What's It Good For?

What started as a travel and what's up with Bob blog, has evolved into something that seems to carry it's own responsibility. The blog says "feed me", and in those times when I have thoughts or feelings that I need to get out of my head and onto paper for me to look at, I comply. Other times when I'm feeling happy about something and just want to share, the posts are generally easy to read and usually easy to write as well. The difficult ones, when I appear to have something to work out, are also "easy " to write, often pouring out of me more easily than all the rest, but they're often fairly difficult to read. I'm sure the responses out there range from confusion (wondering what the heck I'm getting at) to horror ("I can't believe he's saying this stuff out loud"), to sympathy, to pity, to appreciation for my candor, to sadness over my lack of a need for privacy. I can see the comments that are offered in response to the posts, but I'll never know for sure the feelings of those who never comment. I do know that my blog has had an effect in some way on the course of my life over the last ten months and I can feel it tugging on me now, it says "feed me". I'm compelled by the call to feed, but also by the feeling that there are eyes upon me waiting for my next move. At this moment, it feels somehow paralyzing. My response to the blog's call today is simply to write about it rather than to write to, or more accurately for, it. So, here goes...

Since last May when the blog started, it's been visited by 1519 individual viewers, with over 11,000 visits. At it's height in mid-August it was averaging 65 visits a day with the current number being right around 30. This month, the blogs been viewed just under 1,000 times by 146 people in mostly the US and Canada. Not huge, by any standards. I do at times wonder who are these people who find this so interesting? I know some of the regulars, by their comments and emails, but that only accounts for maybe a dozen of them. Would it be better if instead of posting to a public blog, I just found out who was reading and limited the blog to them? I can actually do that.

I agree with those that are uncomfortable with my airing of the dirty laundry, so to speak, on such a public forum, and I'm seriously considering making accommodations for these concerns. Then again I also think that such a move might remove some of the "feed me" factor from my blogging schedule. Maybe not knowing is part of the fun, it's definitely part of the danger. The other obvious option here is to have a happy, mostly trouble free, life where the need to purge my woes onto paper would be unnecessary and also unheard of. That's my first choice and really exactly what I was shooting for.

It's been great having this forum to, at times, work out my issues, but really, to quote someone special, what's it good for?

~B