100,000 Views

Back in 2013, there was a time when I thought 32 views in one day would be the most I’d ever achieve on this blog. I was content with that because in the grand scheme of things, I’m a tiny grain of sand in a giant sandbox, known as the internet. I’ll take my scraps with a smile.

Not even two weeks later, I got 1067 views in a day. It was terrifying and I thought I would need security to leave my house.

You may think you want a big wave of views, but when it comes all at once, you turn into an 8-year-old at a lemonade stand, having to deal with a lineup of about a billion-ish people.

“Sorry, my mom didn’t buy me enough lemons. Check out my Sound Cloud. Ya dig?” Or whatever 8-year-olds say. (Do they say “Ya dig”? I’m grasping, not to be confusing with “gasping”, which I’m also doing because these parentheses can’t breathe. Boom.)

That was a “words trapped between brackets” joke.

I think most of us trick ourselves into thinking our blog stats don’t matter. We’ll say, “I blog for myself!” and then proceed to check the stats page every 10 minutes to see how many people read our lie and who will dare join us on Team Facetious by commenting, “Same!”.

And for those of you who never concern yourself with the stats page, who the hell do you think you are? An upstanding human being who I respect immensely? You’re darn right!

But for the rest of us validation-hungry sheep, the stats page tells us that people care. At the root of my motivation to write, is my desire to put words out there that I think other people will enjoy.

So, really, I’m doing this for you. No need to thank me.

Seriously, though. I find there are too many articles on the internet with catchy headlines and controversial opinions, that the author may or may not agree with, just to spark a debate in the comments section or cause someone to share the link and say, “Look at this big hullabaloo”.

That’s too easy.

The world needs less hullabaloos because, if you haven’t noticed, everything bothers everyone. I’d rather not start tornados bigger than admitting I’ve never had tacos. (Instant uproar, every time.)

I’d rather receive attention (views) for something I felt good about writing.

Which brings me to yesterday. I noticed my blog was 27 views away from 100,000 all-time. I love statistics and anything related to numbers, so of course I had been closely monitoring this situation for a few months.

In the future, our bodies should have built-in statistics that track everything on its own like, calories, number of words spoken in a day, and how many times we bite our tongue in our lifetime, etc. To access the stats, we plug our index finger into something. Tell the people in the year 2230 I had the idea first.

Of course, I finished yesterday with 26 views, which was perfect because the over-arching metaphorical theme of my life is, “Almost there, but not quite there yet”.

I took this screenshot, just in case it was a Y2K situation and my blog would end at 100,000 views.

I really don’t know if 100,000 views is a lot, or a little, for a blog that has been around for five and a half years, with 678 posts. I really don’t care. It’s a big number. It’s six digits. And by God, am I going to milk it for everything it’s worth because blog ideas don’t come easy and this is a meatball, just waiting to be crushed.

This morning, I found this:

I’m a bit sad I missed the 100,000th view. It made me feel like an absent blog-father. No worries, though. I’ll make it up with a trip to Dairy Queen. Ice cream makes everyone forget about prior disappointments – I think it’s the brain freeze.

I must thank all of you who helped me reach 100,000 views. This is your milestone, really. A lot of luck and sleepless nights have gone into this blog and I’m just glad it was all for something.

It is a joy to write for an audience that will go along with my antics. I feel like I mention the friendships I’ve made through blogging, in way too many posts, but I will never not be amazed by the connections we’ve made via words.

On the surface, all we may ever be to each other is a couple of static profile pictures appearing in the notification queue, but below the surface there’s appreciation, gratitude, trust, 177 truckloads of wit and sarcasm, and probably some sort of love, but we can leave that one out because 1) it sounds weird; and 2) if this gets any sappier, we could start a maple syrup company.

Before we get sued by Aunt Jemima for taking over her shelf space, I’ll end with this:

A few years ago, I coined the phrase – blogging is like talking to yourself and then realizing someone heard you.

Thank you for hearing me.