(Me)dium manifesto

I’ve been reading and watching a lot of really good, practical lessons on how to write for a large audience on sites like Medium. It’s all very useful, very insightful and full of pragmatic advice that is evidence-based, and I’m grateful to the individuals who take the time to share their knowledge so freely (both literally and figuratively.)

But I’m going to frequently diverge from this sound advice as others have before me — others who often manage better results than I will ever achieve, and I accept that.

Cosmically speaking (and referencing an earlier post of mine), I am but a lightning bug who sometimes confuses my kind for stars because, from a certain perspective for at least a short bit of time, the two can appear to be one and the same.

And who’s to say one is better or more complex or more worthy of attention than the other?

A great scientist once said that complexity can be measured by myriad criteria, from size to chemical makeup to temporal existence, etc. An artist once noted that diamonds are more valuable than coal, but tell that to someone shivering in a snowstorm — and his contemporary, another scientist, noted that the pearl is ‘but the disease of the oyster.’

We’ll never know what we don’t know. More deeply examining what we do think we know is just as important as exploring what we think of as ‘the unknown.’ And at no point in any of this investigative fooling around, should we assume we’ve gotten any wiser.