Is eHow Falling Apart?

It always seems like it, doesn't it? I've been here for nine months, and we seem to have some kind of crisis and oodles of bugs every month. (Big crises every other month.) But the one thing I do know is that they take payment seriously.

And when it comes down to it, that's what matters.

Seth Godin had a good article this week (among several) which made me think immediately of eHow. The Problem With Positive Thinking turns out to be positive is harder than negative, even though it is way more productive.

To riff further on that theme, it is understandable why there are so many negative vibes around. The economy already fell apart, nothing is certain, the future is scary. Everything is scary. It isn't just that negative thinking is easier, it's almost impossible not to give in to it's allure.

We're wired that way. If we suspect a threat anywhere, everything else goes out the window. Fear is the greatest distraction tool (and advertisers and politicians love it). Because of that negativity is a Black Hole: it will suck the life out of you. And while it does that, it lies to you. You get a surge of adreneline that makes you feel energetic even as it saps it all out of you.

"A life lived in fear is only half lived."

If the source of your negativity is eHow right now, you probably should take a break. (And if politics and the economy are killing you, turn off the TV and stop reading the papers for a bit.) Do something else for a while, write something else. But the most important thing you can do is to change you inputs. Read or watch or do things that renew and refresh. Find something positive.

Of course, if you are not being sucked into a black hole of fear and rage, then you might find it positive to do more writing and learn to write better articles for eHow. So on that that note, I am going to start a series of articles about specific criteria eHow uses to assess and delete articles.