some comments on Medium - part 3

1

what is the potential of Medium [for me]
as a medium for [my] writing
as a medium for [my] reading

what do i want from medium
how do i plan on using medium

2

writing:
i don’t know

at first i rejected Medium — it didn’t seem to offer much for me
now — i'm rethinking Medium and hoping i can use it
my emphasis has been on the visual aspects of text but i often find myself wanting to say something that emphasis content in a more traditional essay style

i plan on trying to accept the constraints of Medium and use the tools that it provides (but i really wish that the writing default was a single line space format — it’s easy to hit the return key twice to double line space)

what is a ‘constraint’
the developers see Medium as liberating writers from the problem of format and allowing them to concentrate on content — for me this is a constraint and not a freedom

some problems [for me]:

1) i’m not sure if i can write a straight forward traditional piece constrained to some sort of coherence of form and content

2) i’m not sure if i want to write in any format — i have already written a great deal and possibly (maybe probably) i should be concentrating on formatting and publishing that

3) i have a lot of other interests such as visual art and music and possibly (maybe probably) i should be working there and not here

3

reading:
i don’t know

i used to read a lot of magazines but gave up on all of them because the large part of all of them was not interesting to me —
Medium is probably a much better paradigm than a lot of individual magazines devoted to a single subject or field of interest
maybe the best way of reading is a lot of short pieces about a lot of different subjects by many different authors

i’ve always read a great deal with a particular liking for long complex novels — i usually had at least 2 books going at the same time - one non-fiction and one fiction — but over the past few years my reading has declined and i find it harder and harder to read an entire book — i have a huge list of books on my reread list but i’m not sure if i’ll ever be able to pick one of them up and read it —

i’ll give Medium a try — maybe set a time limit of a half-hour a day to read whatever articles look interesting


some problems [for me]:

1) i don’t like reading on a screen — especially a small one

2) i don’t read much any more — but possibly (maybe probably) i should work from my ‘to reread’ list

3) now i’m more interested in writing than reading and have many books with passages marked or noted for quotation to use in my writing

4

overall:
i’m not sure
i don’t think Medium has much potential [for me] but i’ll try to work with it for a while