How disappointing. I got a little app for my blog called clustermaps a few years ago and it's quite cool. Tells me how many people have visited my site. I was up to almost 16,000. Of course this is over a span of four years so I am definitely not even approaching the "professional blogger" ranks, but it was fun to watch it creep up. Their server crashed and they lost the data.
I can't complain too much as it was free but...
Sometimes I look at that number and I wonder why I don't post more in order to give more people reason to come read. I find the blogs I read, Generic Views, SDA, Captain Capitalism, No Lawyers, etc entertaining and I hope to occasionally entertain or inform others. The problem as I see it is that I have to be in a certain mood in order to post up anything worth reading and I'm often too tired or to uninspired to reach that mood. I have a little app in my phone and I routinely make notes for myself of things that might be interesting to write about. There are dozens of them and I'm pretty sure that at least half of them would make for interesting reading, but I can't find the energy to sit down and actually write. Sometimes I'll make the effort and after reading what I have written I just delete it. Not worth sharing.
I have often wished I were a better writer, started a couple books, one fiction and one non-fiction, but neither of them went anywhere. So then I read some blogs about writing. Orson Scott Card and James Maxxey in particular. Both authors worth reading. What I discovered is that writing is far more work than I would have ever thought. I had great ideas for both my books. I started with enthusiasm but then ran into the sheer drudgery of churning out enough words to create a compelling story that would entertain and be long enough to publish. I, apparently, am not cut out for drudgery. I sort of knew that as I have little patience with routine jobs unless they are quick in nature (don't even ask me about scraping off old base gaskets on Harley Davidsons) and my house restoration projects are now in their sixteenth year (some of them have been completed but there are many more still to do), but I had thought that being a bookish sort, writing might come easier.
Nope. It is a long, slow process and even when you do have something worthwhile, it often takes a fair amount of rewriting to get it to really communicate the ideas you wanted.
So what is the takeaway? Starting over counting visitors and hoping that they are getting at least a little enjoyment out of what I do write. Books stored on my computer and on my backup server which I may revisit at some point to see if there is more there that I didn't see the first time around.
You never know what the future will bring.
Guess I'd better head upstairs and sand some floors.
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