Wow, congratulations on the position with People. That’s awesome news.

I agree with your observations and positions here very much, and I say that as a person who did not spend my life writing for a living. Before I discovered Medium, I was just an aspiring novelist with several unsold manuscripts to my name.

But I’ve spent years here writing passionately for the love of writing, and because I thought I had something to say. And because I wanted to learn how to say it effectively and clearly.

Sometimes, I’ll post an article on Medium that gets read by a lot of people. Usually that’s not what happens, but somebody always reads, and that’s the whole point – sharing ideas.

Beyond that, I’ve now become a fairly regular contributor to some traditional-media LGBTQ publications. When I publish with those outlets, many more people read. That only happened because of the years I spent writing on Medium for the love of writing.

I’m pretty sure if I had spent those years worrying more about the Medium algorithm than on what I had to say, my experience would have been very different.