writer « Robin Writes

After our weekend campout, I have decided on a few things:

One, don’t reinvent the wheel. Two, don’t make it harder than it has to be. And three, I DO like certain comforts.

Now, the first two are no-brainers, and virtually the same thing. And the first really has nothing to do with this camping trip, and well, neither does the second. But my points are still valid.

As for the third, well, I truly believe camping should be out in the wilderness, or at least a park or a place where you don’t have access to too many “civilized” comforts. We could all stand to toughen up a bit, yes? But on the other side of “comfort,” you have “this is really painful on my old body.”

In light of that, I’m making a few changes before the next trip in June:

I enjoy washing dishes over the fire—I have my two fire buckets, wash in one, rinse in the second; the wash water is thrown out and refilled and the rinse water becomes the next wash water. But I am a bit tired of lugging those buckets over to the table (to use as a drying rack), and squatting down on the pad while I do this.

Purchase #1: a kitchen rack/counter/whatever you want to call it.

I can deal with the cold—I have plenty of layers and a great sleeping bag, and yes, it was 37 degrees Saturday morning. Again. In May. Argh. But I cannot sleep on the ground—I would be miserable and immobile for at least a day, even with copious doses of Advil. And air mattresses are hit-or-miss around here. Had another slow leak Saturday night. A good night’s sleep is really important, no matter where you are.

Purchase #2: a really thick foam pad—6-8 inches—or an actual mattress.

Speaking of the cold, skipping a shower or two (yes, I WASH, if anyone’s interested) isn’t a big deal when the temps only get up to 60 degrees. But I do like a hot shower—or at least warmish—to loosen up my muscles and clear my head. And since the warmer weather will surely be here for the next trip, this is something I must have:

Purchase #3: a solar shower.

And finally, electronics. They are a fact of life, and indeed, much of my work is done online. And, too, if one is camping alone, regardless of how often it’s used, a cell phone can be mighty handy. My battery does well, but I still had to power down Saturday night; 48 hours on a charge isn’t bad, but Sunday morning the darn thing was being stubborn until it, too, warmed up.

Purchase #4: solar cell charger

Now, I know a lot of people whose idea of camping is the local Marriott, and I know some who own and use every camping gadget invented, just because they can. I even know a few who wouldn’t be caught dead using any comforts whatsoever—and I was one of them, oh, maybe 10 years ago. Or five.

But hey, it’s a choice, right? And all of these things will enable me to stay out in the woods just a little bit longer than I do now, and even work from there if I want to do that. And there are some things where I draw the line: RVs, running water, and electricity, to name a few.

On the other hand, I’m sure some of you have seen pictures of my pot. Er, bathroom. Yes, I have one, and yes, I make no apologies. There’s a big difference, to me, in using a latrine built and equipped for oneself versus those hideous vault toilets in many campgrounds, used by many. (Seriously, it’s like sitting on a tall tin can—ugh!)

Today, the ax fell. Helium.com, or Helium Publishing, or Helium Networks, whatever you want to call it, announced today that all sites would be closed down in December this year.

Well. I’d still like to get the fifteen bucks they owe me. Ha.

I started writing for them, a content site in case you didn’t know, back in 2008. I made some money. And then I made more. I became a sub-channel manager, then a channel manager—of course, over the years the titles have changed—and I was on the editorial board.

And then things started to change.

As a channel manager, I was given a list of things to do and I did them well—finding sub managers, mentoring writers, placing content and starting new channels, managing those managers and creating pages and of course, my own content. Unfortunately, even before some genius decided to split titles—you know, changing them into every possible search string configuration so we had perhaps ten articles per title, except that there were four or five titles that were almost exactly the same—things in the management area were getting a little crazy.

They’d give us a job, say, to weed out the silly stuff, and we’d spend hours and days making title lists—and nothing ever came of it. Talk about “busy work.” And always, always, we were told to “be sure to make time for your own writing!”

Except there wasn’t time for that—and this was a volunteer position!

So I finally got disgusted, along about 2011, and resigned. I kept writing, on and off, and I still collected some cash, but all the heart had gone out of me. And then I stopped writing there, too.

You see, we used to have contests, fair ones, with prizes from $25 on up; when things started going south, the “prizes” dropped to maybe $5. Maybe. We used to be able to submit to other sites, magazines and such, and get paid up to $100 or more; no longer—pay for these dropped to, again, $5.

Now, I could whip out one of their “articles” in about 30 minutes, and you might be thinking that $10 an hour isn’t too bad. But—on other sites, I was making five times that much! And then I started publishing books—my own, that is, in 2012.

The politics of Helium were horrible; the arbitrary changes were worse. Most of the friends I’d made over the years were as appalled as I and we defected in fairly large numbers. But there were always others, newbies, to take our places. And there were the cheerleaders, the ones who stuck with Helium, defending her to their dying breaths . . . because that’s where they’re ending up, dying right along with the website that did little, the last few years, but screw with writers trying to earn a living.

Helium offered every possible excuse as to why revenue was down, yet they refused to allow anyone to remove articles. Well, mostly. I mean, I did go back and write one more, late in 2013, that addressed the sneaky changes to the TOS and slammed all content mills—which Helium had become, certainly.

They deleted that one. Oops.

Anyway, so long, farewell, auf weidersehen, goodbye!

Helium, you had a good thing going, and you blew it. You cheated all your writers, but most of the good ones left—those that remained couldn’t carry the site when you let in all the crap producers who would work for pennies. And when you kept changing things for the worse, and hiring people without a single clue among them, you shot yourself in the foot.

I hope RR Donnelly is really proud of its investment now. And I hope they choke on my articles.