B. My writing is good enough to sometimes make the front page of HN. It still doesn't pay, not because I'm doing anything wrong, but because the world expects content for free.
Most YouTube channels, etc, also don't really support their creators. Plus you are de facto asking me to abandon something I've spent years getting good at in order to start over from scratch with something else. The subtext there is "Of course writing doesn't pay! It never will! Just quit!"
This piece (below) by me made the front page, got substantial upvotes and generated substantial conversation. It made not one thin dime.
https://raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-hand-li...
I've been on HN a decade. I've read and participated in numerous discussions pertinent to this problem space. A tldr is people don't approve of any means whatsoever to pay content creators.
Ads are evil.
Tip jars are "panhandling the internet."
Patreon is seen as "begging for charity" rather than a legitimate means to monetize your work in a world where people aggressively use ad blockers and bitch and moan about the evils of ads.
Selling something else as a product and writing related content -- aka content marketing -- is another form of evil ruining the internet.
Doing low-paid writing, such as product descriptions and content marketing pieces for hire, makes me part of the problem that is ruining the internet.
People on HN actively look for and promote means to get around pay walls.
There is zero means to monetize online content that doesn't get decried as evil, evil and more evil. Reflecting that back as "So, basically, you think writing should be done by slave labor" offends the high paid, high minded types that find it an affront that writers want a middle class life.
Meanwhile, they also bitch and moan about there not being enough good writing and utterly dismiss the idea that making it impossible to get adequately paid for writing has any bearing on how journalism etc is going to hell.
I'm exhausted and tired of saying the same things over and over and hearing the same tired argument that I'm just doing it wrong, I'm just too stupid to figure out the right way and some random internet stranger can fix my life with a paragraph or two of advice if I will just dutifully listen.
I already said I don't really want to rehash this. I still don't really want to rehash this. It's amazingly aggravating and pointless.
My oldest son has the same diagnosis. We are supposed to be on thousands of dollars a month worth of drugs. We are both drug free our "diet and lifestyle" based approach to managing our condition is saving an estimated $200k to $500k annually.
Working from home so I have control over my environment has been a big part of that. No job in the world pays enough to make it worthwhile to go back on the eight or nine prescription drugs I've gotten off of.
I do work very part-time as the webmaster for a local non-profit. I am trying to figure out how to get more clients doing website work.
It still would not likely be big bucks.
I would be amenable to accepting the right job. I can't accept just any job. It doesn't make sense for me.
I think I have knowledge and skills worth money. I'm quite confident if I were a man this would not be such an intractable problem.
I don't plan to discuss my personal situation further. I know people mean well, but it's extremely unhelpful and dismissive to get these kind of one-off suggestions from strangers who don't really know enough about my life to make useful suggestions.
I made a general comment. Someone replied to that and asked a few questions. I responded with a good faith reply. As is often the case, the result is a bunch of people wanting to talk about me and my personal problems and not actually take my framing of the situation seriously.
To reiterate my main point:
I actually got myself off the street on my own efforts, so I think I know some useful stuff. My comments on HN about homelessness are consistently some of my most upvotes comments.
So people seem to think I make sense.
But most of them don't want to help me do more in this problem space.
So if the world is going to hell in a hand basket, maybe that's because the world thinks that's a cool destination and visiting it to watch the poor people roast is good entertainment. Or at least something more desirable than admitting that maybe a woman knows something actually useful and should grt genuine support for further her work.
I think I'm done here. This conversation is the usual maddening pattern. And after multiple people have basically politely pissed all over me with seeming good intentions, if I get aggravated and lose my cool, that becomes another reason to blame me for my problems and say I deserve to be dirt poor, I deserve to be ostracized, etc.
I seriously doubt most people here could do half as well socially under the same circumstances.