Nobody reads my blog

The number don’t lie.

This blog platform tracks “kudos” and subscribers. The social media on which I post also track “likes,” “retweets,” and “shares.”

And what do these quantifying/reporting/tracks tools reveal?

Nobody reads my blog.

And that’s OK with me.

Like multiplying monkeys drumming, we humans are finding more things to quantify and more ways to quantify them. What was once the work of a clerk counting inventory in a widget factory is now the daily norm for someone counting their “friends” online.

What happens when counting “friends” online becomes the norm?

We begin to conflate math with meaning, quantity with quality, totals with totality. Does the fact that I have 1,162 Facebook “friends” total say anything about the totality of those friendships? What does that number say about the friendships themselves? What does that number say about any one of those people? About me?

Numbers, however, are easy. And they’re addictive. Addictive and easy are a wicked combination. Going for numbers feels nice and it requires relatively little work on my part. Not like relationships, that require difficult things like compromise, empathy, listening, and–worst of all–personal change and sometimes sacrifice.

It’s also easier to share someone else’s opinion, photograph, video, etc., than share my own. Let them do all the work, take all of the risk. The math works better in my favor. For sharing their work, I get all the credit from my “friends” who “like it.” And if my “friends” don’t “like” it, I lose nothing. All I had to do was push the “share” button. That’s the extent of my emotional, intellectual, and social investment.

Which brings me back to my blog. The one that nobody reads.

If the point of writing a blog is to be liked and shared–insofar as the numbers show it–then this blog is a failure.

What if writing a blog is simply about writing a blog? What if it’s about the creativity, the discipline, the research, the self-reflection, the thinking that goes into writing something? What if it’s not about getting known as much as it is about getting to know myself through writing?

What if the only “like” that matters is my own?

Nobody reads my blog and that’s OK. I write it for nobody.

And that’s what makes it sacred and special to this somebody.