The Half Mil Mark

Pleased. The boy, not the fish.

Yesterday when I went to add Peter Gray’s blurb to the sidebar on the right I noticed this blog just went over a half-million page views. I don’t really know if that’s a lot or not; it sure seems like a fair bit to me, but someone once told me that Amanda gets something like a gazillion views per month. I have no idea if that’s truth or rumor, but I do know that the times she’d linked to my page, my traffic has gone lunar. Funny thing, though: None of them seem stick around very long. Maybe I need to start sewing my own dresses.

I stopped monitoring my traffic about the time I realized I never want to sell ads. Indeed, deciding I never want to sell ads was in some part dictated by my decision that I never want to feel beholden to growing this space beyond what it wants to be. That’s not to say I don’t care about having readers, because I do. I just don’t want to care about having readers more than I care about feeling free to write whatever I want, whenever I want. I suspect if I was a bit more strategic, I could figure out what sort of subjects attract the most readers. I’d probably figure out that using words like “ain’t” and “geezum” and writing about my sons shooting guns and eating beaver and furthermore admitting to my affinity for men-children like Van Halen and Motorhead aren’t doing much for my rep. Actually, they’re probably doing a lot. It’s just not good. By-the-by, as proof that my musical tastes are not obsessively childish, I offer this recording of our friends. Now if that don’t make you feel lucky to be livin’…

In any event. A half-million page views. I guess it’s a milestone, though of course it’s also just another number. Either way, it’s an opportunity to thank all of you who have supported this space, either materially, or simply by reading and maybe commenting.

So, thank you. It means a lot.