Poetic Confessions #4: Best Left to Journals

At one point in my high school/early college writing, I decided that flowery language was out and simple words and phrases were in. Instead of writing a ghastly sonnet with every word to describe love without using the word love, I decided to just say what was on my mind. That's how "Ooh You" came along.

I am now very aware that simple language, unless the message is entirely new, does not always work well. That, and naming the poem after a song (sans the 'h' on Ooh) just makes the whole effort seem sloppy, now that I look back. But it is one of the unfortunate failures that will live on, since I sold full rights to Associated Content (now YCN). I hope they enjoy the $0.10 a year they make with advertising on it. I know I enjoy the $0.01 per year I make.

Pulling Strands from a Cloud

I feel behind this week on just about everything. And it's only Monday! I'm sure I'll get everything done on time, but I can't help the feeling that my head is stuck in a cloud right now. I have plenty of ideas to start writing, however, the laborious trip from the brain to the paper (or Word document) is continuing to frustrate me. A boulder on the trail--the writer's block is further down the road, I guess.

Of course my cloud imagery goes perfectly with my newest published article, although these two clouds are totally different subjects. I'm starting to post more on the Yahoo Contributor Network, though it isn't as easy as Triond was. But it pays a little more, so I guess the two week waiting period between submission and publication is worth it. 

New Articles:
Five Cloud Computing Trends in 2013

Mounting Online Frustrations

Friday I found out that Yahoo Contributor Network (YCN -- formerly Associated Content) risked my entire online security. All of this happened because they kept old Associated Content files that ended up getting hacked. First of all, if these files were old, maybe you should get rid of them? At first, everyone was told that most of the account information was for old accounts no longer active. Then, late Friday night I get the message that I was personally affected by this issue. Yeah, like I didn't already know. All Friday I had to deal with changing passwords on email and social media accounts not because I'm paranoid, but because I had a ton of failed login attempts and was required to change them. It was frustrating, but YCN isn't all to blame. I mean, if all of the login attempts FAILED, obviously the hackers did not have the right password. Why shouldn't I get a choice to change it instead of being forced to?

Well, that was my venting for the week. I used it all up on a Monday morning. Now I need to focus on more of the positive aspects of life... if there are any. I've been told they exist. 

Motivated on Monday

I didn't wake up with the alarm clock... but it was close today. As soon I as I put on the tea kettle to boil for my morning coffee (I'm from a 1940's noir--I drink instant) I got right to work. 150-word article out of the way before the kettle started screaming. I lined up a couple more similar articles for later in the day. While this won't make a huge dent in anything, I do feel like I'm finally back to work full swing.

I'm still looking for a job outside the home because things are getting a little desperate in the money category. My bank had the nerve to charge me a $5 service charge because I didn't have enough transactions. When you don't have a lot of money, there probably won't be enough transactions!

I also wrote two poems last week that I wanted to debut today, but since I sent them to the Yahoo Contributor Network, I guess I have to wait until both are approved. And of course I also have a complaint about YCN... I guess I didn't log in for 90 days, which is strange because Yahoo keeps me logged in automatically. But, I'll take their word for it that I didn't visit the page for that long. Anyway, they have cut of my performance views to count for the overall performance payments. From what I understand, these should have resume as soon as I started visiting the site again, but I don't think they have. I have zeros across the board and it upsets me because I would have never promoted the articles last week if I knew I wasn't going to get paid for them. But I have my queries into the forum, so we will see what I can find out about that.

What free time I do have left in the day I spend on promotion. Most of what I do is drops on Entrecard (which is also on my list--they tell me my book review blog doesn't have a widget--and it's right there for all to see) and I'm back to the traffic exchange game. I never realized before how truly sad traffic exchanges are. 99% of the pages I view are people advertising other traffic exchanges, MLM schemes or other get-rich-quick junk. I like to think I class up the joint a bit by promoting my blogs. I would love to promote my articles directly, but that's against every terms of service at every article website, so I have to hope that people will engage my blog after they see it. It's usually a statistic of one in a million, but it's still relatively free advertising, so I'll stick to it for now.