Is Writing Your Job or a Lifestyle Aspiration?

Why I was Right to Give Up Making Lists

Andy Spears
2 min readJan 13, 2022
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

I’ve written on Medium off and on for a while now. The platform is great for helping you create readable, digestible content. It’s also a good place to get your work in front of an interested audience.

However, I didn’t take Medium seriously as a source of writing income until recently. Sure, I’d written for magazines and gotten the guaranteed check for $100 or $250. That is nice. Plus, there’s a built-in audience of readers who see your work. But those opportunities — to get published in a paying magazine — don’t come along often enough to make that work sustainable. Sure, this type of writing can be a part of a portfolio — but it’s difficult to make it on published magazine articles alone.

Now, I’m all-in on Medium. And I just read a great piece that talks about the importance of going all-in on your work.

What Would Happen if You Went All Out? | by Edina Abena Jackson | Jan, 2022 | Medium

This reminded me of something I wrote recently about how to make writing your job. The short answer: Make writing your job. Treat it like work. Because it is. Set aside time for it, make it happen, and give it 100% when it is time to write.

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Andy Spears

Writer and policy advocate living in Nashville, TN —Public Policy Ph.D. — writes on education policy, consumer affairs, and more . . .