(This article was posted first on Medium!)
© 2024 by Andy Anders Sporring — Part of the score for my Kyrie
July 2020
It seems like ages ago now, but it hasn’t been since I published my first article on Medium. What started as an experiment for me ultimately became a University on how to write.
I’m leaving this body of work as a testament to what a person can make with intelligence, grit, and tenacity. Even I’m impressed with what I have done, during the time July 2020 to December 2023 I published +396 articles! But not only that;
- There are more than 500 essays and poems on Typeshare. Participating in Ship30for30 was pivotal for my understanding of writing and making it understandable for me and maybe inspirational for others.
- Atomicasts is my version of short-form Podcasts. I think there are about 50 episodes there.
- X-space (Twitterspace) hosting and cohosting have also been special guests on five of those.
- Newsletters: I still have two of them. One is resting, and the other is planned to be about my music later on.
- Mentor in Ship30for30, it has been my absolute pleasure to help others get started.
- I have had about 100 one-on-one meetings on Zoom and Google Meet during those years. Plus, there are so many other meetings.
- I’ve been hired as a ghostwriter and copywriter by a couple of companies, and even if it was fun, it almost took away my joy of writing. (It was a means to an end, as it seems to me now!)
- I have three books that I have started but have not yet finished. One is on its way to being finalized, and that's the book about how I cured my mental help by starting to write.
- I have been interviewed three times on podcasts. There’s something unique about being in focus with your voice, and it has also been a joy and pleasure to do it. I’m open to doing other interviews if someone is interested!
- For a short while, I was also a top writer in productivity here on Medium.
I have written nearly four million words over the past three years. How do I know this? Well, Grammarly is keeping track of that for me! Let's say an adult novel, on average, has between 71,000 and 120,000 words in it, making 100,000 an easy number to use. Well, in that case, I’ve written about forty books during those years!
I’m Saying Goodbye To Medium
It’s not you, Medium; it’s me. I have to let go and go on with what I'm destined to do. And that's what I’m focusing on now: Composing music!
But that’s not the only truth; I’m also letting go due to my health issues. I can’t sit by the computer for hours anymore; my Parkinson's is progressing, and I get incredibly stiff sitting. So I use the two to maximum three hours a day to composing and hanging out with my creative friends in CreativeWorkHour.
Another reason is the monetary model Medium is using now, where you HAVE to have a subscription to read articles here, and the only way to earn revenue is from the readers within Medium. I’m grateful for the earnings I made, which have helped me a lot. I have nothing to say to the owners of Medium other than that you were wrong in setting up this business model.
But I’m not saying goodbye to Notetaking and Journaling. I will still use and develop those skills, but more for myself than for others.
My Health And My Responsibilities
As you know, if you have been reading my articles, you all know that I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2017, I had DBS Surgery in April 2019, and a revision of that was done in October 2023 of that surgery.
There’s no cure for Parkinson’s, nor is there medication that slows the progress down. There is, however, something that you, and only you, can do, and that is to keep yourself active physically and mentally. I have been good at both, but my physical activity went drastically down last year due to intense muscle pains. And that wasn’t good for my body.
Finding balance in life isn’t easy for anyone, but when you have a chronic sickness like Parkinson’s, it’s even harder. So I need to focus on getting my life back in balance regarding my health first, and then my relationships. because my creativity lives; it's (almost) my own life and works anyway.
My first responsibility is to myself, without that nothing else matters.
Compositions, And My Future Endeavors.
My heart and soul have always been with music since I was 16 years old. For almost 40 years, I played my violin and Viola in various ensembles. I started in Swedish folkmusic, where I became relatively well-known; I played at more than 100 weddings during the years, and I took pride in composing a new tune for each and every one!
I composed more than 300 folk tunes, but most are sadly lost. As a classical Viola and Violinist, I played both first and second chair in violins and was a concertmaster as a Violist many times. I haven’t been able to play my instruments since 2008, when my shaking became too severe to be able to play.
2008 was a sad year, first my computers hard-drive crashed, and I lost all music composed the past 6 years. Among them, a Piano concertino, my first full-length symphony, a couple of stringquartets, and much more. So, losing the ability to play my instruments made me lose music! In 2014, I also became mentally ill, diagnosed with severe panic anxiety and agoraphobia, and I became more or less isolated. Being a very social person to have that was like being punished.
I started to lose my cognitivity, my brain started to fail me in so many ways, and some of my friends I used to talk to on the phone alienated me.
In 2020, my daughter listened to a podcast where a psychologist was a guest. He talked about the dangers of being alone, and when she heard that, she could recognize her father, me, in that description. Long story short, she and her partner started renovating a yard house for me.
That generous act of kindness, plus my deciding to cure myself by starting to write, made a difference, and my journey back to mental health began. Those two steps were pivotal for my healing, and the decision to write a book on that (in Swedish) became something I have set to finish next year by the latest.
Today I have sixteen of my latest compositions on Spotify, but I have composed almost twenty-five the past year. The need to compose has been building up during my fifteen years, and I have so much music in me that needs to come out.
Bidding Farewell For Now, As A Writer In This Forum!
Bidding farewell is mostly hard, but this farewell wasn’t hard for me to say. It wasn’t hard to make the decision either; I was ready for it.
I will not stop writing, but right now, I haven’t got time for it. If I start publishing again, I will do it on Hive, WEB3. And here’s the address to that place:
And if you want to listen to some of my music, you can find it on any streaming platform, but even so, Here’s the link to my site on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1b2j1sEOoj3VGq1Y0GU0AE?si=mtDRgjoPQhag3wWblmxO4g
And on YouTube Music
The Global Discussion Podcast Interview with me from a year ago:
Other links:
My Typeshare account has about 550 essays and poems.
The Atomicast: From My Brain To Yours
Newsletters, Taking Notes By Andy Sporring and The Shorter Note
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/anderssporring
Final words
My writing journey started with me wanting to get my own voice back. Did I get that back? Yes, of course, and so much more. I made a lot of new friends around the World, found myself again, and found love again.
But most importantly, I got back to music again!
To all of you, my readers here and in other places:
A big heartfelt thank you for sharing this part of my creators journey with me, you’re all special to me. Maybe you will follow me in the next step of my journey, who knows what and where it will lead me, and you!
To you that’s suffering from mental illness, I hear you, and I tell you that one way to get out from under that burden is to start writing. It clears and clarifies your mind. I can’t guarantee it will heal you, but it will help you, and I can promise you. And your don’t have to start publishing, my writing started in a Google document, I wrote some +56k words before publishing anything online. Make it a habit to sit one to two hours a day just scribbling down; it doesn’t have to make sense. Just write! And if you think you have nothing to say, write that repeatedly. You will see something is going to start pouring out!
Andy Anders Sporring Over And Out!!
© 2024 Photo by Miriam Sporring