I guess this happens to every blogger in the process of trying to get an "audience" in the early going of their blog. Last Thursday I was contemplating the stats for my blog...and for the first time since TVL fired up last November, I wondered if I was wasting my time. I quickly jotted down the following thoughts (cleaned up for syntax and spelling).
Site hits are down. Comments have fallen off the map. I had my biggest day [that Thursday] only because of a Ted Kennedy picture I'd embedded in a previous post (apparently other bloggers were looking for a TK picture to embed in their take on the announcement that he has cancer). I've been doing this almost 6 months and have yet to attract a coterie of readers. I have 2 regulars - 2! One of them has software problems entering comments. The other travels a lot. Maybe 6 months isn't a long enough period to figure out if I'm actually going to be a success at this. But right now, I'm writing for myself, 2 regulars, and an audience of chirping crickets.As I might say, were someone else to write something like that, boo-frickin'-hoo!.
Then, on the way home from work, I was listening to a radio talk show I never listen to -- especially at that hour. I only tuned in because the show I was listening to had gone to commercial. An author was talking about his book, something to the effect that randomness is everywhere in life and shows itself in the "luck" we perceive in life. He went on to talk about how randomness came into play with Roger Maris and his amazing 61 homer season, how randomness played into the career of Bruce Willis, as well as other examples.
But the one tidbit of information from this interview that really stuck with me was this: just because you are failing now does not make you a failure. Keep at it and let randomness do its part.
As a Christian, I understand that much of what we call "luck" and this author documents as "randomness" can be attributed to the hand of God intervening on our behalf. I was very much uplifted by the words of the author, and have decided to keep at it and know that at some point an audience will either develop or it won't. Besides, I owe it to my two regulars to keep at it.
