A Little Bit Of Navel Gazing - This Post Falls Into The "Life" Part Of The Subtitle

As the end of the year approaches, I always like to do a little navel gazing and see what changes the last twelve months have wrought. If you look on the sidebar, you will see that the biggest change is the number of posts on the blog this year. In the first two years I had this place, I didn't manage to post more than a handful of times; this year I am knocking on the door of a hundred posts. Why?

In high school, whenever anyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I only had one answer: a writer. (Notice I didn't say "good" writer, so in a way I have succeeded.) Even though I wanted to be a writer, I knew that if I got a degree in wordsmithing that I would someday end up squatting in a tent on public property in some sort of disorganized protest action against the government. Instead, I thought I would bang out some life experience so that I would have something to write about. Sadly that didn't work out well either; none of the prose I wrote was worthwhile and now it waits in the attic to be discovered (and then thrown away quickly) by my heirs.

This really is for the best. 

I gave up fiction after a while, and now write poems - though I have been submitting to poetry journals and magazines for years with no results. However, since I have increased the rate I post here, I am pretty sure that in any given month in the latter part of 2011 this blog has had more readers than any poetry magazine that "politely declines" my verse. How many readers do I have? In December 2010, I had approximately 81 views for the entire month. In 2011, I have had over 2300 views in the same month, which is pretty impressive (to me anyway).

So what does all of this mean? As the year comes to a close, despite my best attempts at making "art", it is the stuff I post here that people want to read. It may be that I am just the only girl left in the bar at two in the morning, but I like to think that maybe people actually want to take my blog posts home and introduce them to their mother. Even better, the return visit rate tells me that for the most part, people are coming back to read what I write again and again. That being the case, I want to thank everyone reading for being a part of making a mulleted high school kid's dreams come true. I plan to pay you back by continuing to put articles on the internet for you to "enjoy" in 2012. It's obvious that the more I post, the more I grow; at this point, I need the validation that my readers provide. If I start losing readers, I will get depressed and that will lead me to write more bad poetry (that won't be published anyway) - and obviously no one wants that.

I have plans and an outline for what I will be doing over the next twelve months (something I haven't had before) and I hope that you will continue to indulge me as you graciously have thus far. We are at the bottom of the first hill and the chain has just caught the hook under the car. Please keep your hands and head inside the blog at all times, and if the excitement gets to be too much for you, just scream. I know I will.