Belated birthday in the blogosphere

It appears that yesterday last year was my first ever post. Common practice amongst bloggers seems to be that on the one-year anniversary of their blog they celebrate by sharing their stats: average hits per day, number of posts written per week, number of comments received, favourite picture, favourite post, etc. This is on the basis of the, um, eight blogs I check regularly. Ahem.

It says something that until a few days ago I didn’t have a clue how to check stats. And of course it says something that I missed Nayembi’s birthday altogether. My schizophrenia about blogging is exposed: is this simply a convenient way of sending news and photos to friends and family, is it some kind of semi-private journal for posterity (i.e. the illusion that some bored grandchild of mine will one day want to read about my life), or am I secretly hoping to be allowed in the big pool with the big kids whose blogs all link to one another, who have several dozen regular subscribers, and who sometimes get quoted by online news sites?

It’s a strange addiction this blogging business. There are times when my mind starts to compose a post at the slightest occurrence, and I have to force myself away or you’d end up with an hour-by-hour account of my day. There are times when I’m vaguely conscious that I haven’t posted anything in over a week, and I only drag myself to the computer and force myself to think something up out of some obscure sense of obligation. There are times when I get cross at myself for staying up late to post an entry, and there are times when I regret all the clever things I’d thought of posting but never found the time. I’m horrified at the idea that anyone other than my forgiving family and closest friends ever reads my insignificant words, but on the rare occurrences when a stranger or fellow blogger posted a comment I lit up with embarrassed delight.

And last week I sheepishly asked my mentor (after months of merciless teasing about his own Internet hobbies) to show me how to set up Statcounter so that I too could find out how many people read Nayembi. One week of statistics confirm that I’m not really in the ‘big boy’ league, but at least it means I can be unapologetic about rambling on about my life (you reap what you sow, you’ll tell me). Amongst other things I found out that Nayembi was worth $1,693.62. So I think I’ll stick to the day job and let Fred attend to our cyberpopularity for now (Extra Extra is worth $12,419.88).