Not to make you paranoid or anything but I watch my blog statistics daily, sometimes obsessively. I still get relatively light traffic compared to blogs I read regularly, generally 10-35 hits a day. I'm just happy I'm out of the single digits; that was kind of depressing. When I can count my audience on one hand, I have to ask myself if it wouldn't be easier just to do this as a journal on my computer and never put it up on the web. Then, of course, I realize just putting this stuff up where people can read it is enough, is a motivation to write. It's an odd kind of theoretical egoboost; even one person besides myself reading some of these posts gives me a sense of satisfaction, a feeling of connection, a touch of community and shared thoughts. I need that connection.

Back to DemiOrator stats: I sometimes see strange patterns in the hit logs. One of my frequents search hits is for "Catholic Demographics" because of a post I wrote questioning the legitimacy of the 1.1 billion Catholics worldwide figure.

What prompted my current rumination is my blog suddenly, in about an hour, got about 20 hits from other Blogger blogs. Now you may note that at the top of my blog (and most Blogger blogs) is a button that says "Next Blog." This will take you to a random blog on Blogger. So I'm used to the occasional hit from this action. But so many at once? It seemed like a convention or someone declared today International Next Blog Day. Ah, but now I realize what's happening: the process is not exactly random. Generally the random blog will be one that was updated with a post in the last day or two. I had just posted my last entry before these hits.

Sorry to waste your time. Have a nice day!