If you’re reading this, then you’re probably one of my followers. If so, thank you for getting me to the first Medium milestone! Medium accepted me into the partner program this morning!

If you aren’t one of my followers yet, there’s still time to be amongst my first one billion followers.

Shout out to my two kinda-sorta Medium editors: Michael Snellen and Indigo.

Michael Snellen was kind enough to invite me into the fledgling Catholic Medium community as soon as I posted my first article. Go follow him and his publication, Catholicism for the Modern World!

Indigo is single-handedly managing a 300+ member read-for-read community. Who knows how she does it, but she’s doing a great job building a community from nothing! Go follow her to see the Read-For-Read Lists, or ask her about joining!

Medium/blog writing is way different from academic writing.

Blog writing is fun, and efficient. Academic writing is neither.

I suspect my blog writing will accomplish my academic goal better than my academic writing.

What’s my academic goal? Have good ideas and spread them everywhere.

Why? Because I have a duty to share whatever talents I have.

I have an unusual talent (that is, thinkin’ good), so my method of sharing The Good News is just as unusual. Look, I’m not a missionary. I’m one of the most introverted people you’ll ever meet. I can manage about 3 hours of existing at a non-dancing social event before I feel physically unwell.*

I can’t evangelize like most people do, because I don’t like being around most people. But I do care, and I have my testimony, and I have a unique way of writing about about The One, True, and Beautiful, the ever-present God.

So, I must write, and I must share. There’s an abundance of Truth ready to harvest, but only a few care to glean it. (Matt 9:37–38) Given the scarcity of workers, I have no right to hide my skills. (The Parable of the Lamp comes to mind here: Matt 5:14–16, Mark 4:21–25, Luke 8:16–18, Luke 11:33–34)

My work is already gaining reach on Medium, and I’m thrilled. The chump change I’ll make as a new Medium partner will be the most tangible reward from my writing in years.

The last piece of recognition I received for my writing was some goofy-ahh “certificate of publication” from Elsevier when my last article got published in 2018.

It’s a participation trophy for PhDs. I’m not joking. Just look at it.

Pocket change is still real money, and I’m glad my work will be rewarded with something real. I have done so much writing for free. Now begins a new era.

Compare my blogging prospects with academic publishing. According to the journal editors in my department, the average article in an academic journal gets 3 views.

3 views EVER.

Science and medical journals often publish aggregate metrics, but the journals in my fields (bioethics/theology/philosophy) usually do not. Because all our metrics would look terrible.

The same presses who publish journals also publish academic books. They keep tight-lipped about book sales (again because the metrics would look terrible).

From my research, the average academic book will get a single publishing run of about 300 copies then go out of print. Most of the sales come from university libraries who auto-buy the press’ whole catalogue, so there’s no guarantee those purchases equal reads.

These statistics don’t include textbooks, because I’m in the humanities and we don’t have textbooks. Our primary texts are a thousand years old.

Anyway, my 3 blog posts on Medium have already blown past the academic averages. Yet, I joined this website a month ago with 0 followers just like everyone else.

If scholarship exists to improve the world, then its ideas must reach beyond academia. I’m not sacrificing years to produce a book that will collect dust in library storerooms for the next century.

My advisor’s goal for his entire career is to change the minds of 10 students. His life will be complete if only 10 people act on his ideas.

Here’s a guy who’s taught 4 classes a semester for 20 years already. He’s a priest turned emergency room doctor turned philosopher. There are as many letters behind his name as there are letters in his name.

4 different departments accept credits from his classes. (If that doesn’t make your jaw drop, then you haven’t dealt with the accreditation bureaucracy). I think he’s had tenure for as long as I’ve been alive.

All those achievements and he isn’t confident he’ll affect 10 people. I know he isn’t confident because he keeps accepting contracts with terrible conditions.

4/4 teaching course loads, chairing a department that offers minor, major, Masters, and PhD programs, organizing a yearly conference with 150 speakers, editing journals, advising a dozen dissertations at the same time. He does more than an adjunct, and without an appropriate salary, because...

he hasn’t reached 10 students?!

I remember when my advisor told me about his ultimate scholarly goal. He had just finished the day’s lecture, and I sat in since I was his teaching assistant. It was a rainy, overcast day in the Midwest autumn and he had taken me to a sub shop for lunch. As we were walking through the parking lot back to his car, he told me:

I was a deferential first-year PhD student, and my advisor had just bought me food, so I didn’t want to discourage him.

I’m from the Deep South, and I still believe in Southern hospitality. Better to be quiet-but-cordial than chatty-but-disagreeable. Still, I remember thinking to myself:

“Friend, that goal isn’t worth the lifetime of toil you’ve already put yourself through.”

Maybe I’m an elitist, but if I’m going to spend my lifetime perfecting my knowledge, my writing skills, and my teaching skills, then I damn sure better influence more than 10 people.

Honestly, I should’ve already impacted over 10 people by now. 31 years is long enough to kick-start some big movement, or create a community, or start a family.

I could’ve gotten married out of high school and had 10 children by now. I wouldn’t be a sophisticated intellectual, sure, but my ideas would have a tremendous effect on my wife and those 10 children. Boom, that’s reaching 11 people right there, no advanced degree necessary.

If academia is an obstacle towards spreading the Truth, then academia has to go. Or I have to get outta academia. Its attitude contradicts the nature of the Truth we’re supposed to be studying.

Truth does not hide itself. That’s one of the first things the Early Church realized, through their fights with the Gnostics who claimed to have secret books with the “real truth” hidden in them.

But only the rich and educated were worthy of learning the secret truth.

(And only the men. The Gnostics were misogynistic to the core. If you want me to explain why, ask me. That’s a whole 'nother article.)

My Orthodox Catholic tradition proclaims we don’t need to join an elite in-group to know the Truth, whether that group calls itself a Mystery Cult or a Philosophy Department.

The Truth is free, and abundant. The problem is there aren’t enough people who care enough to act on it. (Again, Matt 9:37–38).

I've learned the academic game. I feel like I've reached the point where academia has nothing valuable left to give me.

It spent decades teaching me how to get at the truth of things, and I'll have that mark on my soul forever. I'm grateful for it. I wouldn't be able to do what I'm about to do without all the academic training.

But now I feel I've reached a crossroad: if I stay on the standard academic path, my talents will stay hidden for life.

I’ve already seen scholars spend a lifetime pushing rocks up the hill to the ivory tower. And the ones at the end have little to show for it.

My advisors won't approve. My colleagues won't understand.

My H-factor will approach zero. Search committees for tenure-track jobs across the country will be aghast when they discover I have a public blog for a popular audience and drop the occasional curse word in discourse. "It's all very unprofessional, you know."

And yet, as I type that out and imagine those possibilities... I find myself not caring. I respect my advisors, I'll remain cordial with my colleagues, I'll always entertain a fellow scholar.

But I can't make decisions about my life based on what others value.

So I gotta do my own thing now that I'm a Joint Doctor. Welcome to my bizarre adventure.

Thanks for the hundo subs.

☦️❤️🐍

A few snippets of my research on academic book publishing:

This chart

This op-ed

This investigative report