"I'll swallow a lie when I have to. I've swallowed a few big ones, lately, but the stat game? That lie? That's what ruined this department. Shining up shit and calling it gold so Majors become Colonels and Mayors become Governors, pretending to do police work while one fucking generation trains the next how not to do the job." - Cedric Daniels in "The Wire"While writing and blogging on Medium these past few months, a grownup and more professional version of Odyssey, I have learned that a large portion being a creator and member of the site and community are about selling yourself and marketing your brand more than it is sometimes about the actual act of reading other people's work and writing. There are three stats that go along with each article published on Medium: number of people that view the article, number of people that read the article, and the number of people that are fans of the article. For members of the Medium Partner Program, which pays writers through the feedback of readers focused on quality, these metrics (particularly fans) are the ones that determine how much a writer gets paid.

And that reality can sometimes lead me to be obsessed with stats and how well my articles are doing, and delete and re-post articles that don't do well, in different publications or just with the hope that they get curated when the curators read the articles. On Medium, the system of curation is one that is far more luck-based than quality-based. I have seen articles I know I was not nearly as devoted to get curated as some articles I previously published on Odyssey that I put my heart and soul into.

At first, I believed this trend was a reflection of the quality of the articles, and I was led to believe, even for a second, that the articles that weren't curated were just not well received or worse quality articles than the curated ones. That is completely not true. I know that isn't true, because of the impact the non-curated articles made on my friends when they saw them published on Odyssey or even myself in the process of writing.

Part of influencing that luck is getting my roommates and friends to clap and read my articles. "I'll give you a ride to the airport," I told a friend the other day. "But first you have to read and clap two of my articles." These propositions are made with enough charm and humor that my friends will shake their heads a little bit and then actually read and become fans of my articles, but, again, those efforts are largely driven by stats. Even Medium writers, like myself, follow other Medium writers and read and clap on their articles with the faint hope of some sort of transaction that you receive the same fandom and support

All this is, on some level, stats-driven. And the stats-driven approach to Medium is one I learned is not healthy and defeats the purpose of trying to write quality work that makes an impact on people.

I have written many articles on the right way to approach faith and Christianity, such as the headlines "Christianity Is About Love And Relationships, Not Rule-Following," or "Prayer Is About Relationships, Not Outcomes." Those mindsets have helped me grow and mature in my faith and prayer exponentially.

Medium stats are outcomes, and writing on Medium should not be about outcomes, but I'm reaching for straws here to find the ulterior motive behind why I and others write on Medium. I believe that I chase the stats and numbers because I lose sight of the larger scheme and purpose behind what I'm actually doing. The quote from "The Wire" attests to a trend where chasing stats and chasing numbers was what ruined the Baltimore Police Department and led officers to pursue quantity in street-level arrests and citations over quality, felony cases. And there has to be another option than chasing the stats so we can prioritize quality and meaning over quantity and the appearance of accomplishment.

Let me first preface that everyone will, at some level, be wary and conscious of their numbers. That is our natural inclination to want to know how many people we're reaching with our work and what quantitative impact we're having. Having a goal to not care about stats and quantitative success at all is unrealistic, because at the end of the day, almost everyone cares.

But there is something better and something more to writing and reading on the site that transcends the numbers. The other day, Cyndi Rooney, another Medium member, commented on a short story I wrote a couple years ago, titled "Step Nine", that touched on several topics close to home:

"Ryan, I got a lot from your story. Thank you for sharing your writing. It made me start thinking about some things…. and isn't that the point? We always hope our words will touch someone. Yours did."

It is on the articles that we comment on that absolutely blow us away in awe, that make us heavily reflect with new perspectives and maturity on every aspect of our lives. It is in feedback like Cyndi's that make me realize that my trudging away in my writing actually means something, actually touches people, and affirmed my choice to write in the first place. These articles on Medium impact our lives and our readers' lives. They have purpose. They have meaning.

And so I endeavor to continue on Medium find purpose and meaning. But what I also realize is I can't get by as well as I have without the community of writers, like me, who are mostly freelancers just trying to get by. When I first started writing for Odyssey and then writing for Medium, I thought of freelancing as mostly an individual effort where you build your own platform through writing. After all, the word's etymology comes from the words free and lance, which originally was a term that described mercenaries in medieval times. And so modern-day freelancers are often tempted to think of themselves as individual mercenaries, contractors who write for Medium like an individual Lyft or Uber driver is a contracted driver for either ride-sharing company.

But I realize that that hasn't been the case, to my surprise, for my own Medium experience. In fact, it's the opposite. I'm astounded by the Medium Facebook groups and people on the platform that seem to give so much more than they receive, of the writers I respect so much that have twice as many people they're following than followers of their own profiles. Because most people on Medium are writers themselves, the site is a judgment-free zone to so many nervous and aspiring writers to find their voice and confidence writing about whatever topic they want, and people support them with warmth and kindness. On the site, I have witnessed writers who weren't as confident of writers before become empowered in their confidence and writing voice, and that has been beautiful to see.

On platforms like Twitter and Instagram, people are often derided for having low follower-to-following ratios as indicative of low success, but on Medium, that is something that is not only acceptable, but celebrated.

A friend pointed out to me that I follow about 650 people on Medium but only have about 350 followers, and I took that as a huge compliment rather than the flaw he was trying to point out. It is a community of readers and writers that seems to give more than they receive, and for me, as a Christian, that validates my faith and my beliefs. And my faith tells me that because I have received the love of Jesus Christ, I have the capacity to give back abundantly, and I have seen the same mindset at work with so many other people on the platform. And that gets me thinking: isn't that the hallmark of any good service institution like a church, school, government, whether it can give back more than it receives?

So the stats and payment might follow this mindset and this epiphany, and they may not. But it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, Medium is about meaning, empowerment, and community, not stats.