Want Some Cheese With That Whine?

Yeah, I know. It’s been a few days since I’ve posted here.

Not that anyone’s noticed.

By last check of my web stats, I’ve had about three visitors over the past week. A couple were apparently just clicking the “Next Blog” button at the top of the page and came across mine by accident. No visitor has stayed on for more than a couple minutes. So if I don’t write anything today – or ever again – will the world care? If a blogger types something in the woods and no one’s around to read his stuff does he make a sound?

I was making this argument to my wife last night. Told her I was thinking of booting the blog. Fishing for a little pity.

“It’s only been a week,” she said, deftly avoiding the baited hook.

I took a bite of my fifth chocolate bar of the evening, putting a big dent in my diet plan but just a teeny dent in the supply of candy collected by my children Halloween night. “Yeah,” I said. “But what about the friends I emailed to tell them about the blog? So far no one’s tuning in.”

“First,” my wife said, “you only emailed them the middle of last week. Second, they’re probably busy and haven’t had time to look at it yet.”

She was right, of course. Still, I’m not sure which is worse. Being ignored or being damned with faint praise. Right now I think I’d prefer the faint praise.

Let’s face it. This isn’t Hemingway I’m writing here. Before this entry -- and not counting the very first one where I basically just said “Hello, world, here I am!” – I’ve written a total of just six essays. And a couple of them aren’t really essays at all but preambles to older material (an essay and some poems) I decided to inflict on – well, on whoever might happen to read my blog.

Which is no one, really.

I’m not a stupid person. Well, in some ways I’m really quite remarkably stupid. But I know people have little time to read, and when they do read they want something fun or intellectually stimulating or mysterious or titillating. To date I’ve posted essays on a friend’s vasectomy, the challenges of raising two daughters, another friend’s premature baby, the pleasure of watching a meteor shower (which, it turned out, I never got to see anyway because it was cloudy all that week) and my freaking out about some heart flutters. Oh, and some poems whose only distinction is that they’ve been rejected by some of the better poetry magazines in the country.

And I wonder why no one has offered me a book deal yet.

OK. So maybe I won’t give up the blog just yet. As my wife says, if I really ever want to be a Writer – with a capital W – I need to keep at it, regardless whether anyone is reading. It’ll help me sharpen my skills, find my voice, develop a stronger sense of narrative. And because I’m writing on a public website and there’s the potential for someone reading me, the blog puts the onus on me to write rather more regularly than I would otherwise – and, frankly, ever have – in a personal diary.

Which raises a good question: Just what exactly do I want my blog to be? A confessional? A sounding board? One of those albino lab mice I inject my poetry and prose into to make sure my writing’s safe on animals before exposing humans to it?

I guess I’m still kinda working that one out. So if you’re up to seeing where all this leads – yeah, you who just stumbled across my blog from the SatanDogLover blog – stick around. I probably won't provide much titillation, but at least the writing should improve with time.