Choosing the Same Path but Changing Direction
Similar, but not the same.
I started blogging weekly at the start of 2012. This was my first New Year’s Action (rather than a resolution), and it got me writing more frequently.
I began to blog once a week, and Pathwalking was born. Now, 729 weeks later, I’m still creating content and sharing my evolving philosophy on life, conscious reality creation, mindfulness, and more.
In addition to Pathwalking weekly, I added many other daily posts. At one point, I was blogging 6 days a week. That, however, proved both unsustainable and detrimental to my fiction writing. So eventually this became 3 posts a week, and now you get Positivity on Mondays; art, writing, creativity, and ongoing process blogs on Tuesdays (on my author website); and Pathwalking every Wednesday.
I started blogging on my own websites. At the end of 2018, I discovered Medium. Medium was somewhere I could share my blogs and make money from them.
This struck me as having a ton of potential. Monetizing my blogs? Yes, please! For an annual membership fee, I could place my writing behind a paywall and earn money for my work.
Cool. Also, I discovered a handful of other outstanding writers blogging in a similar vein. This was really awesome.
Over the past 7 years, Medium has made a lot of changes to how they pay. This year, for the second year in a row, I am not making back my membership fee.
For that reason, this is the last post I am sharing to Medium.
Farewell, Medium
I did not reach this decision lightly. There are a host of factors that led me to this.
First, according to the stats for my presence on Medium, I have 1780+ followers and 465 email subscribers. Impressive, right? Yet, based on their metrics and how the algorithm determines pay for reading (and I can’t explain this anymore), I’m earning as little as $.49 a month and as much as just over $3 a month. Before 2024, I was earning about $10 a month or better.
I get a digest of Medium stories by authors I follow and others similar to me. While many are good, mine are at least equal (and, not to brag, sometimes better).
I’ve appreciated the extended audience Medium has built me, but since they clearly seldom read what I’m posting, my earnings have tanked.
What’s more, the time it takes to cross-post both to my own sites and Medium is no longer worth the effort. Yes, they do make this easy overall, but it’s still a step that, while once profitable, has become not worth it.
Hence, after 7 years, I’m bidding Medium adieu.
Choosing the same path but changing direction
That written, I’m continuing to write these blogs.
They’ll continue to populate my author website and my original blog website. I might create some better cross-sharing options so interlink them further.
I have been composing Pathwalking weekly for 14 years now. Positivity has been shared every week for 11.8 years. My ongoing creativity posts have been shared every Tuesday for just shy of 5 years now. That alone amounts to more than 1600 total articles written since 2012.
Writing these blogs helps improve and increase my focus. Changing direction has occurred before, like when I increased from 3 weekly blogs to 6, then back down to 3. Given that change is the one and only constant in the universe, this comes as no surprise.
Because I liked monetizing my blogs, I have an idea to work a new direction with that, too. No, I’m not moving over to Substack or looking for another option like Medium. I’m going to create some new nonfiction offers to expand how I share my philosophy.
I benefit from sharing my ideas on nontoxic positivity, conscious reality creation, mindfulness, and expanding self-awareness. Maybe I lack a fancy title, degree, or formal education in philosophy or psychology, but I’ve had life experiences that taught me things I can share to benefit others.
This has always been a two-way street.
Changing direction and honing focus
When I began blogging regularly, I didn’t just write about these ideas and then ignore them. Writing about them was recognition of their potential and possibilities. Then, sharing these ideas and notions with the world was me acknowledging them.
Applying them has changed my life. Sure, I still have bad days, fight depression from time to time, get angry, fight to keep hope, and face challenges both material and immaterial. But, overall, I’ve never been more whole and content than I’ve been these past 14 years.
The longing, the idea that the grass was always greener over there, the sense that something was missing, has faded. I have a greater sense of self, of balance, of where and what my center is. I’m calmer, slower to anger, more capable of handling change and an inconstant world.
Again, I still have bad days. I’m human, after all. But I seldom stay with that, and more frequently rebalance and recenter. This philosophy I’ve developed and continue to evolve and share has made me a better person. And I believe it can open new ways for other people, too.
Despite changing direction and leaving Medium behind, I’m honing my focus and continuing to walk this path. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to do this, and look forward to new potential and possibilities.
Thank you for reading and coming along on this wild journey with me. I thoroughly appreciate you and the time you take to walk these paths with me.
Have you ever stayed on a chosen path while changing direction?
This is the seventh-hundred-twenty-ninth (729) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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