Every once in a great while, I will see a spike in my blog statistics where suddenly, for no apparent reason, the views on a particular day jump by 1000% or even more. During the first years of blogging, I could see where views came from, what was googled, or what link was clicked to get here, but apparently, privacy laws have now eliminated much of the practice. Sometimes I can see what posts were read, but when there is a big jump, all I see is that the views were for the homepage of my blog, not any specific article.
So I’m left wondering what it was I said that struck such a chord. I know it’s not something I wrote on that day, because this even happened a few times when this blog was all but dormant. Since no one left a comment on any post (which few people do any more), I’m left in the dark.
I’d think this was an algorithmic anomaly or maybe bots trolling the site since sometimes the jump signifies a single view, but sometimes the statistics show that people stayed to check out another post or two. Why? I have no idea. In the past when this happened, I’d congratulate myself on having said something that resonated with people, but now I wonder if such a jump in views has anything to do with me at all.
For a non-blog example: it used to be that when people were kind to me, I’d be pleased with myself, thinking that their kindness was because of something I did, my own kindness, perhaps, then it dawned on me that they were kind to me simply because they themselves were kind. It had nothing to do with me.
Is it possible the jump in views has nothing to do with me or anything I wrote? It certainly has nothing to do with any promotion I’m doing because I gave up promoting this blog years ago when Facebook banned it for being spam. Sometimes I like to think this blog could be considered S.P.A.M. — Special, Perspicacious, Astute, Meaningful — at least to some people, but that’s just me being self-indulgent. But, come to think of it, writing this blog itself is a form of self-indulgence. And so perhaps is wondering what brings people here.
I don’t suppose it matters why people come, at least it shouldn’t matter to me, though I can hope it matters to those who stop by. In any case, I can only write what I feel, throw my words out to the winds of the internet, and what happens after that has nothing to do with me.
It’s like that saying: “What others think of you is none of your business.” Perhaps nothing that happens here after I post is any of my business. Though that doesn’t mean I can’t be curious about what brings people here.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.
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