July Goals Recap and a Rant About Medium

The first of August is already here, and you know what that means.

It’s time for my monthly goal recap, where you secretly judge my failures or envy my success over the past month. I know you can’t wait to find out about my weight loss progress or my virtual football team. Or the other amazing goals I set each month.

Let’s get started.

I don’t know what I was smoking when I created this goal. I’ve somehow been stuck at around 190 pounds for a couple of months. I guess Mother Nature thinks the slightly overweight look is totally natural, especially when the only fat I have left is around my midsection.

On the bright side, I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. So, I’m just going to keep pretending that all of the muscle I’m adding is offsetting the fat loss, even though the mirror tells a different story.

I’m active every day, even though sometimes I feel like I’m living in hell thanks to the weather in Texas. (It’s not always hot and humid, just letting you know, Rashida Beal.) Most days, I’m either lifting weights, going for walks, or doing endless yardwork at my house, my parents’ house, or the rental property. Or taking photos of the moon.

On the bright side, using a weed eater around my house doesn’t take much time at all. However, it takes over an hour at my parents’ place because they only have 40,204 flowers, bushes, trees, and gigantic metal chickens and roosters randomly placed throughout the yard.

Those massive chickens and roosters also become flying missiles in a storm, and they almost took my head off one time.

I published four articles on Substack and seven articles on Medium. (Two cross-posts from Substack and five unique articles if you really care about the details.) I earned a total of $18.16 on Medium and $88.85 on Substack.

I even got a new yearly paid subscriber and another monthly paid subscriber on Substack. I really do appreciate it! I’ve been steadily losing paid subs over the past few months, and it has been a longgggg time since I’ve had a new paid subscriber. I somehow got two paid subscribers in a week, so miracles can still happen!

From 2023 to 2025, I invested consistently each month because I actually had more than enough work to keep me busy, and it’s a lot easier to do if you are single and don’t have any kids.

I took about a five-month break from investing in the stock market this year because I needed to build up an emergency savings fund for the rental property. It’s an older house that belonged to my grandparents, and you never know when the HVAC might die, or if the roof might be destroyed due to a hailstorm. Or if a flying metal chicken from next door lands through the window. And about 10,000 other scenarios.

I even convinced my nephew to start investing since he now has a part-time job at a restaurant. (This is the one I beat all of the time in basketball.)

Investing at a younger age is a cheat code if someone stays consistent with it due to the magic of compound interest. No such thing as getting rich quickly, but you can end up with more than a million dollars if you stick with it over twenty or thirty years. I can honestly write about 5,000 more words on this topic (thanks to the coffee), but it will totally derail my goals recap.

I haven’t played much of College Football 27 this year because the wonderful people running EA Sports always release a game that’s broken, and I usually have to wait at least a month or so for a patch.

So, I decided to wait until mid-August to start my dynasty with the Texas Longhorns because that’s around the time the roster will be updated and more freshmen will be on the team instead of fake players. Yes, I can be a nerd.

I’ve still been playing a lot of OOTP Baseball 27. I’ve somehow yet to get fired, and I even won 105 games with my Texas Rangers. Of course, I was swept in four games by the New York Yankees in the ALCS, and I have yet to reach the World Series in eight seasons.

So, I went 3 for 4 on my goals. I’m not counting the one about video games, since EA Sports isn’t capable of producing a playable game until at least a month or two after release.

#1 Lose at Least One Pound (I’m trying to use reverse psychology to get in shape)

#2 Stay Active

#3 Never Stop Writing

#4 Keep Investing

#5 Reach 900 Subscribers on Substack (I’ve been stuck around the 860ish number for months)

Yes, I know this article feels endless. If you’ve never been on Medium, feel free to skip this section and hit that like button. Or accidentally upgrade to paid. Either one is fine.

Anyway, my Never Stop Writing publication can’t qualify for the Editor Partner Program because it didn’t meet the “Healthy Story Distribution” or whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean for the past seven months.

I would have earned $88 this past month, but the potential earnings were also around $100, $200, and nearly $500 on previous months if the program was available back then. I guess some things in life will always be a mystery.

Oh wait, Medium explains it here. “Publications that consistently publish stories that fall into General Distribution or Boost levels will meet this criteria easily, while publications that consistently publish stories that qualify for Network Distribution (think: AI slop, NSFW stories, Medium meta) might want to tighten their acceptance criteria for inclusion.”

Hmm, I don’t publish AI slop, NSFW stories, or Medium meta and yet I still don’t qualify? A friend of mine who also runs a publication has the same issue. My guess is that Medium made up this requirement to limit which publications can join because they can’t afford to actually pay all of the publications that actually would meet these requirements.

I sent them an email about it, and I got no response. I left them a comment on one of their recent announcement articles, and I got no response again. So, I’m only slightly frustrated.

I just think it’s bullshit to hype up a program for editors to finally get paid, and then randomly make up rules when I know for a damn fact my publication should have met the distribution requirement. Yes, many publications on Medium will publish a ton of AI crap, but I actually do have standards, and I take pride in my work.

Anyway, I’ll still keep publishing articles for others on Medium because I’ve made a lot of friends over the years, and I really do enjoy supporting others. It just really irritates me when I know I’ve met all of those requirements, but the morons running Medium do not apply the same standards to everyone.

I can’t end on a negative note, so I’ll share a couple of Dallas Cowboys TikToks I made over the past week. The first one shows me trying to mentally prepare for the pain and torture of the next six months, while the other one is about Tony Romo, who will always be my favorite QB.

Okay, I think I’m done.

I honestly didn’t mean to write an article this long, but that was one hell of a cup of coffee.

Thanks for reading or skimming. I’ll see you next time!