564 Blogs And Still Annoying People On The Internet

Yesterday I got 268 visitors to my blog.

Now, before anyone starts applauding, let me point out that the day before I had considerably more. In the world of blogging, this means I spent several hours behaving exactly like a share market analyst watching a stock crash.

I checked the statistics repeatedly.

Maybe the counter was broken.

Maybe Google had accidentally disconnected Australia from the internet.

Maybe everyone had collectively decided to go outside and enjoy their lives.

The possibilities were endless.

The strange thing about writing online is that you start out convinced you're writing because you have something to say. Then somewhere along the way you find yourself refreshing analytics at ten o'clock at night wondering why David from Nebraska hasn't read your latest masterpiece about social media, narcissists or the collapse of modern civilisation.

Apparently, my self-worth is now directly tied to a graph. This is probably not healthy. When I started blogging years ago, I didn't even know what analytics were. I wrote things because I got to laugh my ass off. If ten people read them, fantastic. If nobody read them, I still had a laugh writing them – that was my biggest laugh actually.

Now I can tell you exactly how many people visited, where they came from, what they clicked on, how long they stayed and precisely when they got bored and wandered off to watch cat videos.

Knowledge is not always a blessing.

One day you feel like a literary genius because 2,000 people read a post about true crime. The next day only 268 people turn up and suddenly you're convinced your career is over and you'll die alone surrounded by unpublished blog posts and empty coffee cups.

It's ridiculous. The truth is, 268 people is still a lot of people. If 268 people walked into my lounge room and asked me to entertain them, I'd have a nervous breakdown. Yet online we somehow convince ourselves it's not enough.

Human beings are greedy creatures. Give us ten readers and we want a hundred. Give us a hundred and we want a thousand. Give us a thousand and we're disappointed it wasn't two thousand. Nothing is ever enough.

So today I've decided to be grateful for my 268 visitors. Thank you to all 268 of you.

Especially the one person in Brazil who appears to read absolutely everything I write. I don't know who you are, but at this point we're practically family.

The rest of you can lift your game. I'll be checking the stats later. 😏