Chasing Numbers, Catching Love

I checked my stats. I wasn’t particularly fond of it due to: first, my lack of familiarity on how to use it and second, my lack of interest—which is the result of trying to save myself from being either discouraged or motivated by something outside of myself. I want my motivation to come from inside so it will always be sustainable. As I wrote about in the post “To Blog or Not to Blog”, I want to blog for myself first and let everything else follow. That may sound selfish but think about it, can what I write be of any interest or help to others if I, myself, was only pressured towards writing it? If I was too focused on external factors, will I not become uncomfortable writing about the madness of my own thoughts? Will I not be lead towards putting others’ own ideas and society’s impression first? Nothing is totally wrong with that. It’s just that…the brand, this blog may grow but something will else will die—the deranged poet, the visionary, the writer will die. Michael Cunninghum warned about that in his novel, “The Hours“:

“Oh, pride, pride. I was so wrong. It defeated me. It simply proved insurmountable. There was so much, oh, far too much for me. I mean, there’s the weather, there’s the water and the land, there are the animals, and the buildings, and the past and the future, there’s space, there’s history. There’s this thread or something caught between my teeth, there’s the old woman across the way, did you notice she switched the donkey and the squirrel on her windowsill? And, of course, there’s time. And place. And there’s you, Mrs. D. I wanted to tell part of the story of part of you. Oh, I’d love to have done that.”

“Richard. You wrote a whole book.”

“But everything’s left out of it, almost everything. And then I just stuck on a shock ending. Oh, now, I’m not looking for sympathy, really. We want so much, don’t we?”

-Richard & Mrs. D, The Hours, Michael Cunningham, 1998

But wait, I got a little derailed. I was about to tell you about my Blogging 201 assignment. So I checked my stats but refused to “analyze”. Goodness, this class just asked me to audit (what used to be my day-job) for the last two days, and now I’m being asked to analyze (what my current day-job is purely made of)! I thought when I’m in blog world that I can escape from them for a while but look at how unforgivingly clingy they can be. (There I am diverting again from that assignment! Focus, focus, focus!)

Whatever I say, I still needed to do the assignment. So here are three good-to-know facts I’ve gathered from my stats page:

1. The highest viewed post ever was “How Much Does Mr Right Really Cost?“. It was viewed even more than the Home Page. More surprisingly, it has also garnered the highest number of shares. It’s funny because I shared this post in Facebook to comply to one of those Blogging 101 assignments and it barely had 10 likes and only 1 share–which last time I checked had only 4 likes and no shares. But there was a good count of viewers that my blog stats registered that day. They clicked on that post, read it and shared it. My, my.. what does this tell me? We are a society filled with people who are, try-as-we-may-to-deny-it, suckers for LOVE and happy endings. The assignment says “Give ‘Em What They Want“, well then… Hold on tight, ’cause I’ll give more love!

2. The blog has gained some traffic from my Instagram account. I haven’t linked it to my blog but I have the address displayed on my instagram profile. Wow, that just means social media links really help. I should be working seriously on this for the next few days.

3. Views, follows and comments peaked when I started using tags and categories. Well, this isn’t surprising at all but yes, I wasted a great deal of time writing and publishing under the default “uncategorized” category and NO tags.

Okay, item #3 made me seem really funny so you can laugh but hey, before you judge me, I was intending to concentrate on writing during my first blogging days and had little interest to know whether I got applauded for it. I said that not out of hypocrisy but out of insecurity. I wanted to be more confident before I let my thoughts out into the world for their scrutiny. Not that I am confident about my confidence level now, I still struggle. The difference is, now I try to keep to myself this thought: Handsome stats shouldn’t be the goal, it should only be the bonus that comes with reaching the goal.

But then again, it won’t really hurt to visit that stat page once in a while. If only to fine-tune those plans already drafted inside our heads.

Featured Photo is taken from www.wallzical.com