My membership status is erratic and it lapsed a week or so ago! I have mixed views on this. On one side, I'm a professional journalist. I get paid to write. No one begrudges me getting paid when I sell stories to magazines and newspapers. And I earn a lot more from them than I do here. I'm arguably wasting a lot of time here, but that's another story. No one asks me to pay up to be a pro journalist.

The fee is for reading, not writing. Just as when you want to read the Daily Telegraph, you subscribe.

But on the other side, I do appreciate that the fee is what makes it possible for Medium to be a paying platform. And perhaps there's a moral issue that we should all pay up. But what if we don't have time to read a lot. I really need to spend *less* time on here, not more.

If you pay, you can access all stories, create a publication, and probably a few other perks, that I'm not privy to just at the moment. And you have to spend more time reading to get your money's worth.

I certainly think it's useful for new members who are often only earning cents to get free access for a while.

But I agree... write good stories and people read. Write shit, and you're going to struggle, whether you've paid to read or not.

I may 'Resume my membership' as medium suggests, but I needed a break.