I’ve Decided Not to Mention My $500 Bonus from Medium

It’s vulgar to talk about money

When I opened my emails today, I thought I was the butt of some kind of sick joke.

People are often emailing to tell me I’ve won things, and my trusting heart has been broken one too many times by unscrupulous individuals telling me a wealthy stranger has left me large sums of money. Fool me six times, shame on both of us.

Once I realized it was a genuine email, my initial thoughts were: Here we go — hundreds of articles from people who’ve also got the bonus, talking about how surprised they are.

My next thoughts were: How am I going to talk about it when I’ve written quite disparagingly about all the money-related content here? I’d have to be some kind of huge hypocrite to make fun of “I made this much on Medium” stories then write something very similar just a few days later.

That’s why — after much reflection — I’ve decided not to mention the $500 bonus I received from Medium today.

I’m British — we don’t talk about money. How absolutely ghastly, old chap. Frightfully bad form.

Carrying on the theme of “not talking about the bonus I received,” I’m also not going to list some reasons why I think I was chosen:

• I sacrificed a self-help guru to the Medium gods.
• I have incriminating photos of several senior staff members.
• This was a test to see whether my moral convictions outweighed the temptation to write a story about money. I failed.
• Someone employed by Medium likes the incongruous animal references liberally sprinkled throughout my stories over the last month or so, including but not limited to sloths, octopuses, red pandas, and gerbils.
• It was a typo and they meant to reward Alice Cooper for services to the music industry.

As I explained a few short moments ago, I’m not going to talk about any of this. But if I were to publicly acknowledge my $500 bonus, I’d probably say thank you to Medium for incentivizing me to persist with my weird brand of content.

And I’d also say thank you to the editors who publish my stories, and the readers whose engagement has apparently netted me this “April shower.”

But this is all merely hypothetical because — as we’ve established — I would never talk about money.

Glad we could get that straight.