Five Years of Mediocrity -- How Did I Survive?

I was reminded of a very important fact today by SQT of Fantasy & Scifi Lovin' News & Reviews and John Scalzi of Whatever (and writer of those funny things made of paper which we call books):  my blog is old.  But it's not that old.  SQT has been at this blogging thing a year longer than I and Scalzi has been doing it for thirteen years -- which makes my five look rather pathetic, don't you think?

But in the interest of celebrating something good, I'd like to say how shocking it is that I'm still here after five years.  Even more shocking is when and how I started.  On September 3rd, 2006, I wrote my first blogger blog post entitled "Yes!"  Apparently I was excited to have found it within myself the energy to put nearly incoherent words into a magic Internet box and press the "publish" button.  I was also excited about having a mystical mission to entertain the billions of people who still don't know I exist.

And what followed?  "Good News & Bad News," in which I mourned the death of Steve Irwin and pointed out my supreme ignorance as a writer by stating that I don't write outlines because they are oh so lame.  Then again, I still don't do outlines...  After that, I wrote "Names and Things" -- the first post where I had something coherent to say, but also the first post in which I proclaimed my
love for reptiles.  There are two pictures there of animals I either used to or still have (one of which was stolen by my evil, wicked mother from the West).

But things picked up from there.  I started a novel (The World in the Satin Bag), which turned out to be a piece of high fantasy YA garbage.  I'm still working on editing that junkfest, and so far I've made it 100 times better -- and, yes, there are short stories coming and a video (I swear).  And in five years I've had a few "hits," some of the "this is interesting" variety, and others of the "you stupid bastard, I hate you" variety.  I've stirred up quite a lot of trouble, said some dumb stuff, pissed off a fair share of people, amused some and made at least one or two laugh.

What do I have to show for all of this?  229,815 unique visitors from 178 countries (that leaves about 26 I've yet to touch) and 334,095 page views, 4,343 comments, and 1,884 published posts (including this one).

What can I say?  That's not bad at all, right?

But none of that could be done without you weirdos who have been following this blog, whether recently or since the beginning-ish.  So I'd like to say thanks to all of you for your comments, page views, and link sharing.  You all rock.

Here's to another five years!  Maybe by year six I'll have reached 500,000 unique visitors.  Or not.  Whatever...

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