How Did I Fail on Medium?

I don’t know how to get started. Try to understand me!

In Medium, I use a second language (English) and while writing from my country (Turkey). I did not have a very successful start. At the start, there were many obstacles to getting paid. I managed to overcome them. For example, the first, Turkey was not among the countries that pay Medium. For this I had to open a Stripe account. Fortunately, I was required to have a European or American bank account for the Stripe account. Somehow I took care of all of this. And finally I joined Medium’s list of paid authors.

Before I go into more detail, I want to tell some things. My name is Dervish, I am 23 years old. I haven’t finished college yet, because of Covid. Would you like to know what awaits me after graduating from the university where I studied with the opportunities provided by the state with a delay of one year? 27 thousand lira debt. This debt is left over from an aid that the government has given me and stated it will get back. If you knew it was in debt then why did you take it? You will say. Yes! I knew it was in debt, but if I didn’t get it I couldn’t go to university. And maybe you wouldn’t be able to read this article right now. Anyways! As a result, I accepted this loan and started college. I was disappointed when faced with the educational nonsense at school. Actually, I was very hopeful at first. I even had hope to change something. But every passing day carried me far from these hope. The training I received from biased and inadequate instructors put me in this position. I knew I had to do something. But I had no idea what to do. I did some research and decided to become a software developer. I was older, of course, but I still didn’t lose my motivation. You all know the Tolstoy’s bike story. That story was my motivation. After a while, I started to learn something, but still it wasn’t enough. It took a lot for me to be a software developer. As you can see, the idea of software development was wasted.

Naturally, all my lessons of failure caused me to hit rock bottom while I was dealing with the software. I failed only one course at the end of the term, but I passed all the courses with the lowest grade. So at the end of the semester, I had only a low average and a little bit of software knowledge that wouldn’t do me any good. I was psychologically broken. Now I fell into the pit called depression. My dream of Erasmus and high GPA at the end of the year was completely wasted. I didn’t know what to do. I had to find a new motivation and come back to life. For this, I waited for the new period to begin. And I was interested in my lessons in a more motivated way. I closed that period with a high grade point average. However, the restlessness in me did not end. Because that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write. I was depressed but still wanted to write. Naturally, I had to earn money. And I knew that If you are not recognized, it is almost impossible to make money by writing. But I wrote it anyway.

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There were a few articles that I did not share with anyone, but that I had my close friends read. One day, while I was talking with a friend, he said that you could share these articles on Medium and make money from there. As soon as I heard this information, I felt like I would go crazy with happiness. Finally I found a platform where my writing could be read and valued. And I became a member of this site without wasting any time. I overcame all the obstacles I mentioned at the beginning. Then other obstacles arose. For example, nobody reads short stories on this site. Only serious articles count. I thought and I could overcome this obstacle. Then what happened? Boom! Here is another hurdle. The language of this platform is English, so if I write articles in another language, it won’t be very read. OK! I accept that too. I will improve my English further and write my articles in English. Well, do you think the obstacles are over with this? No!

Before writing the article, I wanted to do some research and looked at what kind of articles were read. The result is deplorable and ridiculous. I cannot give you a source, but you can open and examine the medium. Let me now explain what the outcome is almost most articles are written about enterprise and personal growth. And the most read article type is how did I get 282828 readings in ‘medium? How did I get rich? How… ”such articles. In other words, most people only look at the financial side and do not care about the content they produce. And they know that most hope can be sold well. Everyone sells their hopes by making articles. Whichever article I click on is a success story, a story of wealth. Take: this is my failure story too.

Now I have 27 thousand lira debt and it is very difficult to find a job in my country. I went abroad only once in my life. The only foreign language I know is English and I know half of it. So why didn’t I improve myself? Actually I developed it, but under these circumstances this much happened.

Thank you for reading my failure story.

Derviş TEKDEMİR

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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