Meta-blog

Writing a blog is an interesting thing, made more interesting by the paranoia that keeps me from making it quite a known thing.  I've outed myself on twitter where I'm followed by a handful of people and only half of them actually know me, and I've selected a group of people I love and feel comfortable with to share on google+, but I've refrained from making the big social-networking leap of linking it to facebook because I'm a terrible self-conscious chicken.  I've been "outed" by friends who've liked posts more than once, and even that has felt scary, until I realize that the volume of stuff posted on facebook means that only a fraction of the people who see a link actually click on it. 

I guess my hangup is that I'm more than happy (I've become a stats-watcher, egad!) to share my writing, but I want it to be because people are interested in the topics as opposed to the idea that I have a blog.  I know I'm guilty of that voyeuristic inclination to read blogs just because I vaguely know someone,  but once I've checked it out, I only keep reading if it turns out they're as interesting as I thought they might be.  In many cases, I share a ton of friends and it would be a seemingly simple thing to just actually meet the writer, but in most cases my intense fear of being judged inadequate stands in my way and I just keep creeping around the interwebs like a stalker.

As it turns out, I loooooooove reading blogs and more than that, I love the comments and even commenting myself.  What I've found, though, is that the likelihood of me commenting is almost exactly inversely proportional with the likelihood of me meeting the author.  You live in another city? Great, let's talk!  You live in another state?  So much the better!  Getting thinky with strangers is my favorite!

At this particular moment, I'm aware of six people who read this blog with any regularity, one from comments, one from following, two 'cause they told me and two because I got feedback in another forum (an example: "DON'T GET RID OF THE TURTLE!!!!!!!!!!!").  I'm more than a little curious about how someone in Indonesia ended up here one time or why there've been multiple hits from Germany, but honestly, as readership has quadrupled this month, I'm curious about everybody.


All in all, though, I'm cool with anonymity.  As it is, my people-pleasiness occasionally makes me almost second guess what I'm writing.  Some people are here for the Deep Thoughts on Big Issues posts, some are here for Pictures of Awesome Shit posts.  Some are here...well, some are just along for the ride, I guess.  But every time someone tells me they like a particular thing, I start thinking I should do more of that thing.


Ultimately, although I'm embarrassingly excited to see that anyone at all is reading (despite my fear of telling people to read), I realize that this is kind of a personal exercise in...something.  Maybe I'm just translating the journals I kept for years into electronic format with an exhibitionist twist.  Maybe I'm flexing my writing muscles.  Maybe I'm really into the idea of imaginary friends.  Probably all of the above.  The question floats across my mind a fair amount, but I'm not actually very interested in figuring out the answer.  I like writing this.  I'mma keep doing it.  The end.  Thanks for reading.