100+

My second post, short and sweet

I have maintained this blog for more years than I care to remember. At first, I didn't really maintain it at all. I started it in 2009, wrote seven entries that year, two the next, then completely forgot about it—until March 28, 2015, when I got the bright idea of writing a daily blog post for 365 days. An extension of a photo project I had carried on for four years. Why not challenge myself even more?

That first 365 project, called "True Things," got me going with regular blog posting. I did do a second 365, launched on October 30, 2016, called "Hodgepodge." And I started a third one last October, called "Noticing," but quit it (at an even one hundred entries) when I was leaving for Antarctica—because, no Internet down there. (Whew! Good excuse!). But all along, and even still, I do continue to turn to Roostmusings to write down random stuff. Just not every day. But yeah, I enjoy having a blog.

I do not, however, have followers. Well, a few that I know of—friends who check in from time to time, even one who comments. Blogger doesn't have the Wordpress feature of allowing people to sign up for notifications when a new post is published. So sometimes I will mention on Facebook that I've got posts up, but mostly I just let it be what it is. Me blabbing to the universe, without much feedback. It's fine. I'm used to it.

My stats for this last month

Blogger does, however, have a rather lame statistics feature. And a few months ago I noticed that I was getting a lot of traffic from, of all places, Turkmeni-stan, which seemed to be focused on a particular post of mine from November 2015, titled "Helping." It was about the Syrian refugee crisis, but also about, oh, humanity. Fraught, fraught humanity.

As of today, that post has gotten 543 views—ten just today.

I happen to have a sort-of friend who is currently living in Turkmenistan—she works in the U.S. State Department—but I can't see that she would have anything to do with the sudden currency of that post. It baffles me. It will continue to baffle me, I'm sure: a mystery for the ages.

I also find it kind of delightful. The mere fact that random individuals from all over somehow stumble onto my blog and read my random stuff. That is an example of the beauty of humanity: curiosity, connection, enthusiasm.

Anyway, today I decided to go through the Blogger records and see which of my posts have gotten more than 100 views. (At least, as recorded. I know, for example, that my husband's views don't get recorded, so the recording feature is another of Blogger's lame services. Whatever! It's all just for fun. One of these days I really will move to Wordpress, which is serious. For the ages. Right?)

Here's what I found:

Bucket (list of birds), 5/16/15 (253 views)
Work (VWA) (how I became a Wilderness Ranger), 5/30/15 (142)
Other (othering, plus Dr. Seuss's Sneetches), 6/5/15 (169)
Exercise (quitting my gym . . . again), 6/10/15 (210)
Bats (25 percent of all mammals!), 10/2/15 (145)
Gophers (vs. prairie dogs—guess who wins), 10/24/15 (198)
Helping, 11/6/15 (544: see that, it's up one since fifteen minutes ago)
Condors, 12/19/15 (135)
Fitness Tracking (Walking), 11/10/16 (226)
Crosscut Saw (a training), 6/10/17 (132)
Book Report (The Hate U Give), 8/28/17 (121)
Two Years of Posts (a list of my two 365 projects), 10/30/17 (139)
Glasgow Murals, 11/9/17 (112)
Japanese Ghosts, 11/29/17 (140)
Anti-racism Reading, 12/6/17 (139)
Chanukah Poems (just poems; not about Chanukah), 12/14/17 (143)
Maori Portraits (a show at the DeYoung Museum, SF), 1/31/18 (135)
Giorgio Morandi, Artist, 12/4/19 (114)

And there we are. I do wonder how people happened upon these specific posts in such numbers. And how they found me in the first place. The Internet. It's something else.

And as I sign off, "Helping" is up to 545 views. So strange!