It's All About the Blogger

Instapundit notes a blogger, The Razor, toiling away in relative obscurity for a decade now. I've just got nine.

Good for him. A decade is a long time. I feel his pain. Traffic-wise, of course. It would be nice to have wider readership. I still think I provide value to the web. The Razor must think so, too, to keep going all this time.

But like Kirwin, this blog is about what I want to write about. So, too, is this post. What you want is usually different from what you get or what you need. I too hoped for far more traffic than I have. Yet I do have far more traffic now than when I did in my first year of blogging. Or my second. Good grief, there was a time when what I'd think is a bad day now was a really good month! So I've got that going for me.

And looking back--especially as you read of bloggers fired over their blogs--I should probably be grateful that I did not get the curse of getting what I wanted. I had enough readership to get key points out through links from other bloggers (with special thanks to Instapundit who has been generous over the years--even when I lacked links to individual posts--with occasional mentions) or readers. Yet not enough readership to make my blog a work issue. I did not--and still do not--cover any issues that I would have expected to address at work, but in a political environment, who knows what could anger someone with the authority to react badly? In retrospect, it was probably foolish to blog in the first place. But it seemed like the best way for me to support the war effort. So I toiled away in relative obscurity. Being one of a thousand grains of sand can still make a nice sand box. And it all worked out.

Of course, now I could afford to have a little more traffic. Or at least that's what I think I want. What I need may still be quite different. But I take consolation that my life really does just seem to work out. So, if I'm still blogging away in obscurity when my 10-year blogiversary rolls around next July, I won't complain. I might be getting exactly what I need and just not realize it yet.

I hope Kirwin is getting what he needs, too, of course. I'm not totally self-centered here.