State of the Blog Address

It has come to my attention that somewhere in the world--even here even in Tottori, yea verily--there are people who do actually read the ramblings I fling upon the walls of International Coordination, and to all of you, I owe a great apology. I have doubted your existence, and for that I am truly sorry.

This revelation came to me in a roundabout way, because all of you who read are what we in the halcyon days of the Early Internet used to call lurkers, and I have been gifted with no direct response to anything I've written in the past several years. Not a word. This is partly because this 'blog', so called, is more a series of articles than a blog. It started out as a blog, though, and there was a place to comment at the bottom of each post, where comments used to appear as soon as they were posted--and I mean real, genuine comments, not robot-generated stockmarket scams and ads for Viagra. They were real things said by real people. And they appeared frequently, often starting conversations and giving me some indication of what readers wanted to read about. Alas, that is long gone.

After more than a year of no feedback whatsoever, I did petition the universe for a peep if anyone was still reading. I was met with vacuous silence. I concluded, I thought rightfully enough, that there was simply no one reading, and that my keystrokes could be more productively spent. Nonetheless, I was enjoined to continue howling, against my will, into an eternal void.

Thus it came as quite a shock when I received more than one thirdhand comment that certain humans found certain things I posted here to be of interest--possibly even amusement. I immediately regretted having been so careless and inattentive. Had I known, I might have tried to predict, divination-style, what sorts of things these hidden readers want to read about. There might have been more interesting and amusing content from this little corner of the world than there was. Perhaps I could have paid more attention to current events, for example, and tried harder to have some opinions about them. (One of the drawbacks of blogging in middle age is the growing awareness of how few things there are in the world that require my opinion.)

Maugre the impediments to easy communication between writer and reader, I intend to be not only more deliberate but also more prolific. There may come a day when all of you I cannot see or hear can tell me directly what it is you would like to get out of this blog, and I will do my best to oblige.

Until then, I remain your humble servant in grasping, clueless faith, and you can read what I think might possibly be worth reading. Or don't read it. I don't know. But at least I now know there's someone out there.