My Miserable Readership

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed that I've added a counter at the bottom of this page. (Of course, who would ever scroll down to the bottom of the page where there's just a huge version of my logo and now a counter.) The number (which was 26 at last sighting) represents how many new visitors have navigated to living in misery. It only ticks when a reader visits the first time. I've tested it out.

Like I mentioned before, my blog has had about 26 readers in the past 24 hours. One of those viewers is me. So, that really means that there are 25 of you out there that check in to see what it's like in Misery.

I am now going to attempt to identify those 25 readers (in no particular order) based on comments on previous posts, conversations in the real world, and a little thing I'm calling "blinstinct".

#1 - R, my partner, or at least I hope that she reads this. Of course, she has to hear all this crap as I try it out on her when she has real writing to get done.

#2 - My mom is a regular. What kind of mother would she be if she didn't read my blog?

#3 & 4- ATR and his partner, Monkey, have left COMO, but they like to keep up with the goings on in Misery.

#5 & 6 - JR and JER are new colleagues of R's and avid bloggers and their initials are very similar. (FYI-I'm not counting Vered. When she's walking, talking, and truly blogging, then she will be counted. Call it ageism. I don't care. I have to have standards.)

#7 - Raymond Cummings found my Pavement blog which eventually led him here. He's at least one actual journalist who reads my work.

#8 & 9 - Sven (formerly Mike C) and Lovey (formerly Karen) got me drunk over this whole blog thing. (Did I just give you two up?)

#10 - R's boss has made some comments as if she's read the blog. So, I'll count her.

#11- The Bathysphere's Zach somehow found me out and sent me his direction. I don't think that the two other guys at Bath read this blog, but Zach did recognize me at the Arcade Fire show the other night.

#12 - Filthy Renditions might get the award for furthest distance. He hails from Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

#13 - At least one person in the English department at MU reads my blog and tells all the others what I'm doing. Someone's always commenting on my blog at those get-togethers.

#14 - KR of post-december has left her COMO family only to frequent our blogs. That makes at least two readers from Pennsylvania. (Raymond Cummings is the other.)

#15 & 16 - Donna and Chuck (I don't know if they use online pseudonyms.) These are more colleagues of R's.

#17 & 18 - Illiac and Ashley visited our house a few weekends ago for lots of smoked stuff and sometimes visit my blog.

(This is getting difficult.)

#19 - Clyde Bentley of the Missourian has read my blog at least three times...I believe. There was the post where he discovered lim, the Paris Hilton post that made the paper, and the breakfast piece that also made the Weekender free paper thing. It must've been my elegance with the English language that impressed him enough to publish me on dead trees.

#20 - My sister reads this blog, I think. She's left me a couple of comments that had nothing to do with my posts. Why won't she just email or call?

#21 - The NSA has surely picked up on some of my more unpatriotic posts.

#22 - That one J-school grad student who told me that she hates bloggers at the Wilco show.

#23 - R's colleague, Elisa, reads this blog and worries that I'm going to off myself. (Don't worry. It's all an act. I just like the "misery" pun.)

#24 - I'll reserve this spot for the many, many people that I've told to read my blog either in person or on MySpace and actually have. Of course, there are probably more than the 25 on this list who have never bothered to type in "http://www.in-misery.blogspot.com" but said they would.

#25 - Some guy I don't even know has been reading my blog religiously since he discovered it last winter when he Googled a band name or forgot the space between "como" and "prozac". Either way, he's a valuable reader, and I don't want to lose him.

Now, if you like to read this blog and feel you've been wronged in any way by my neglect, leave a comment. I'll rectify the situation. Just don't stop reading. Please don't take it personally. It's hard for me to imagine that 25 people really like to read this here blog, especially after reading in the Times that most blogs have a readership of one to three.

I like that I have a readership. It motivates me to write because I know someone is checking her Google Reader or flipping through the blogs on his del.icio.us account in order to read what I've written. Thank you. Again, keep reading.

Note: While I was typing this and adding links, someone else has read my blog. That means I definitely skipped someone. Sorry.