This is a tricky one, because Dave, I sympathize immensely. The Internet is hard as hard as hell. I’ve been making stuff online for almost twenty years, building my first website on Geocities at age 13, while learning HTML out of a For Dummies book. What do I have to show for all of this?

Monetarily, I’m so far in the red that I’m not likely to recoup everything I’ve spent to make awesome stuff online. But, I was lucky enough that with a blog, a podcast, a social media profile, and a friend of a friend who worked for a startup, to find a new career in a new town. That’s the biggest success I’ve earned from nineteen years of doing stuff online in my spare time — to be able to call myself a “web and communications professional” on a résumé that originally just had government clerking and telemarketing on it.

Here’s what I’ve learned, though… the Internet was never easy. It was always hard to get noticed, at least by the time I got online in 1996. It rubs me the wrong way when someone with moderate success complains about how hard it is these days. From where I sit, it’s always been hard, and the large players have always had a huge advantage over insurgents. And large is relative. You’re a one man show, and I admire that, but to a schmuck like me who had 480 Twitter followers, and 3,800 unique visitors to his blog last month, you’re pretty big. You’re having the kind of problems schmucks like me want to have.

But, like I said, I sympathize. We’re not in the same boat. I’ve got a rickety wooden rowboat, and you’ve got a nice fiberglass boat with an outboard motor,. We’re floating not-too-far from each other in the same stretch of a vast sea filled with countless people in rafts, a few hundred thousand people in various nice motorboats, thousands in luxury yachts, and a handful of cruise ships. Okay, the metaphor is strained here, but work with me.

Where you’re at is where a lot of people wish they could be. Where you want to be is where a lot of people like you want to be. And so on up the chain. It’s not impossible, it’s just harder, and it’s not harder because the game is rigged — at least no more so than it’s ever been — it’s harder because there’s more people competing for a prize that hasn’t grown enough. I keep doing what I do, because, eventually, I might get something out of it. (Notice me, Senpai!)

We’re all struggling, but I try not to hate the game and not to hate the player.