It was two years ago today that I unleashed my spanking new blog on an unsuspecting world. Beforehand, I had produced no trial posts and I had no master plan. I just began doing it and I suppose that was a good enough approach for me. The very earliest posts here are perhaps a little bit clunkier than what I'm creating now, but the overall taste and temperament of the blog haven't changed very much because my taste and temperament haven't changed very much. In fact, I still like the same stuff I liked in the 1970's.
Over these two years I have produced, on average, slightly more than one post per day, for a running total of 785. Although I have only a scant 20 public followers, there have been over 225,000 page views since inception, and that number is currently growing by about 10,000 a month. For a blog that's anything but universal in its appeal, that seems to me to be a pretty reasonable number. Of course, I'd always be pleased to have more readers. In fact, most nights I go to bed wondering whether tomorrow will be the day this blog finally goes viral.
Even without that, I'm having a pretty good time here. Do you know what I love about blogging? I love not having an editor! Anyone who has read, for example, my
New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest entries has to be aware that I don't have proper supervision. I'm the only boss here. There is no imperious blog committee urging me to push things in a new and more popular direction. With obscurity comes freedom.
My blog, then, reflects my freedom to write pretty much whatever I want. One thing that I have been astonished by is the reaction of the Chinese people, who as far as I can tell have no pressing reason whatsoever to visit this blog. Nevertheless, they have been coming in droves--well, very small droves--and despite an authoritarian government placing harsh restrictions on internet access, many have exercised a new-found freedom to bypass central censorship by coming here, of all places. Over the past month, China very briefly placed sixth here among page views by country before lapsing back to seventh place behind Canada. I find that remarkably refreshing and encouraging even though I don't fully understand it.
So what does the future hold? I can't really say. After all, I didn't know I'd be entering
The New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest until I actually tried it back in April and decided to go public with my unlikely efforts. It really wasn't planned.
What I do anticipate is relocating Blog Central to a suburban refuge, but I don't yet have a clue in what fashion this will alter the content of my blogging. I certainly don't expect to compose any posts with useful tips on outdoor grilling, but who knows? We shall see together, won't we?
Note: You can read my very first blog post
here. See how it all got started.
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