I get lonely

I like to imagine I have a big readership. You’re just quiet. It’s not like I say anything controversial – what’s to argue with? And everybody knows how tiresome chirpy DITTO!s get.

Since I added the stats service to the blog I can’t delude myself as much. I see that few people are visiting and most of those who do are popping by to find a picture of Hagrid (it’s just a link!) or cat pee solutions (go here).

I’ve been keeping this blog since December 2002, which means it slipped past the five year mark last month. Currently I get about ten visitors a day. There are maybe 3 people who subscribe to the RSS feed. LuvSet ain’t burnin’ up the web.

I don’t obsess about these numbers. Like the poetry I write the blogging I do is primarily for me, to keep the me of me alive. I’m not, in other words, writing for an audience. So not getting what I’m not working for is no great surprise?

There are things one can do to improve a blog’s visibility, I know. But marketing bores me; it takes an energy I tend to have little of. I would rather put the energy into the writing. What I write I write carefully. I strive to be clear in my prose, to burnish the poems until they reflect light. I don’t bother to say the same thing everybody else has said already, unless it’s got a Glenn Ingersoll variation.

I imagine a larger, talkier audience would raise my enthusiasm. I would feel seen rather than overlooked. I would be able to earn money with blog ads! But perhaps I’m wrong. A thousand and two more of you rummaging through my daily (semi-daily?) thoughts would be NO GOOD? Well, whatever. I imagine myself developing strategies to cope. At worst one could wait out that excess, right? I’m sure you’d be able to swing with it, my core ten, of all the millions those who truly care what Glenn thinks about hahoo.