Blogging

I rarely look at my site statistics.  Mine is a small. personal blog, written mostly as therapy, and I have never actively sought to grow it.  But recently I had cause to look at the statistics and found some strange and wondrous things:

• More people read my blog on days I don’t post something than the days I do.  (I have no idea what this means)

• Only about 10% of all visitors leave a comment.  This kind of surprised me because I always thought I knew most of the people reading - because they commented.  And I know I have a couple of readers who generally email me  if they want to respond or question something that I wrote.  But apparently the majority of people read and never comment.  I do that on quite a number of blogs myself.

• Most people come to my blog from “no referring link” or from feedly or from typing in the name directly.  A scary number of people come randomly by googling something (keyword unavailable) that brings them to a post I wrote called “The problem with not having breasts” These folks never read more pages or comment.   I don’t even want to think about what they are really looking for but I am sure they are disappointed when they get to my page.

Anyway, all this got me thinking.  I have often wavered about keeping the blog up.  There was a time in my life when I really needed writing to process all the therapy work I was doing and the support and friends I found though that process was amazing.  But now my life has settled into a rather average routine and I find that I don’t have the overriding need to get things out of my head and onto paper.

On the other hand, I know that writing was one of the major keys in my therapy success and my gratitude practice of the Full of Grace posts keep me centered.  So I am also frightened to give it up.  

Then I was thinking about why other people blog and I know there are probably as many reasons as there are blogs.  But one thing I think most have in common is that they enjoy getting comments and feedback.  I know I appreciate when someone takes the time to write a few words, or just say they stopped by.  I have developed some truly nice friendships with many of my commenters and some very mutually supportive relationships with people who suffer PTSD and/or are dealing with breast cancer.

And so (yes this train of thought post has a destination)  I will probably continue this blog even though it has become rather dull (in my opinion) and I am going to make a conscious effort to read more blogs and to leave more comments for others.  

If you know of any blogs I might be particularly interested in, please let me know.  And if you are one of those who read but never comment, please, if you feel comfortable enough, say hello.  I would be very happy to meet you.