MYSTERY SOLVED

Boosted, or Busted?

And the answer is . . .

Janice Macdonald
3 min readMay 10, 2023

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Happy for a boost, not a bust

A small boost. Yesterday, I wrote about receiving a mystery check from Medium. I’d hoped it was a boost but feared it might be a bust — perhaps a book-keeping mistake and I’d have to return the money.

I learned this morning that it was a boost, just not quite the windfall I’d imagined. With no response from Medium, I contacted Stripe. Although I’d received two Medium e-mails informing me that two different payments — the monthly payout and the possible windfall were on the way to my bank, — only one check, a combination of monthly payout and a smaller boost, was sent.

So not quite a windfall, but I’m not complaining. At least not about the extra money. It would have been nice to get some sort of explanation from Medium though — congratulations, whatever.

Absent that, I wasn’t sure what to think. The time spent figuring it out and eventually going to Stripe for an answer could have been spent writing another boost-worthy story. A moot point though, since I don’t even know what story earned the extra money.

Oh well. I appreciate Medium for many, many things, but communication with writers isn’t high on the list.

Here’s the piece I wrote yesterday before Stripe unravelled the mystery.

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Janice Macdonald

At 68, I started a new chapter in my life: I moved to France. Alone. It turned out to be quite the page-turner. Still is — even when age insists on a part.