How Accurate is This Criticism?
I need to know, for my own sanity. I’m physically sick to my stomach imagining that I’ve wasted anyone’s time.
Paul Reney, a venerable wordsmith on Medium here, said this:
About this:
If he’s right, then I’m a bit of a disgusting hypocrite, and I need to do a heartfelt retraction.
Maybe I’m making a big thing out of a small thing, but it’s, to me, a material thing.
I don’t, honestly, know how my words are viewed by people who read them. I get recommended, and I get comments, and people seem to like me. But I don’t know whether I’m that clever Bugs Bunny who you could take or leave, or I’m Calvin, Hobbes’ friend, whose words matter. This is relevant to me, because if I’m spewing self-indulgent murk, and jus’ injecting oog into the netherspheres, then I need to hang up right now and go back to navel-gazing.
This matters. It should matter to everyone who writes. It matters to me.
I’ve gotten a few accusations of unnecessary roughness/cussing here, and a few accusations of pompousness, but this is the first time it’s been hinted that I’m wasting anyone’s time.
If I’m wasting anyone’s time, then I’m falling down where I’m trying to dance, and I need to hide and learn for a while longer before I wreck your days any more than I have already.
So, please, friends and peers and much-beloved nemeses, tell me if I’m wasting your time. If, in any way, for even a moment or a day, I am, then I am not yet learned enough to take up airtime anywhere public.
EDIT!
A further development has caused this thing:
It’s a good development.
Thank you for being a good community, Medium.
Paul Reney is a good guy. Jus’ too Canadian for me to keep up sometimes.
