If you read at all about the secrets to
a “successful” blog, you will find the following tips among many
others. First, you (the soon-to-be successful blogger) should find a
subject niche, the narrower the better, and hopefully one a) for
which there is a ravenous and large population waiting to consume;
and b) that no one else is serving. Better to cover a single topic
in great and painful detail than to write aimlessly about whatever
crosses your mind. Second, update frequently. You people are
insatiable, demanding fresh content by the minute, and you have an
attention span bordering on a medical disfunction. At the very
least, the blogger should post consistently. Third, engage on social media. Get out
there, press the digital flesh, and drive traffic to your site.
Comment on others' blogs, always including a link to some value added
prose you recently posted on your own site. Meet, greet, tweet. And
fourth, try not to gloat as you sit back counting all the cash
pouring in from corporate powers desperate to have just a skiff of
your digital savvy rub off on their brands. (Note, there is a
possible fifth tip that should be mentioned: ignore the fact that the
blog is dead, killed by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et al.)
Any long-time readers know I don't hew
too closely to these guidelines, which might explain my blog
statistics. If you are reading this I probably know you on a
first-name basis, and since I only know, like, four people, I don't
think the laws of physics allow but so many page visits to accrue.
But Google never-the-less provides me with analytical tools. You may
recall a prior campaign on my part to collect readers from as many
countries as I could based on those statistics, which purport to tell
me the country of origin for each page visit. I've since learned
that most of those visits are probably attempts at reverse phishing,
explaining the numerous page visits from Russia. But the truly
curious aspect of the Google analytics is that the vast majority of
my page visits appear to have occurred three-years prior to my first
post.
While I appreciate those 897 page views
in August 2007, I'm left questioning the accuracy of Google's
reporting.
In any case, this is all a long way of
saying that, in an earnest campaign to get my fair share of all that
sweet, sweet, corporate blogging money, I have decided to get back to
basics. This all started as what could be called a cancer blog, and
it is time to revisit my roots. Luckily, I just had the pleasure of a
PET scan. The good doctor wanted to take a look at my insides as he
can only with the help of a radioactively tagged sugar injected into
my circulatory system, so I took sedatives and emitted gamma rays for
a half-day or so, some portion of which were captured by what I
suspect is a very expensive scanner. Last week I met with my
oncologist to discuss the scan, and I left disappointed that I will
not have an excuse to just stay home, nap, and catch up on the Wire
now that HBO's original programming has been added to the Amazon
Prime service. But, silver-lining to every cloud and all, at least
I'm still free of cancer cells. So there is that. But I may never
see the Wire.
And now bored of the laser-like focus
of a single subject blog, I'm moving on to a bunch of other topics
that I occasionally touch on here, like: traveling somewhere that I
expect to be warm, but it is instead cold. (See here and here,
for example.) We have been having an incredible spring in Anchorage,
with lots of warm days and opportunities to legitimately wear shorts
and sandals because they are more comfortable than the alternative
(and I'm thinking long pants and shoes, here; nudity is no longer a
legitimate alternative for me), and not only as a chilly act of
defiant hope, which is the best I can muster many years. Last
weekend was more of the same. We woke up early on Saturday, the sun
stroking skin to life. To take advantage, we packed the car and
drove north to Denali National Park, adding the pleasures of a road
trip to the pleasures of a warm breeze on a blue-bird day. The drive
was stunning. The Alaska Range erupts from its southern drainages in
cascades of topography, peaks etched against the sky in high
contrast. The road north frames views that pull instinctive
exclamations and lead to impromptu high-fives, and we drove with jaws
appreciatively dropped in our laps. But the mountains do what they
do. Clouds started to build. Late afternoon, the skies opened up,
rain coming in roving downpours that organized into a night-long
drizzle. By morning, we climbed out of our tent and got to walk in
a combination of sleet and snow.
Or another topic I frequently explore:
running. My first race of the season, the Race Judicata, came and went, a 5-k at which
I hoped to, but did not, crack 20 minutes. Instead, I ran a 20:27.
Or a 51:35. I can't be sure. The official results have me listed
twice. Which makes me wonder if the race director relied on Google
for the statistics.
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