This is my 800th post on blogger.com (aka Blogspot) at this URL, or so says Blogger's dashboard. But in truth, I've taken down certain obsolete blogs, and some of the 800 are unpublished drafts, so you won't actually find 800 posts live. Thus, I don't know whether it's legit to celebrate 800 posts.
As this blog enters its tenth year, the Blogger analytics dashboard says I've gotten 5,267,316 total views, most of them coming in the last 3 years. The all-time traffic graph looks like this (but note, it goes back only to 2010):
I don't know that I should totally believe those numbers. Google Analytics (GA) numbers are lower than Blogger.com analytics numbers, which I'm pretty sure means Blogger.com counts bots, malware, and miscellaneous programmatic visits, whereas GA doesn't. (For GA to work, a piece of JavaScript needs to execute in a browser somewhere. There's no "browser somewhere" in the case of a bot crawl.) Certain posts of mine seem to be honeypots that attract bots. What if over half my visits are from bots? Do I still celebrate the traffic numbers? Do I get an SEO prize? Or am I just gifted at writing pages that bots love?
Traffic was so high last year, I took some steps to discourage bot traffic. I put up some page redirections and took down some posts that were apparently acting as bot-honeypots. That's why the traffic graph takes a sharp dip starting around a year ago. (Even so, ongoing "legit" traffic looks to be stabilizing at a little over 2,000 visitors a day.)
All by way of saying, I don't know that there's anything to celebrate, really.
But hey, I can still fog a mirror. Let's celebrate that. (Way to go, me!)
I have two books coming out in a week. Let's celebrate that, for sure.
My lovely wife, who had a psychotic break and was in the hospital last week, is home, finally, and the new meds are kinda/sorta doing the job. She's lucid, for a change. Most of the time. I'll definitely celebrate that.
I'll be doing more BigThink.com pieces soon. Traffic at my other blog (Author-Zone.com) is up. I'll soon be launching a support site for the two books that are coming out (stay tuned for details).
Twitter has been good to me. I have 312,000 legit followers and my account hasn't yet been hacked. That's good news, right?
I have two grown kids who've both landed in really good jobs, in this difficult economy. My son is an auditor at Bowtie Cinemas headquarters (Ridgefield, CT) and my daughter works for a successful startup that acts as a matchmaker for pharma companies looking to hook up with clinical research orgs, in Boston.
So really, there's plenty to celebrate.
And I guess that's one thing you have to tell yourself constantly. There are things to celebrate in your life. You can't just look at the down side all the time. Give yourself permission to look at the bright side once in a while. It's there. It really is. You just have to glance at it now and then.
Please visit Author-Zone.com when you have a chance. Thanks!
