Man, talk about your punctuated equilibrium (if you go for that sort of thing). This blog had been cruising along for awhile as a Slithering Reptile in the TTLB blog-ranking ecoystem for I don’t know how long when all of a sudden last week I noticed I had morphed or “evolved” into a Marauding Marsupial, completely bypassing the intermediate phylum of Flappy Bird and Adorable Rodent. I couldn’t figure out how this happened because TTLB essentially measures links and I hadn’t had a sudden burst of linkage — at least none that showed up in my TTLB report. I just assumed that global warming had killed off a bunch of blogs ahead of me and I’d been promoted simply for outlasting them.
Now, just as spasmodically, I’m back to reptile status. I don’t think I would have noticed except that I felt a draft.
Honestly, even after two-plus years of doing this blog, I don’t understand how a lot of the protocols and accessories work on this great big inner-web thingy. For example, sometime last spring I started getting 300-400 visitors a day, day after day. I didn’t see any reason for the sudden surge of fans, but I noticed that my Site Meter report was showing most of these to be from Google images; in other words people searching for photos. Some of the images I’d posted were getting a lot of attention (in particular a close-up photo of the Mall Diva’s bruised and naked knee that was getting all kinds of traffic from Asia). After this kept up for awhile it just wasn’t that interesting for me check the Site Meter at the end of the day because the numbers didn’t have that much to do with anything I’d written – and given my irregular posting schedule the past several (intense) months – that was probably just as well.
Now the image links have gone away, too, just about as quickly as they appeared. While my “daily visits” average has crashed big time, I actually like this better; I didn’t feel as if I’d “earned” the traffic. It was actually kind of de-motivating. While traffic isn’t the reason I blog, it does offer a measure of feedback to indicate if what I’m writing is resonating with anyone. I don’t know if I’d keep blogging if I got 5 or 10 or 20 visitors a day, but I do know that 400 visitors a day didn’t make me feel more like blogging.
Oh well, that’s enough navel-gazing (actually, I don’t think reptiles have navels). I think the real reason I blog is so I can go to Keegan’s — and I’m heading there tonight!
