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Nothing Funny About It

Updated on August 2, 2012

...alone on a hill...

Return To Writing

It has been quite a while since I've actually written anything for HubPages.

I was demotivated by the lack of income ability I was seeing since I really wanted to write and earn money with the system. Nothing I did made a difference. I signed up for ALL the income systems through HP, but haven't even see a penny. (How is that possible?)

I know it's not HP's fault. It seems that no matter what I do, I can't get any of my endeavors to pay off. I apparently am a magnet for failure.

I can't even get results from social marketing because, even though I have a few hundred "friends", I don't have more than a couple friends that actually read my posts.

I have been told that only having around 300 "friends" is nowhere near enough to successfully market anything.

It makes me wonder, if my "friends" are reposting my initial posts and asking their friends to repost my posts, then why do I not have some kind of results?

The number of people from Facebook and Twitter that actually come to read my Hubs is about seven per article. That's less than a quarter of one percent of my "friends" from both sites. I know that they are not retweeting or reposting because I scan my timelines thoroughly.

It's a painful thing to work so hard at something and be the only one who cares about it.

But, then again, maybe the stuff I do is just so bad that my "friends" don't want to read it. I know this happened with (apparently several) other things I've done: boat washing, lawn mowing, real estate, comic book production....

And you know what makes me SO angry about this? NO ONE TELLS ME! They just say, "Good job" and then never called again. I have had to find out through acquaintances and work mates how bad my employers thought the work was.

Maybe they thought they were sparing my feelings. Maybe they thought I'd get angry with them for criticizing me about my work. I don't know. What I do know is that I stunk at what I was doing and no one would tell me. It has often cost me a lot of money (and, later, confidence in my ability since, by not telling me about my shortcomings, they kept me from improving my skills so I could get good at what I was doing.)

I remember my first comic book. It was so BAD, I can't believe it was printed. Yet, when asking friends and family for opinions, I got a LOT of "yes" men saying how good the art was. The cover was great, but 90% of the inside was total crap!

That alone cost me $1,200 in 1987 dollars. I was unemployed and borrowed the money because I thought I had a chance to be a cartoonist. (Maybe now my skills are good enough, but I don't see any feasible way to get it published and sold.)

I'm a bit depressed at the moment, and maybe that's why I'm ranting. But I need to do this so I can get back to what I'm good at (or, at least, think I'm good at); writing (especially humor).

So, if my writing is crap PLEASE TELL ME! If you enjoy it, please tell me and maybe provide constructive criticism on things which need improvement. I cannot improve or be motivated to write if I get no honest feedback.

Thank you all for reading. To those who, in the past, have commented and critiqued, thank you for that too, and I wish you all the best!

Two nuns walk into a bar, which is really stupid because the second one should have seen it coming!

working

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