I never know what to make of big, sudden leaps upward in my readership. I can never figure out what stirs them. And then, often, just as bafflingly, they dissipate, and I am back to my regular readership, which feels more comfortable for me. It’s not that I’m not delighted to have new readers; really, I’m just quite curious about how I got them, and likely will never know.
About a year ago I posted about my stretch marks, and mysteriously, several months after that, that post started getting massive amounts of traffic. Since I didn’t know how that had come about–were strangers making fun of my tummy? or were other women happy to find solidarity with someone else who had stretch marks? I couldn’t say–I took that post down. I still wonder about that episode.
It’s not really possible for me, for anyone, to control readership; nor do I want to. But this is one of the fundamentals of blogging that sometimes I still manage to forget: it’s so public, and once I hit “publish,” there’s not much I can do about what happens. Mostly I’m at peace with it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get curious.
