Mel, I think you hit the nail on the head. As a rural American, I’m living in an entirely different country than the other 97+%. I have acquired so many skills and there are so many things I can do with those skills I am happy and productive from dawn to dusk. I’ve never been as busy as I am in retirement (and I used to work 60+ hours a week).

I think many Americans are so unhappy, because they do NOT have the skills to do anything, other than their jobs. They don’t know how to cook, bake, garden, sew, build, fix anything or navigate any place but a city street. They’ve never spent enough time learning something on their own, to fall in love with that activity. As a result, people have to hire people who own tools to do everything they need done (I have city friends who don’t even own a screwdriver). Watching a repairman fix something makes them angry because it looks so easy to do with the right tool. They don’t know how to use those tools, or how to take care of them, but they are sure they could have fixed it themselves, if only they’d had the right tool. Paying someone to do a simply, five-minute repair makes them feel stupid. But paying a hundred and fifty dollars an hour to someone without a college degree, makes them feel cheated, taken advantage of, or robbed.

Hobbies give us motor skills. A motor skill is a function that involves specific movements of the body's muscles to perform a certain task. In order to perform this skill, the body's nervous system, muscles, and brain have to all work together.

Unfortunately, very few Americans have the motor skills necessary for anything – except a keyboard. Sure, they can ride bikes and drive cars, but they can’t change a tire. They can work out in the gym, but they can’t build anything. They can microwave anything, but they can’t cook anything from scratch. They have several hundred apps and streaming services, but they need devices to create anything on their own.

I think Medium is experiencing the consequences of our mind-numbingly bored and painfully unskilled population. Simply put, a keyboard is the only tool most Americans own, and know how to use. As a result, people are writing for fun. Since Medium is a vanity press, and anyone can publish here, people see their article on the internet and think they are writers. Suddenly thousands of people are trying to turn their hobby into a career – yikes!

Since there are some gifted writers and some seriously good journalists here, I give Medium a whole lot of credit for trying to turn a vanity press for us, commoners, into something worth reading. Writers like you, Mel, and many more are worth the effort it takes to find you in this messy hobbyist site. Nonetheless, that is the reason I keep encouraging Medium to prioritize readers’ experience, above and over writers.

And that’s my two cents for the day. 😊