Perfect posts, perplexity, and a resolution

Well, colour me tickled pink: Dawn at Belle of the Blog nominated my Christmas Goodies post for a Perfect Post award. You can read the rest of the perfect posts here. Thanks, Dawn! Can I tell you I've always wanted to win a Perfect Post? And now I have! Happy New Year!



Dawn is new to the 'breach. A lot of people are new to the breach actually -- as some of you noticed, out of the gazillions of blogs on Blogger, this one got a 'Blog of Note' designation in early November. It had an impact on my traffic:

[fancy photoshopped sitemeter graphic will go here once frickin-frackin Blogger lets me upload]

It's funny. One minute we were thirty or so people, more commenters than lurkers and the occasional confused Google searcher. The next minute, there were 3000 people, then about 1000 people, then ... then about 60-100 people a day, every day, even when I was only posting once a week. I'm on an awful lot of blogrolls, suddenly. I get a lot more Google search hits. I get a lot more email from people who want me to help them maximise their blogs, or launder their money. Some jackass ripped off my content to get some of my traffic onto his own crapass blog [obviously, I'm not giving him a link.].

I was a little freaked out.

Does that sound disingenuous? A lot of people work really hard to increase their traffic, either to build an audience or to make a little more money from their ads or both or whatever. Not me -- I was pretty comfortable with my posse of people, and because I pretty much knew everyone, I share stuff that I would among my intimates -- actually, more, because this space has been so supportive and honest and I had become part of such a strong community.

Anyhow, I've been thinking about what it means to have the Blogger spotlight shine on me. It was a kind of publicity I have never courted, didn't expect, and accepted ambivalently. In the days of the 3000 hits, I got some weird and irrelevant comments, and it felt like a busload of strangers was in the bathroom with me, handing me novelty toilet paper and commenting on my technique. I've had to (as we all do, sooner or later) rethink my own ideas about publishing photos of Munchkin, and how anonymous I wanted to make myself in terms of geographical hints, how much of my life I should share in this now much-more-public space. It's made me a little more self-conscious of how I write. I worried I might lose my regular readers in the vast fog of Blogger traffic.

Honestly, though? I've never been good with new people, mostly because I'm awkward and shy--remember how much BlogHer freaked me out? But most of my returning new readers are really nice people: Cloud, thank you for that link to Ask Moxie the other day. It was really useful. Raz, your compliment on my Christmas post made my whole week. New Girl? You're living my life, one year back, and I'm so glad if anything I write here helps you get through the screeching. Lurkers stepped into the light to support me in the Great and Continuing Condo Development Debacle of 2007-2008. And of course, the peeps who've been accumulating here, who I've been getting to know did not disappear, but continued to be awesome.

Things have calmed down now, mostly. My traffic is levelling off in the 50-100 hits range, low enough that I can track who's coming and from where, if I want to.

So my New Year's resolution, blog-wise, is this: start returning some of those visits that resulted in comments from fresh faces, new people, stumblers-upon-Mimi. It'll be nice to get to know you.