Ok, it’s Confession Time
I have to admit something; I feel afraid to write and publish on Medium as often as I want to. I have a ton of topics written down in my Evernote, but I look at them and can’t find anything I want to write. I get stuck as soon as I look at them, trying to decide what to write about this time. I continuously tell myself that I am going to write on here more often. However, I also have to pay the bills, and I do like to eat when I get hungry.
You Have to do What you Have to do
So, guess what I have to do right now? I have to write boring, SEO articles and there are a lot of them that I need to do to pay bills and his fines. What is worst, the pay! It is low, but I can’t find anything else right now, and this company does pay on time every week. I get ripped off by private clients most of the time anymore, and I am sick and tired of having to apply to job after job only to be turned down by most of them.
The articles I have to write for the site are all SEO, mind-numbing, and on boring topics. I don’t want to do this, but I have no choice. My husband’s fines need to be paid this month, and he has two different ones with two different courts. So, I am trying hard to write these soul-sucking articles every single day, at least 10 per day. Don’t get me wrong; they are mostly straightforward. Especially the topics that I have already written before. However, since I am not able to choose my topics on this site that is low-pay and boring, I have to click on the get more work button. Once you click on the Request Work, button, you don’t know what topic you are going to get.
Take last night, for example; I got my fourth or fifth one done and submitted it, clicked on the request more work button, and got a topic I knew nothing about. What was worse than that was the fact that it didn’t interest me at all. But, once you click that request more work button, you can’t decline topics, you have to write it. So, I put my headphones and concentration music on and started researching the topic and got it done within a half hour. I was surprised at myself, but when you have to do what you have to do to survive, it gets done.
I should be working on them right now, but I needed to get this off my mind and write about who I really am in this life. Everything I have been reading on here says if you want people to read your work, you need to be yourself and show them who you are. That is hard to do, but here goes nothing:
Doubting Myself
My name is Clarissa Wilson, and I suffer from what everyone calls Imposter Syndrome.
Although I have been writing online for 12 years, and I know what I am doing, I know how to write, and hopefully, people think it is good, I still have a LOT of doubts about my writing abilities just like everyone else does. I feel like I am a fraud and that I am just winging it on here. Just pretending to know what I am doing. Then, I need to remind myself that I was a top write for both Yahoo and Examiner when I first started writing. Back in my early days as a writer, I made it into the Top 1,000 Contributors for four years in a row with Yahoo. Before they stopped taking submissions from us for The Yahoo Contributor Network, as they called it, I also made it into the Hot 500 Contributors for the last few months before I had to stop writing there. I felt great about myself back then but now, and even though I have all of this experience, I still feel like I am just pretending to know what I am doing. And, it feels like I am barely making it anymore.
I also have to remind myself that Examiner named me as one of the top writers for at least half of the categories I was writing. For a while, every time I logged in to write something new, I would see my name and profile picture in the number one spot for Technology, Pets, Mental Health, and Entertainment. I wrote in nine different categories. I loved writing for them. I was so sad to see them close down after being a writer for them for about four or five years.
Since then, I have written for many websites, including and mostly, news sites. I also branched out and found private clients. At first, it was good to have private clients and the first ones paid well enough, but these days I can’t find one good one anymore. I can’t find one that will pay me what I want as opposed to those who want to pay peanuts but still want you to do everything for them. I can’t find one that doesn’t want to rip you off and try to destroy the online reputation you worked so hard for over the years.
A 12-Year Online Reputation Almost Down the Drain
The last private client was a real winner for sure, yeah right! Not only did he pretend to be someone he wasn’t, but he ended up hacking into my business bank account, racking up a substantial negative balance of $-42,000. So, that account had to be frozen and closed down for good. I was told by the bank that I would need to open a new one. So, I did. And that one got ruined too because, since the fact that I trusted this so-called client, I accepted a check from him to mobile deposit into my new bank account. Well, that check came back as a fake about five to 10 business days later. They charged me a return check fee and closed that account too, and now they say I can never have another account with them again. Not only did he ruin my two bank accounts, but he also hacked into my LinkedIn account, which took me 12 years to build to an All-Star profile, and posted something he shouldn’t have under my name. I tried to log in the other day and noticed something come up on the screen asking me to verify my identity. I did that, but they emailed me about a half hour later and said that although the verification went through, my post was a violation of their terms of services and I was pretending to be someone else. So I wouldn’t be allowed back on the site. I explained to them what this client did to me, but they didn’t believe me and closed my account and banned me for good.
I am so angry about this!
I don’t know why people do things to other people to hurt them. It makes no sense to me! Why? What do they get out of doing something like this? Does it make them feel like a bigger or better person for trying to ruin someone’s life and reputation? It just doesn’t make any sense to me why this would happen!
A Word of Warning
So, please be careful as to who you trust online.
Because of what I have been through, I don’t trust anyone online anymore. That is except for Medium and the other two websites I am writing for now. If I do ever find another private client, which I am not actively seeking them anymore, they better have half the payment upfront or no deal between us. It wouldn’t even matter if there was a contract because I had an agreement with the last one and it was a fake. I will never go through this again as long as I am writing online!
The bottom line is, if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. If the client does provide a contract, have it looked over by a professional, such as an attorney. It is better to be safe than sorry! Watch your back and your reputation and don’t trust just anyone online anymore.
