I started this blog, my second, in May 2009. Since then, nearly 50,000 people have visited this site. That's the population of a pretty big small town in Canada.
Most of the people who read this blog aren't my friends. In fact, I think it's fair to say that maybe a dozen of my Facebook friends read it.
Usually I get between 150 and 200 visits from people all over the world. For a while, I was a big hit in Europe and Russia. Now my peeps seemed to come from America, Canada and the U.K.
I don't know why people read my blog.
Unlike many successful blogsters, I rarely write on the same topic. Mostly, I just sit down at the keyboard after reading the newspaper and something comes out.
Like this blog, for example.
When I sit down here and look out the window on the weird and wacky St. Laurent Blvd., I often feel like a musician trying to compose a tune on the piano. I just peck away and hope what comes out is to the liking of a few bleary-eyed souls. Sometimes I make a connection. Sometimes I don't.
My best read blog sits opposite here. It has a photo of Jim Carrey dressed up as his Royal Ugliness, Lord Grinch. I wrote this piece just last Christmas when I was feeling very blue about our financial situation. The car market had bottomed out, and Scott was barely making a living. We had money coming from a video contract but the government which hired us kept losing our invoices and it was clear we wouldn't be paid before Christmas. And the magazine I was trying to launch was stuck in cyberspace while my brilliant advertising manager in Paris doggedly tried to convince advertisers here in Canada that there was a market for a specialty publication for audiologists.
In an effort to shore up my sagging spirits, I wrote the piece to convince myself that Christmas should be more than a holiday of presents. Instead, I argued, it should be more about presence about being involved in the lives of our friends and family.
It was a simple message. Writing it made me feel better. Obviously, reading it made other folks feel a bit better about their own situations.
Since writing that piece, more than 27,000 people have read it. Even though Christmas has long passed, at least 50 people have read it each and every day.
I find that astonishing.
I suppose they like it because it was heartfelt. Readers shared my pain.
Sadly, I haven't been able to keep all those readers.
Writers don't have many greatest hits.
Unless their names are Stephen and Stephenie.
Like most people, our lives are relatively small.
There isn't always much to say on any given day.
But sometimes you click.
And that makes it all worth while.
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