What Does It Mean To Have 1000 Followers?

Editor’s Note- This will show on both WordPress and Medium

Some of you know there is a version of this blog on Medium/Wordpress and follow me in both places. If you have tried to keep up than you also know I haven’t updated Medium in forever and that I have slowed down on the updates here.

You can blame that upon life having gotten busier and my having had to become more judicious about where I spend my time.

You can also say I have wrestled with which one provides the bigger bang for my buck so to speak. In concept Medium feels like it is the bigger platform based upon the 1000 followers it says I have there.

But that doesn’t mean that it really is bigger or that part or all of those 1000 are actively looking for my posts. Hell, most have probably forgotten I exist as it has been more than a year or two since I last updated there.

In concept some of you subscribe and or follow me in both places so you know that I haven’t fallen off of the earth but I really don’t know how big or small that number is.

I also know very few of you have reached out to ask about my silence. That is ok,  we’re all busy and I haven’t reached out to people I read on the regular to find out why they stopped production.

So don’t take that as a passive aggressive remark to encourage connection or comments. It is not, it is an observation.

I never stop writing, though I have stopped updating some of the places I used to be most active in. Writing is such a big part of who I am I don’t think I could give it up.

But I could absolutely take it all offline and or adjust as I have done.

What I can’t easily do is let go of this place because the mighty JackB is what kept me going during some very hard times. It is what kept me from losing my mind and losing hope.

It is a place that once had a very large and very active community. At one point it certainly was larger than the 1000 followers Medium says I have.

This was part of what I consider to be the golden age of blogging and that fills my heart with joy. So many good memories.

Part of why Medium didn’t take off for me is because I was spread too thin and you have to work to build your community. You have to nurture it and give it love/attention.

I didn’t do as good a job at that as I could have. If I had seen more activity there I might have focused on building and nurturing, but I didn’t.

There is so much content out there now I think we’re all swamped and overrun with beeps, buzzes, whistles and newsletters jockeying for our attention.

That impacts all of us, myself included.

Sometimes I haven’t published a post because I haven’t felt like the content merited being given that exposure.

But it never meant I wasn’t writing because that doesn’t happen. If you don’t keep your pencil sharp you grow rusty and so I keep going…always.

So I look at my time and consider what I have to say alongside of what I want to share and ask if I am writing something worth reading or doing something worth writing.