« GOOSEBUMPS | Main | THE MAN WHO CHANGED EVERYTHING »
July 30, 2004
THANK YOU
First, let me just tell you that I had to work very late tonight (sent my last work related e-mail at 12:12 am), and so I missed Kerry's speech. I have two e-mails in my inbox already from people who saw it and loved it, so I assume it went well... but I wasn't able to observe it, so I can't review it.
There was just one thing I wanted to do tonight ... and that is to say thank you. Because it was one year ago tonight (July 29) that - with encouragement from the Doc - that this blog was born.
As I explained in the comments during our debates last week, I really just tossed this thing up on the cyberwall because I was afraid that writing about business every day was hurting my creativity, and I wanted to reinvigorate my creative writing skills. So a blog was born... and no one noticed.
Not at first, anyway. Between July 29 and mid-December, I only had a total of about 1800 hits on this site - and most of them, I suspect, were me refreshing the page while I tried to figure out formatting and kept reading what I'd written. 1800 in five months... just a little unknown corner of the blogosphere.
In December, Doc suggested that since I am usually complaining about something, I should change the name of the site from "Christopher's Take" to "The Chronic Curmudgeon" - and so I did, and an alter ego was born. And then we got our first "break" -- when Tim discovered"the other Tim Blair" -- this one a very right wing commentator from Australia who makes my frequent commenter friend Alan look like a Kennedy or a Wellstone. The moderate American Tim Blair wrote to the right wing Aussie Tim Blair and they mutually linked blogs... and when I made the mistake of heading to the Aussie site and commenting, I started getting angry crossover hits from conservatives who wanted to come to my site to tell me how wrong I was. ;-)
At about the same time, I discovered some of the Blog Search Engines, like Blogorama and BlogWise, so I signed up for the hell of it... and between December 13 and February 13, the hit counterjumped from 1800 to 4800. Okay, 3000 in two months isn't much really, but to me it seemed like a lot ... 1500 times a month, someone came by my site to see what I had written. And at least 750 of those each month weren'tme. I figured this was pretty cool, so I started trying to do a little more.
The first blog I found in the directories that I wanted to link to was JoFish over at The Democratic Veteran. From JoFish, I found Marine's Girl. A little while later, I signed up for BlogCritics. And suddenly, people started dropping by... and this little writing exercise became something more important, and something I took more seriously than just a writing exercise.
Today, on the one year anniversary, the hit counter reads 24,462... more than 20,000 viewsin the last five months, and I think that up to 5,000 of them might not even be me refreshing the page. Actually, from SiteMeter I can tell that about 100 people a day come here (that's visits, not page views). We've developed a little community here...
Beyond Doc, Tim, Erika and I hurling insults at one another, we get regular (or unleaded) thoughts from MG, Mike, Brenda H, Nancy, cousin Joe, Unca Jer, Shari, Andrew, Alan H, Sarah, Mileah, Jillian, Brent, Pemagnet (and by the way, pemagnet, I finally think I know who you are!), ValorKnight (and by the way, what an absolute honor that a Marine in Iraq actually has spent some of his occasional few minutes with Net access looking at my little blog... you wanna talk about "I'm not worthy???!!!"), WallyCoxLives, Pete (who's a much better writer than I am, dammit - I'll hold it against him forever! ... seriously, guys, for sheer quality writing, Pete's as good as it gets- and he's less politicalthan I am too!), UsefulGuy, Ethan, Ptiza, Brian, and even my mother (the infamous "Curmymom").
All I can say is thank you to one and all of you for reading every now and then, and for taking the time to comment now and then (or an awful lot as the case may be). Those of you who stop by often but don't comment, please do once in a while. (This means you, Campbell.) We really don't bite - although Alan might disagree with that. ;-)
Thank you for reading, thank you for letting me know what you think, thank you for the confidence and ego boost that come from knowing that there are at least a few people who actually want to read what you had to write today, and thanks for the encouragement (from those of you who have encouraged me). This has been a great experience this past year, and you guys have made it so. Here's to another healthy and safe year for everyone. .................The 'Mudge
P.S. Don't let this show of sentimentality fool you. I'm still going to bitch about everything.
P.P.S. Anyone who knows how to reformat a freaking blog site, please e-mail me at thechroniccurmudegon@hotmail.com. I'm sick of this grey-on-blue format, it's time to get better font and a white background like civilized people. But seeing as how I have about as many technical smarts as Doc has hairs on his head, it's never going to happen unless someone helps me through it step by step.
