As empowering as it can feel to have my website, in practice running it has often been a time-consuming distraction from the fundamental task of writing content. All that tinkering with themes and plugins, managing comments, filtering spam, widgets, optimising for mobile… sheesh. My first blog was a self-hosted Wordpress one so, believe me, I know.

This site is currently on Tumblr. I originally chose that because it didn’t cost anything and it freed me up from the hassle of managing the hosting side of things. Piss poor reasons for anyone wanting to take their blogging seriously perhaps, but it’s served its purpose so far.

Of course, I knew even when I chose Tumblr that it wasn’t the ideal place for the sort content I want to produce. As fun as short, snappy memes and animated gifs can be, it’s not what I’m about here.

So, this brings me to Medium. It’s inherently appealing, being all about the writing, and it also strips away even more of those icky blogging responsibilities.

But is it really the next step in the journey? And should I take the leap?

A quick search reveals that a lot of people are doing just that; established sites, blogs that have been around for years, writers and journalists. In fact, I’m surprised by how many well known figures are actually using it, and using it well.

In my last post I talked about whether I should be clinging to an old school perspective on publishing. Similarly, I now wonder whether the idea of an independent presence on the web, that needs exhausting amounts of attention and promotion lavished on it if it is to get any love at all, is also an old fashioned notion.