Yeah - I took it as a sign from the Medium gods. it was a music piece, about cover versions, which I wasn't entirely convinced about, and had got fed up of similar stuff getting 5 reads. I think the cosmos was trying to tell me 'Just give up writing this quirky, quizzical crap about 80s music, matthew - no one's interested'.

Message received and understood.

That's one genre less to get frustrated about, huh?

I'm pretty much focusing on my quirks of language and translation/Spanish culture and environment pieces these days. Firstly because Curation seems to have decided that I get an 'expert' badge and gold star (gee, thanks!) in that category, so am eligible for boosting out of the 5-read gutter. But also to build up a body of more or less consistent articles in terms of subject matter that I can then turn into a Substack pub, with enough material to publish one a week for a year or so and see how that goes.

The thing I find most frustrating here (at the head of a very long list...) is the lack of readership recurrence. People read and enjoy my stuff (at least if boosted), but then I never see them again, because of how the algo fails to deliver.

I'd rather have 50 fairly regular readers who leave comments and engage in discussions, for $0 a month, than 200 passers-by whom I never hear from again, but generate a little income.

I think.

And maybe Substack would deliver that, without huge effort on my part. Or maybe not. But if I have a bunch of stuff that hangs together, I can at least give it a go for very little time investment.

That's the theory for 2025...

Nadolig Llawen to you and your wife in case our paths don't cross again before the festivities kick off in earnest, Zivah.

I'm now entering head-down pre-Christmas rush translating all the year-end reports that people only just got finished last week but absolutely need by the 31st. So they can then ignore them until mid-January when their offices emerge from semi-hibernation