Writing and Self Esteem

Hey MPP, Can We Call a Truce?

The recent changes to the MPP have hit a lot of us pretty hard. My stats look like a staircase going down to the basement. My earnings look like a grade school bake sale where the kids ate all the frosting off of the cupcakes and the only buys were pity buys. It’s sad folks. Yes we have tried to adapt. But poets are out here most likely trying hard not bail on the whole thing. Again, it is not about how we don’t love love love writing for writing’s sake and poetry for poetry’s sake, it’s about how we spent a lot of time here — hi Medium! — we spent hours and hours and hours here, and sometimes the earnings would justify that. Now, they really kind of don’t.

And I need to clarify this part. The community is great. The friendships and connections, the ways we inspire each other to be better writers, and better people, the supporters and fans, yes maybe even fans!, of my writing, my poetry, that stuff is amazing and worth it all. But what sort of gets cut in this “justification of time spent” is the exploration. The reading more, the responding more — because hear me out, this change to the MPP pushed us all to focus more on the individual and less on the community, it’s not engagement it’s can I get eyes on my stuff and for how long, and who can grab the most eyes — the engagement stuff was the best part of the “old MPP” — it was never clap for clap for most of us, it was this system of sharing and spreading, and I could tell my fiance hey, you know how I spend like most of my day reading and writing on and for Medium, well look, we paid a bill with it, and that feeling of joy sort of spread out even more — he spends NO time here, LOL, be he got some of that joy passed on in one less worry for our family, you know? Now it feels like we hit and run and dash and post and the leisure feeling, the luxury feeling, is sort of missing — I cannot explain it in full, but I used to scroll the “latest” in poetry every single night and now I am a bit too stressed to do that because like most struggling artists, baby poets, little writers, I have to go out and about away from Medium now to look for ways to sustain the basics of life in gig economy neoliberal capitalism: food, rent, bills.

I still get a thrill every single time I see anyone has read or clapped for any single one of my stories or…

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