I know I was one of those people and I’m sorry if you were offended by my comments. I’ve worked hard on my writing over a decade, and I work hard on Medium.

I’m just feeling a little despondent because according to everything I’ve read, you can earn decent money here and it just isn’t happening for me. Of course something is better than nothing! I’m well aware that nobody owes me anything, but in my life Medium feels like the latest iteration of the promise of “work hard, use these rules, and you’ll succeed” which, for some reason, is not working for me.

I’m really sad about that. This feeling of failure in general, not Medium per se, is causing me a lot of existential sadness and doubt, actually; have I wasted the last ten years? Am I just not a very good writer? Have I taken a drastically wrong turn in life? That kind of thing. – and I think that I’m allowed to be sad.

Added to which, everything is rough right now and people’s tempers are shorter. It’s easier than ever to feel discouraged and sad. And the things that may have been causing stress or depression before all this have also not gone away and may have been amplified by it. So while I’m sorry for my negativity, I’m also asking for grace.