The Good, Bad, and Ugly writing on Medium for 12 months

Lessons learned 12 months, 80 Stories and 800 Followers Later — The Few, The Proud, And why I am back

MarkfromBoston 🌻Ukraine
3 min readNov 3, 2022

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Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

I drank the blogging Kool-Aid in 2021. And with a few fits and starts, I still shout Medium at the top of my lungs to all who will listen. I have had a challenging year of loss, love, and adventure. More on this is below.

The Good: getting feedback and hearing good things about my writing. Priceless.

This writing community is a personal community and it is invaluable to grow and face the universal challenges we all face — across the world. I have learned about articles my conservative ass would never have read and expanded my worldview. I also learned how much growth there is in sharing my life.

I am a very lucky guy to have found Medium writers.

The Bad:

Slump periods where the energy to write is just not there.

The voice in your head asking you to stop — “It’s not worth it, you are wasting time.”

The Ugly:

Telling the voice in your head to S.T.H.U. — your heart rules your writing passion!

In summary: Gratitude.

The people I have met along the way have been deeply gratifying. And gracious. And fun!

It has been a few months since my last article. I have suffered job loss, sleepless nights, and at times ---- acute loneliness. But like Lazarus, I am somehow back to life.

What is bringing me back?

I have a new job side gig I took a risk on — Risks are still really scary for me!

I am also buying a ticket to travel internationally and volunteer to help wayward dogs find new homes in exotic warm places.

My frustrating insomnia still persists but I am growing again and have great hope.

I am still cold water swimming in historic Walden Pond.

The picture below is me in my frog man suit. I love being a frog man and I feel like “It’s fun to be a cold…

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MarkfromBoston 🌻Ukraine

Sharing stories of thrills of love. Just completed a teaching volunteer service in Costa Rica. Treasure the Medium tribe as my family. Connecting is what I do.