chrome sadness

I resisted as long as i could. In the end, that only amounted to a few months.
Not long ago, Blogspot installed new templates for its blogs. The home page may still look the same, but in the pages devoted to site maintenance, much much much had changed. When they first offered this upgrade, they gave the option of keeping the old format. After a glimpse at the new, i quickly clicked "old". The single essential change that spooked me was the data showing site hits. Heretofore, such information came only if you installed the counters. Now, it had become part of the standard layout. Non-optional.
Many people (obviously) love to monitor hits.
Not me. I think that kind of self-consciousness is contrary to integrity. Hopefully, people will read your site, and perhaps even share links to particular articles. But suppose you found out that your number of site hits was much higher or much lower than imagined. Might not that knowledge affect the way you approach your writing?
The trick is to hope that millions read, but write as though none will.
Perhaps other writers don't have trouble maintaining integrity in the face of constant readership awareness. Perhaps some can even use such awareness as a tool in some paradigm of "collective" integrity.
But i don't want to know. It's hard enough dealing with the post comments, which range from flattering to eviscerating, to everything in between. Am i as good as "annaSwedenchick" thinks? Am i as third-rate as "winkyhoohoo61" thinks? The truth is perhaps all those things, or none.
However...
My innocence has been compromised, and i'm resigned to it. Last week, Blogspot sent out a notice that it was linking its services to Google Chrome. Refuse Google Chrome, and your connection to Blogspot will be partially-unsupported.
Partially-unsupported? It chills the spine.
I bit the bullet.
It's not all gloom and doom. The data involving overall hit numbers and graph-related material, are on a page which isn't part of the basic post maintenance. The data i have to see virtually every day, however, are the numbers of discrete post hits. I do an awful lot of site maintenance, there's no way around it. I can stay almost entirely ignorant of how many people visited my home page on any given day, but i'll usually be continually bombarded by how many times recent posts are accessed as individual links. It's pernicious, this knowledge. Maybe others can screen it out. But i sure can't. Many of my posts have a discrete hit number that's less than 10. I HATE knowing that. And i hate being excited when one gets a lot of attention. I HATE knowing that "The Nurules!" has 296 discrete hits! I hate that i now check that number regularly, hoping for just four more hits. 300? Woo-woo!
Sigh.
Tain't easy bein' pure.