I thought this was supposed to happen to TikTok users, the instagrammers, the facebookers and even perhaps to the Linkedin influencers. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me! For God’s sake, I deleted my Facebook account, I don’t post on social media and I’m inactive on my Linkedin profile, for most of the time. So, for me to wake up at three am and walking to check my medium app was a wakeup call. I mean, it was not metaphorical but a literal wakeup call.
I was enjoying the attention I got with the green notifications icon. I enjoyed the fan’s clapping my responses, the comments on my posts and so forth. And I saw the numbers going up too. I had reached 10X the volume of the reads and views than ever before on my medium page. It made me happy. Everytime, I open the medium app on my phone and I see that green icon light up, there was a smile on my face. And then my stupid sanity kicks in and tells me what I’ve been worried about all along: I’m starting to get addicted to my medium app.
So, I made a resolve that I would delete the medium app from my phone and only use medium via the web. Its the same trick I use for all my other barely existent social media presence, so why exclude medium from the club? I painfully type the password when I check Linkedin, I refused to create an account for twitter and I shall do so the same for medium. I deleted the app, the moment I hit twenty five followers! That may not be a big count for those with thousands of followers, but these twenty five were earned the hard way: by reading posts, by commenting on the ones that I liked and by writing blogs. So, the journey to hundred seems like a long way to go, but I’m not gonna get there by constant opening of app, reading absent mindedly and then posting something. I will get there with due diligence and through mindful practice.
So, medium app, I bid good bye to you and while I could say it was fun it lasted, I would be lying. I’m much more happier now by switching to medium on the web and from my macbook. I will occasionally be tempted still, but atleast, my hands have to go through one more step of logging in and typing the website address before they get their dopamine hit.
