown, my long-dormant science fiction novel began bubbling up into my consciousness. After several failed attempts, I gave it another whirl and failed again with “Carlos & the Bridge Between Worlds”.
As I observed in yet another post, this short story experiment wasn’t sufficiently character-driven, with fundamental flaws not figured out until a year later, when I posted what has become the seed of my work-in-progress magnum opus, the adventures of Jonnie Fazoolie. Meanwhile, I had a painful split with my GF/wife, fueling several angry and loving posts.
Most notable of these post-breakup blogs was the eccentric and exceptional “Mastering the Male Multiple Orgasm: A Step-by-Step Guide for Couples”. Still getting hits, this formidable 29-minute read could and perhaps should become a tutorial for improving intimacy, sex positivity, and fun in relationships — if only I cared enough about promotions to promote it.
From here, blogging became sporadic for a couple years. In March of 2021, “A Neanderthal’s Guide to Exercise” was a goofy and descriptive post about my quirky but effective approach to personal fitness during lockdown — with zero blogs for a year despite having the time and isolation to hunker down and type. The Muse is fickle! No arguing with her, so don’t even try.
Into 2022, I started repackaging and expanding on my spontaneous and irreverent Facebook posts, which had been continuing nonstop as a daily diary, journal, and soapbox. Along the way my rationale for blogging kept emotionally shifting, too, starting out as a vehicle for building some kind of following, and culminating in a stream of mini-essays and short stories.
With more room to elaborate and bloviate on Medium, I started writing political, cultural, and personal posts, focusing on the Ukraine War, domestic challenges, sentimental family stories, and other sporadic observations. Busy paying the bills, not quite obsessive, the Muse still ambivalent about my talents and commitment, I was just playing around.
A few highlights from this phase stand out, most notably stories of befriending celebrities Beck and Andy Dick prior to them becoming famous, and my continued fixation on the Multiverse theme of my brewing sci fi novel. Along the way, another breakup triggered a slew of relationship and romance posts, building my chops by exposing my vulnerabilities.
The year closed with the stunning release of ChatGPT, many implications of which I recognized and described. Consistently having the worst timing throughout my life, 2023 rolled into the obsessive creation of original long-form content, and birth of my first full length novel. Busy blogging, even busier turning into a writer, in September my illustrator and I published!
For more than two decades prior, I had acquiesced to adulthood — more accurately, I had little choice after the accidental pregnancy and marriage featured in my first and most successful blog post. The benefits have since been significant and meaningful, as have the sacrifices in terms of leaving limited bandwidth for doing what I’ve always wanted to do, which is write.
Into 2024, with my older son set to join the Marines, and my younger one contemplating a gap year between high school and college, I was teased by empty nester status, like an inhalant intoxicant rushing to my head. Infused by the Muse, whom I had courted for decades and was finally getting some action from, I tumbled into this year typing like a maniac.
From here, I went wild. My total piece of garbage Amazon Basics keyboard became my best friend, the hammered, dusty, still stalwart contraption resisting every move while enduring millions of keystrokes. I commented on politics, the Israel-Hamas War, publishing earlier works, telling stories, sharing quirky local dialogues and other goodies.
Rolling into the summer, writing constantly, descending further into debt, living in NYC made less and less sense. Another blog still to be written shares my reasons for moving back to Orange County, CA, where I’m now typing with equal ferocity. On the agenda: more and better blogs to express myself daily, and finalizing my pride and joy, an inspired sci fi series.
The lead up to the elections this month provided plenty of fodder for frenzied typing. I stuck my neck out for a Harris win because I recognize the deception of selective attention, and consider the risk of what is now a second Trump term to be unacceptable. But accept I must and do, now looking forward to the fullest expression of extremism to play itself out.
Shooting for a self-publishing book launch for Valentine’s Day 2025, The Lovers’ Guide to the Infiniverse is the first infinitale in my infiniseries, a 400-page plus novel that captures and expresses everything I’ve learned about writing and storytelling so far. Will it garner attention, or languish within the petabytes of content effervescing online, at best fodder for the AI bots?
To be honest, I really don’t give a shit — and am writing my masterpiece for myself. That sounds crassly narcissistic, and fiscally foolish, but is true to my sensibility as a person who gains intrinsic satisfaction in the doing. Rick Ruben has gone on an interview spree to proselytize his philosophy of creativity, and he’s right: the audience remains irrelevant for a good artist.
Staying true to the work differentiates commerce from art, the process of which is akin to a diary that captures the artist’s daily, even momentary, thoughts and feelings. When asked what value he provides, Ruben replies good taste. For a creator, that amounts to a clear, compelling, and cool vision. We throw away what others use, and use what others throw away.
Location is everything in real estate, and timing is everything in life. At the dawn of the AI revolution, writing and storytelling are transforming, whether writers and their audiences welcome that or not. We hope the ghost in the machine will remain the genuine humans in the real world who have lived experiences, but none of this should concern us now.
Instead the focus should be and always remain on the connection we make with our fellow humans. That begins with knowing ourselves and why we wish to communicate in the first place. Much of my earlier writing sucked because I wrote to write, and didn’t write to be read. That sounds contradictory to what I just wrote about writing, but it’s not, here’s why:
The difference between writing for an audience and writing for oneself is in whom you are trying to appease. A good writer tries to narrow the delta between their own vision of a perfect story, and the story emerging on the page. I’ve matured in my ability to bridge that gap, largely thanks to being honest with myself, my limitations, and my innate style of self-expression.
Everyone is unique, has a voice and a tone distinctive to us alone. The tricky part is peeling away the many layers of bullshit, the maps interfering with the territories. The duality of human nature generates anguish when misaligned, but is creativity’s engine when in harmony. We are what we do, and what I’m doing is writing. What more is there? Thank you for reading!
