1000

Some writers let the words flow out, and are done. One poet told me that she felt editing compromised the creation, distilling the product of a unique moment in time.
Some writers take years working and working and re-working a single sentence.
I suppose i'm closer to the former, but i edit the hell out of most of my work. Oftentimes i'll continue editing even after i've posted (the irony being that people who follow me most closely often read work that will be better a few days later).
I'll give just one little example of my dedication to getting it right. In a recent article, i wrote the words "kidnapping, killing, robbery, and rape". The first draft had the first two words inverted. By the time i got to the final draft, i had altered the order of those four words more times than i could possibly recount. I tried synonyms too, before deciding that the original alliteration best served the sentence. I did all this in search of the grail of great writing. The flow of language has rhythm...each speech, each verse, each sentence, has an inherent emotional cadence. Take out one word, change it, or put it in a different spot, and an entire essay can go zowie (or pffft).
If you like my writing, you didn't need to know that. I just wanted to share.
As this blog approaches the two-year mark, i'm still unburdened by any abundance of outside appreciation. Which is fine, even enviable...not having anyone's expectations but my own to deal with, makes purity and unself-consciousness easier to achieve.
I've never installed a program which tracks site hits. I like to think it wouldn't affect me greatly, but i'd be fooling myself if i thought i wouldn't be affected at all, either by finding out that an astronomic number of people are tuning in, or that my three fans and a cricket are keepin' the faith.
Absent a "hits" count, the next most reliable way of assessing readership is comments.
Chirp chirp chirp chirp...so de cricket say.
Subtracting my own responses, no post has had more than a few comments, and the majority have had none at all. This is good. It keeps me humble.
But you know what?
I've had a little half-cheat going on these past two years: the site count for profile views. If there's a way to disable it, i don't know what that is...but i haven't looked for it, either. My ego hasn't been able to resist peeking at the "views" tally once every month or two, as a quasi-indicator of how many people are hitting me. It's fair to say that only a small percentage of the total visitors even view the profile at all, yes? Regular readers probably look at it only once (if that), and the majority of irregular readers never look at all.
Please, no cheap cracks about all my readers being irregular.
I've never tried to come up with a formula to translate "Profile Views" into site hits, my dedication to unself-consciousness is too strong for that.
But not long ago, a milestone arrived...and with it came a distressing change in the nature of the tally itself.
Four figures.
1000 views.
Without allowing myself to conjure up a number, it must be assumed that "Profile Views" is a fraction (and very possibly a small fraction) of site hits.
For just a moment, i gave myself a woo-woo.
And then i took in the change that had occurred. "Profile Views" had become "Profile Views (approximate)". Since the milestone, the odometer is firmly stuck on 1000.
It's as though the gods of modesty saw my tiny conceit, and smited it.
Ah well. Just another day in the big city, where the tourists dwell, the well-to-do are shameless, the homeless ain't goin' anywhere, and i do love you all.