What I Learned From Writing on Medium for Six Months

My goal was to keep up a weekly practice without churning out “content”

Manoush Zomorodi
4 min readMay 7, 2021

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Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Last November, I committed to publishing on Medium on a weekly basis for six months. Usually after completing a project, I charge onto the next thing, without pausing or looking back — a stupid, unproductive habit, because it means I rarely learn from my mistakes nor relish what I’ve accomplished. So, in an effort to break from my personal norm, I’ve evaluated what I learned from writing here every week. Well, nearly every week.

It turns out that my brain likes routine…but only up to a point.
From November up until today, I managed to keep up a weekly cadence of posts, except for three: One week in March, I simply couldn’t get my shit together. Between my job, another job, two kids, a new puppy, and Covid, my brain went on strike. Then, in April, the editor advising me, Stephanie Georgopulos, took the buyout, so I indulged my sadness and skipped two posts, back-to-back. Or, so I told myself at the time.

In retrospect, my fortnight hiatus also coincided with viral conversations about languishing and journalists burning out. Clearly, I hit a wall too. For a couple weeks there, I just had nothing much to say. And, while I appreciate the belief in writing as a…

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Manoush Zomorodi

Journalist, mom, Swiss-Persian New Yorker. Host of @NPR’s @TEDRadioHour + @ZigZagPod. Author of Bored+Brilliant. Media Entrepreneur-ish. ManoushZ.com/newsletter