To Russia, Malaysia, UK, Australia, Poland.... With Love

My little blog is not the most viewed or the most popular of blogs on the Internet.  It has 8 followers, which, after all these years is, to say the least, somewhat disappointing.  Granted, it was never really intended as anything more than an outlet through which I could practice writing.  And it’s basically a public diary of thoughts, events and observations.  So, yeah, I don’t really expect it to rock the blogging world in any significant way. 

Sometimes I think that I don’t want to do it any more.  Sometimes I say to myself:  Self, what’s the point?  If you want to keep a diary, just go buy a notebook. 

I have a stack of notebooks in my closet that are filled with my musings from days gone by.  Mostly they contain rants about people who annoyed me on any given day and pep talks to myself, ridiculous attempts to convince myself that all was well.  It so wasn’t!  I keep meaning to burn them.  One day I will haul them out, rip them up and feed them to the fire.  

I do have a little notebook that I keep by my bed.  I jot down the ideas that pop into my head as I’m trying to go to sleep.  What is it about that time of day?  I’m tired and looking forward to getting a good sleep and just when I turn out the light and my head hits the pillow – Bam! – 6 billion synapses detonate, giving birth to some fabulous new brainchild.  Ninety-six percent of these late-night notions are not so fabulous come the light of day.  But the other 4% are well worth the trouble of turning the light back on and making note of, if only to facilitate a peaceful and sufficient amount of sleep.   Now if I could just recover my penmanship so I could decipher them again, I could very well become wealthy someday. 

I follow several blogs.  They are inspiring, funny and sometimes poignant.   And I admit to a small pang of envy when I see how many followers some of them have.   What are these people saying that so many people are interested in reading?  What am I not saying? 

One of the features of my blog is stats.  I check them often.  On a good day, they tell me that 40 people have read my blog.  When I look at the audience, these people are mostly from Canada and the US, which is expected and makes sense.  Then there are the people from… Russia?  Malaysia?  Australia?  The UK?  Poland?  People in Poland read my blog!  How?  Why?  Who are these people?  And why don’t they “follow”?  Why don’t they comment?  Hardly anyone ever leaves a comment.   

I’m genuinely curious about these people.  I sincerely want to know what they think.  I welcome feedback, even criticism as long as it’s constructive and not nasty.  Is it a language issue?   

When I first started blogging on Blogspot, I used to get comments from someone, but they were written in some sort of oriental script.  I tried copying and pasting them into translation generators, but never found the right language.  Once I did get a bunch of gibberish, random words that made no sense whatsoever.  Then the comments stopped. 

Maybe these people are not actually reading my posts.  Maybe they stumble upon them, but don’t read them at all.  I can see the eye-roles now…  “Not another blog!”  Click! 

But if they do…  Well, how cool is that?  The idea of people so far away, complete strangers reading my words is just a little bit thrilling.   

I do enjoy blogging.  Even though Yemalla’s Moon serves no real purpose other than as a stage for me to vent what’s on my mind and share what I’m up to, I like doing it.  I guess, in the big scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter who reads these words or what they think or who they are; that isn’t really the point.  But if you do happen to stop by and you do happen to take the time to read whatever has kept me from whatever else I probably should be doing instead, please say hi at least.  I really would like to hear from you as well.