I want to thank medium for existing for people like me
Summer Lotus Jan 24 2021 4 min read
Through Medium, I have inculcated the love for reading and writing.
I am a latecomer to reading. For most of my life, I hardly read as I was not motivated and I was largely entangled with textbooks of subjects that I aimed to pass. For 16 years, from primary school to University, I was in the Science stream so Art and Literature subjects were not on my radar of interests. I had not acquired a love for Art, History, Geography, nor Literature until in my later years when I started traveling and became exposed to other cultures.
I chanced upon Medium a year ago when I was surfing the internet and realized what a treasure trove it is. Many writers are already accomplished and prolific writers and thinkers, generously sharing tips on living a better life.
Members of medium.com have opportunities to express their thoughts, relate their stories, and share their experiences in ways that are so beneficial to readers that I quickly fell in love with reading and writing. Some of them earned good money to boot.
I am a proponent of reading as well as writing now. I have benefitted over the last year when I became a member and decided to give writing a shot. As a dentist, my sphere of living is very small but the desire to write had caused me to dig deep into my life experiences of 60 years tucked under my belt. I discovered that reading expedited my writing attempts as I became inspired going through other authors’ works.
“Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write”— -Annie Proulx
How reading and writing benefitted me.
1 You can say I now feel more intelligent. Such variable subjects from philosophy to business to life hacks to almost anything conceivable are bandied about on this platform and many good authors crystallized those ideas for me. They sourced and shared quotations that were timeless and brought much introspection to my life.
2 I became more confident, positive, and happier. It is very encouraging to see many great authors on medium who could churn out nice, motivating articles, as many as two a day. They were very supportive, egging new writers to keep writing and trying. They were also realistic to reveal that it could take as much as five years to see results and only practice, grit, and hard work can hone a writer’s skill.
I noticed a positive change in me during the Toastmasters meeting. During the off-the-cuff speech session, we termed as table topics, I was able to adopt a fresh and optimistic perspective no matter how negative the topic was. This was a far cry from just a few years ago when I used to shun table-topics and was not able to deliver a concrete view when volunteered. I would credit the reading and writing habits on Medium that built my critical thinking skills.
3 I learned many new things from reading articles by established writers. These are authors who have a huge following and have proven to be persistent and progressively successful. I aspire to be like them. From them, I was exposed to other great authors whom they have followed and the good ideas and thoughts were shared through their writings in their own inimitable ways. Some have become so successful that they had made writing a full-time career.
Many of these writers want others to succeed as well so they would share their tips and their mistakes. I think this generosity is to be lauded greatly. I have adopted their recommendations and made my own essays to meet the criteria required by publications as closely as possible.
4 Being involved with Medium, I have developed the good habit of reading at least three articles a day. Each article always carries an important message for me to apply. The writing was a struggle and it still is. However, I do find that I am able to achieve a flow state under the right conditions and have generally written an article in less time than was required when I first tried to do so.
My article that was viewed the most was only about 100 views but it was a boost for my self-esteem as I never thought I could even write. The topic was Knowing Your Communication Style Will Help You Succeed In Your Life
Well, let me share my chequered past. My composition book was thrown out of the window during my formative years as a teenager when I lacked a lot of motivation and focus. I became the bane of my English teacher’s life for the whole year. I was demoralized for many years. Coming from a neighborhood school, I got into this elite school by the skin of my teeth. It was a brand name school ( all teenagers aspire to get in)by all accounts. When I entered school, I discovered that most of my classmates were already polished in the English language. There, my torment lasted for four years.
Joining Toastmasters Club to find my voice required me to produce scripts to perform as speech projects. It was after I became a member of Medium that I honed my writing and now I am not short of articles to use during club meetings. The need to write quality speech spurred me to read quality articles, process them and write out my best version.
This is going to be an exciting year in 2021. There is plenty to discover on Medium where I could develop further in this craft and my goal is to be consistent in producing worthy and readable articles that are of value to other readers.
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others; read a lot and write a lot” — -Stephen King