I Like Big Blogs and I Cannot Lie

I have achieved a milestone of sorts. My blog (sjdgoingonrecord.blogspot.com) has surpassed 13,000 pageviews!

I did not make a big deal out of it when the count passed 10,000, 11,000, or even 12,000, but I happened to recently mention to my son Nik, a techno-geek, PC gamer, and VR enthusiast, how many visits my blog had, and he said, "Wow, that's a serious blog."

Of course, referring to my blog as serious is kind of ironic considering my strange and, so I've been told, often inappropriate sense of humor.

Also, 13 is an auspicious number. The fact this goal was reached on a Friday can be chalked up to coincidence, serendipity, or something else. I go with something else, because you can't make this stuff up. 

When I went into the reports, however, the statistics surprised me. The award for most pageviews went to the blog, "I Like Big Butts and I Cannot Lie!" a cautionary tale about what can happen when a person new to Facebook, "Likes" and "Comments," only to discover it's in full public view. Big Butts shared the link to my post on their Facebook page, and to date the blog stands at 853 hits.

(sjdgoingonrecord.blogspot.com/2013/09/i-like-big-butts-and-i-can-not-lie.html)

This might be as expected, considering the subject matter, but the runner up is not. In April of 2014, I came across an article about Edge magazine. Each year the online publication gathers together some of the most brilliant minds in the fields of science, engineering, and the arts, and poses a theoretical question. That year's question was, "What Should We Be Worried About But Aren't?"

Edge then published the book-length 151 answers they received. I was so intrigued I went through them one by one and edited them down to a long essay. I posted the blog and thought no more about it, except for the fact that I think it's one of my most fascinating blogs.

But when I looked at the numbers, the post had 697 visits. I don't use metatags, accept advertising, or publicize my blog, but I must have tripped a flag somewhere, and almost seven hundred people took a look.

(sjdgoingonrecord.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-me-worry.html)

By far the biggest surprise though is where the visits came from. As you might expect, the vast majority of views came from the United States (8923), but the second and third highest number of views came from Russia (1124) and Ukraine (762). I did publish several blogs that featured Russian President Vladimir Putin, but they were more entertainment pieces than political pieces.

Like I said to my wife, "Otherwise I'd be eating borscht in a gulag somewhere, freezing my tushnikoff off."

Europe was well represented. I got 59 visits from Poland, but my wife is Polish, and I often write about Polish customs and holiday traditions. People from France (409), Germany (206), and the United Kingdom (167), stopped by. But there were some strange ones too: Denmark (96), Turkey (82), and Brazil (53) of all places.

I noticed if you add all these figures up, that leaves 1,119 views unaccounted for. I know some of these came from Ireland because I have friends there who read my blog. I can only speculate about the rest. I have published blogs about Mexico (Cinco de Mayo), Japan (Fukushima), and China (computer hacking). Surely, this would explain some of the discrepancy.

To put all this in perspective, I started my blog on June 11, 2013. That means, on average, 20 people visit my blog per day. That's pretty damn good, except for all I know, 99% of these pageviews could have come from intelligence agencies, cyber-criminals, and keyword bots.

As of this date, I have not received a summons, a law suit, a cease and desist order, or a death threat. Of course, I haven't won a Pulitzer or Nobel prize, either.

I'm not sure what the take-away is on all this - that we truly do live in a global and interconnected world?

For those who have enjoyed my writing, I thank you. Writers are people who must write. Whether anyone reads it or not is immaterial. But the joy I get when people read my work suffuses my soul with gratitude.