I never intended or made any effort to use this blog as a money-making venture. First and last, it’s been a project purely for me to vent angst and aggravation out into the universe. I’m told keeping it all bottled up is bad for you and this has been my now year’s long venue for getting it out of my system without picking fights or putting my career in too much jeopardy.

Even though I don’t make any editorial decisions based on them, WordPress is chock full of metrics that, if one were so inclined, could help tailor content and optimize its potential reach. Back in 2021 it was picking up a surprising amount of traction for a nobody blog with no particular focus and no stated purpose. Over the last year, those numbers have, if not quite cratered, then trended back towards the historical mean.

Maybe it’s an issue with algorithms or maybe it’s a case of “they’re just not that into you.” That’s fine. Just like I don’t find my self worth in my profession, I don’t look at my daily page views as anything more than they are – a snapshot of who happened to pass by on any given day. 

I don’t know how long the average blogger lasts, but having been at this since way back when Myspace was a thing, I’ve got to be one of the old timers by this point. The focus of blogging has certainty changed since I started tapping out my first proto posts is in 2006. The ones I come across now have a lot more marketing flare, topical focus, and longer form writing than they did back then. God save me from ever feeling the need to be slickly marketed or well put together.

It’s well that this is something I’m just doing for me. Here in a couple of weeks I’ll roll up the full year’s numbers and they’re going to look anemic next to last year’s “state of the blog.” I’m surprisingly ok with that.

I’m still here. I’m still writing. I’m still offering up thoughtful and not-so-thoughtful takes on whatever abject fuckery is going on in the world and manages to catch my attention. I’m doing, at least one these pages, exactly what I want to be doing.