I’ve no idea how to even begin to parse the weekend traffic. Either Saturday is abysmal as a matter of form, or it is an atrocious statistical outlier. But writing about GK Chesterton was supposed to cause at least a brief uptick in my traffic, if not a slightly longer surge.
I know sycophancy when I see it. Chesterton has his own groundswell of fans–easily comparable to Doctor Who–who are continually trolling the cross-nets of Google and Jeeves, looking for any new reference of said subject.
Yet . . . crickets.
I do have to say, however, that there has been a severe disproportion between what I would regard as the traffic that arrives at what I would deems “substantive,” and what I would deem “an atrocious waste of time.”
Yet, the “waste of time” articles always seems to be the ones that at least take the first nudge in my traffic statistics (and speaking of which, trust me. “Doctor Who” is going to be tagged here, along with “Tardis,” Gallifrey Falls,” and “David Tennant.” I need the traffic)
Gratuitous TARDIS photo
I could lay in here with a 50-word screed about Kim Kardashian, and take three-hundred hits. Possibility says I could hedge a few theories about the sexual proclivities of the Jonas Brothers, and rev the motor quite nicely. Of course, I could also write some saccharine-addled piece of deferential hagiography about Kanye West, and get a thousand hits–and all of these would be from him refreshing the page himself.
But I’m better than that. My main bit of angst stems from the fact that I have–even in recent days–written a thing or two that I KNOW a decent publication would have paid for, and had it simply sit there with my stats saying that I barely hit the statistical mean.
Other times, I’ll pop in here with some five-sentence “FYI” or something meant to keep the workflow alive between posts that have more meat on them, and I’ll get 50 “likes” on the FaceBook side, and comments from varied sources.
This isn’t all the time, mind you. But it certainly feels that way . . . right about now.
But maybe it’s just me. I know this. I’ll keep plugging away. One day, it’s going to pay off.
Master Of None 
So every once in awhile I walk around our local Barnes and Noble and marvel at the drivel that gets into print. That is, drivel from my perspective. I guess there must be a market for it. Funny, today while I was at the abbey I was talking to the “running monk” who runs marathons and who developed his own energy bar. They sell it there and it’s pretty good. I tried one, awhile back, and went running and felt like I was sustained for the length of my run. For the 280 calories it contains, it better be sustaining; that’s a little under three miles of running just to work it off. I bought another one, today. Anyway, in the course of our conversation he mentioned he hates inspirational writing. You know, I got it immediately. This is something one either “gets” or not. I could see myself trying to explain this to someone and getting a look like I crawled out from under some rock – which, btw, is how I think my teenagers sometimes look at me. Something to do with frontal lobe development, I think…
Keep plugging away whether it pays off or not. In the lecture I attended, tonight, the retired abbot said, “You never know when you’re going to hear a word that is really transformational.” Your blog may fill that role for someone, somewhere.
That said-I wish I could sound like Ann Voskamp. But really, I’m not exactly dissatisfied with my writing. I just find myself a bit flummoxed that the funniest bears are being routed and the salad is left sitting there.
But I wonder whether it is also a degree of coincidence.
Half my problem is that I don’t exactly find constant brevity to be a good vehicle to drive every point. I do t necessarily need to write some glutted magnum opus about everything, but I DO sort of require some predication before I pull whatever dramatic trigger I’m going for.
That was supposed to read “gummy bears.” I HATE iPhones.
The joys of autocorrect!
There is simply no accounting for taste when it comes to blogging, so the only thing for it is to write what you want to write. Then the readers come for the voice and not the subject.
Great way to put that, Michelle!