Thoughts on years of blogging.

When I first started this blog, way back in mid-December 2008, it was because I figured I needed some sort of place to hang my virtual-hat as I ventured into the world of erotica. I'd started entering Alison Tyler's short short story contests, and other folks seemed to have a home base, so I would too!

At first I was pretty sure I was just talking to myself. And I was okay with that. I didn't get any comments that December. But I was venturing out and commenting on other blogs and thought "well, at some point someone will follow me home." That sounds kinda creepy, doesn't it? LOL.

I did my first post of 2009 on Jan. 5. That day I'd sent off my first erotica submission, a story I'd written many years before. But I got 2 comments from other erotica author/bloggers. The very first one was from Jeremy Edwards. That's cool, because I couldn't remember who had first commented on my blog (I went looking as I started this post), and now Jeremy is someone who, with his lovely wife Helia Brookes, are real world friends. As are many of the friends I've made through the virtual world of erotica blogs.

The other comment was from EllaRegina, whose entry in that first contest, spurred my entrance. I did get to meet her IRL, but she's been scarce these days. I hope she is well.

That year, 2009, was my most prolific year blogging, with 233 posts. I was drawn out of my shell, and that was the year I befriended artist Randy Lagana, whose work I was familiar with from a project that had been abandoned about four or five years before. I wanted to use some of his photography, etc. to illustrate my blog. I've never been one much for grabbing things off the web. I take/took a lot of my own photographs and if I used somebody else's work, I asked first. For the most part. That's just how I am.

I did an interview series with Randy, in three parts: 1, 2, 3. I should probably go back and read them. It's been awhile since I have. I had coffee with Randy this morning. We're now working together on the revival of that long-ago abandoned project, a poetry and photography journal: Stark. Randy has been taking nude photos of the poets that are included in the collection, some of them from the original selection of poets, some new. I'm one of the original ones, and I've not had my photo shoot yet. Soon.

He met me when I was new at all this, and full of enthusiasm and tentativeness. Now, not many people read this blog. I don't post often, and I'm sure those two things are interrelated. This post is an attempt to correct that. I started off blogging despite having no readers. In a way that gave me the freedom to write whatever I felt like.

Think I'm gonna try that again.

Thinking about those red pins

Folks from all over seem to visit my blog. This is just "recent" visitors. There seems to be two clusters of what are probably my regular readers, those on the East Coast of the US and those in Northern Europe & UK. I've always found it interesting that I don't have more readers on the West Coast. 

Out of the last 500 visits, roughly since sometime in January, about 85% are from the US. No surprise. Then in descending order: United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, India, Germany, Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Luxembourg, Italy, Peru, Croatia, Switzerland, Morocco, Czech Republic, Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Columbia, Chile, Japan, Netherlands, Russian Federation, Spain, Portugal, Malaysia, Belgium, and Indonesia. (Note: I'm not sure of the timeframe of the above map, but it sure doesn't reflect my last 500 visitors.)

Over the past couple of years of doing this, I've probably been missed by a few countries (don't think I've had any hits from Antarctica), but not many. I've not kept track of the states, I'm sure that I've had at least one visit from each of the 50. 

I know who some folks are, since they leave comments and I can match them up, but most visitors are unknowns. I often wonder if they like my blog, or find it so-so, or find it a complete and total disappointment because they were looking for porn, and did not find it here. I even recently wrote a search word poem using the most common search words. 

In the past year, I haven't worked that hard at promoting my blog. Not sure why. Maybe because I'm happy with it being somewhat small and intimate. Not sure I'd want an insanely popular blog. I know I could do things to make mine more popular, but that's never been my aim. Though I admit that I've always liked seeing the numbers of visitors creep up at times. 

But more than that, I like it when someone "discovers" my blog, and reads back in it, comments, and keeps coming back. I've made "friends" that way. Connections with other writers. Probably because it's other writers who connect with what I write here. 

Sometimes I feel guilty because I haven't been able to keep up with other's blogs. Blogs written by friends that I enjoy when I do have the time. I wonder if they think the same things I do as they type away: Who the hell is going to read this and will they care? 

But, that's not why I do this. Yes, it is, but not completely. I do this because I have that writerly compulsion to "not shut up." Even when the greek chorus of voices is telling me to stop. Stop writing, stop sharing, stop going on and on when nobody is listening (that's the evil voice that I listen to far too often).

I do this because I have to.