Popular, I am not

I am a member of the Blogher community, although I don't do much with that membership. I joined that site, as well as several others, when I was working on an article about blogging. Most of the sites I joined are designed to help others find your content. I also applied for several blogging jobs (no calls as of yet) and I subscribed to a basic site meter.

All of these things had a culminating effect -- increase my obsession about my lack of readership. In fact, I became a little more than obsessed, googling my blog name, and my name, sometimes several times a month to see what popped up.

Recently I read an entry on Remedies for Small Blogger Blues from one of the bloggers who presented at the Blogher conference last month. The part that stuck with me was "Tip #8: Remind yourself that you are writing for an audience of one."

When I started this blog, it was literally a communication medium for people I rarely get to see anymore, including members of my family, such as my cousin Becky who comments here from time to time. Most of my family lives in St. Louis. I do not.

I also find blogging/writing/journaling a powerful outlet. I always have. So in a way this is cathartic for me as well as entertaining for the masses.

Truth be told, my own hubby doesn't even read this blog. He claims to occassionally check on it, but can never remember what he read. Hmm... I just assume that when you live at the circus, you don't need to check out the side-show freaks.

I also have two other, completely annoymous blogs. One is for a story I'm working on, the other is for that stuff I should say to a shrink, but I don't have one. So I blog instead.

I have a serious over-achiever streak that makes me somewhat miserable. The cleanest house, the well-behaved kid, the good job at which I'm beloved -- I compete with my own meter of self-worth constantly. It's really very draining. So when I started to write online, I unwittingly fell into that "must be better than ..." mindset and away we go!

But this time, I am taking that little tip to heart. I am officially off the "better than" blogger bandwagon. I write for an audience of one, me. And damnit, I'm the best writer I know. And Lord knows that I'm funny as hell! And did I mention cute? Man, I'm the complete package. (Ok, a little overkill, but I feel better.)

I did try adding some new tags to increase my search function with Technorati, so I'm not completely out of the game. Although today's top search is on Ron Paul. Who knew?