Well, Quora certainly doesn’t seem what it was. I know lots of people bemoaning what’s happening to it.

I’m lucky to get more than a few dozen reads on any of my stories here.

The numbers are just tiny, and they’re getting smaller rather than larger as some of the people who followed me over from Quora lose interest.

I don’t know what to do other than persevere, but it’s not pretty.

I made the mistake of looking at my stats again earlier today.

When I see a story I spent hours on get a measly 40 reads in three days, it’s pretty hard to stay motivated.

I’d get that many reads in 5 minutes on Quora. If I didn’t get at least a thousand in 24 hours, I’d scratch my head and try to figure out what I’d done wrong. If I didn’t get two or three stories a week over 10,000 reads, I’d work hard to improve.

I haven’t had a story here with 1,000 reads since my introduction.

It’s a rough crowd.

I think based on what Eric Griggs is showing me that the readers here want flash and pop culture.

That’s not something I’ll ever be able to give them. It’s not something I want to give them. That kind of fluff bores me out of my skull.

At least on Quora, there seems to be an audience that doesn’t care about graphic images and references to celebrities I know nothing about, who will read just for the sake of reading good writing.

That said, who knows what’s going to happen now that Quora is working so hard to monetize.

It’s encouraging that they finally awarded top writer to Michael Masiello, who has deserved it forever. And to Jordan Yates.

I don’t know, but I hope that the plume going to the professor, an unapologetic classicist, means they’re still holding out for quality over flash.

I do know that I feel very bitter.

I worked my ass off for those bastards, spending hours most days writing the technical stuff on HIV that I knew they valued and wanted.

And for what?

A kick in the ass and a ban without so much as a thanks or a simple word of explanation.

And now here I am on Medium, and despite running into really cool people like Darren Stehle, I’m getting nowhere. My stats are dismal. Almost nobody is reading.

Pardon my rant, but I’m pretty damn discouraged.

Thank goodness for friends like Fred Shirley, Emily Fisher, you, and Eric who encourage me and keep me going.

It’s damn hard, though.

Damn hard.