Member-only story
Why I finally bought a Medium membership
Five dollars is a cheap price for engaging my mind
When I first started writing on Medium, I made myself a deal. When I was earning enough from my own writing to afford a membership, I’d get one.
I haven’t hit that milestone and yet here I am, in possession of a membership and slowly working my way through all the articles I’d saved and been unable to read on my free account. It has been decidedly wonderful.
But why did I buy the membership before hitting my goal? Firstly, and most simply — I wanted it. I get a lot of pleasure, and also a great deal of inspiration, out of reading a range of articles. I like going down rabbit holes of content, finding out new information and discovering opinions that align or conflict with my own.
Recently I’ve been feeling stagnant and weirdly longing to be back at university. It is a distinctly strange desire, since I hated university, but I pinpointed that what I was really in need of was intellectual stimulation. While my day job is challenging, those challenges are logistical mostly — problem solving rather than learning. I don’t tend to have the gumption to read non-fiction books for the most part. So being able to scratch the itch a little bit here on Medium, but nowhere near enough (as evidenced by the ever growing saved…
