My last post brought my total page views up over the 10,000 mark. Now I know that really isn't very many, especially since it's taken me nearly four years to get there. Gerald most likely gets that many views or more every single day for his About.com website. Still, for me and my little blog, 10,000 seems like a lot, and I was excited to see that number. Not that it's accurate necessarily; it isn't. How do I know? Because the statistics change all the time, and sometimes they decrease! For example, I'll check one day, and my page views for a particular post will be, say, 68. Then I'll check the following day, and the views for that very same post will be 62. How can they go down? It makes no sense. So no, this number is not accurate; however, I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna celebrate my 10,000 views regardless.
How will I celebrate? Hmmm. Maybe by musing over what this blog has meant to me since its inception way back on April 4th of 2009. I started the blog for a couple of reasons. First, I've always struggled to follow the age-old counsel from our church leaders to record a journal and write our personal histories. I'm simply not a journal writer. I can't imagine writing each day if I have nothing to say. I am more what you could call an essayist. I like to write around themes. Second, writing is therapy for me, and it's way cheaper than either a psychiatrist or a trip to the mall. It's also way more fun than a psychiatrist and, no, not as fun as a shopping trip, but as I said, considerably cheaper. Writing does, indeed, reduce my crappy anxiety. Sometimes, if I'm feeling super stressed, just opening a new window for a blog post helps calm my fears. As I write, I can feel the tension escaping, little by little, as I put the sentences and paragraphs together. By the time I finish, sometimes I can even relax enough to sleep!
I had no idea, though, all the other ways this blog would benefit and improve my life. That is mostly because I had no idea how many people would read it. I thought my immediate family might read it, some of them anyway. I knew Gerald and Shulamith would read it; I didn't know whether my sons would. I thought maybe my brother would check it out. And maybe Lindsey and Celeste. Possibly Mandy. Perhaps, at the very outside, Patty and Lorrie. I really didn't think it would go any further than that. Instead, though, the blog has attracted a much larger audience. Some who read it are folks I know well; others are people I know only as casual acquaintances; still others are those I honestly do not know at all. It's crazy. Most do not comment, either onto the blog itself or on Facebook, so I'm continually surprised when someone says, "Hey, I loved that post about __________." Really? You read it? Thanks!
No, I had no idea back in April of 2009 that I'd ever, in my entire lifetime, reach 10,000 page views. Not in my wildest dreams. More importantly, though, the blog has for sure fulfilled its original purposes. Each year, I assemble all the posts for that year into a hardcover book to keep for posterity. Maybe it's not exactly what the brethren intended when they asked us to keep a written record of our lives, but I think it works. And the blog has absolutely saved me from some pretty severe anxiety attacks or at least served to lessen the symptoms.
So let me take this opportunity to say "thank you" to everyone who reads it. Thank you for allowing me to share a little bit of my world with you, crazy and unorthodox as it may be: The things that make me happy, the things that make me sad, the things that make me passionate, the things that make me laugh, the things that make me mad, the things that make me nostalgic, the things that make me jubilant, the things that make me grateful, and all the other things that simply make me, me. Thank you.
10,000 page views - Woo hoo!
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