At the risk of dating myself, I’ve been writing and posting articles online since the 1980s. Back then we didn’t have the Internet but we did have dial-up modems and bulletin board systems (BBS) hosted by computer enthusiasts. When the Internet, blogging, and self-hosted websites became popular in the late 1990's and early 2000’s I was also there. For awhile I hosted a website focused on content management systems that in its peak easily received over 100,000 unique visitors a month.

I’m an amateur writer that over the years have competed along side with professional writers with some innate ability (aka luck) to adapt with the technological advances and social changes of the time. But of all the places for me to fail in reaching an audience it has been on Medium. With no readers for my articles on Medium it made little since to continue. Instead, I have been posting most of my articles on own websites and also utilized social media (Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) for the community connections. Given that “Anyone can write on Medium” is the motto on Medium, I feel like such a failure and haven’t posted a story via the platform since 2019.

I never thought I would give Medium a second chance. But a funny thing happened recently, Medium decided to provide their members an alternative to Twitter by setting up their own Mastodon instance. I saw a post from a Medium member that called this new instance Mediumstodon and I think the word describes this new federated presence perfectly. It’s a new phase for Mastodon as larger organizations begin to better understand what a federated social network has to offer them and their customers. Having been on another Mastodon instance (Fosstodon) for over a year I decided to give me.dm a chance which then required me to become a paid Medium member.

So long story short, I am back on Medium thanks to Mastodon.

I’m just now starting to understand the Medium culture and update my Medium presence by updating my profile and posting new content. To be honest, I need a little encouragement to follow-through here on Medium as I go through the learning curve (you all do things a little differently here). It’s going to take awhile to restart something I thought I said goodbye to four years ago.

Despite a decade of having an account on Medium…for all intensive purposes I’m a still a Medium newbie. I’ll take advice where I can get it and of course I’ll take followers too, whether that be here on Medium, on Mediumstodon, or better yet both locations. In the meantime, see you on the other side of this learning curve!

This article was originally posted on Medium.