According to my blogomatic interface thingy, this will be my 2000th blog post. I feel so excited, on this significant anniversary. Well… not really. [UPDATE 2018-10-15: the alleged “blogomatic interface thingy” is no longer relevant, as I have moved my blog to self-hosting. The link is retained for historical accuracy, but the company linked to is no longer one I will endorse.]
But I will take this milestone to reflect, again (as I have before), on what this blog means to me.
Um. It’s surprising how few people actually read it. Fewer read it than two years ago, when I made my 1000th post. I’m not sure what that means. I suppose that one thing that it means is that my friends and family have better things to do, or I’ve been in Korea so long that they’ve mostly forgotten about me. I guess that’s okay – I’ve come to realize that I mostly write just for myself.
It’s true that I get a limited number of random visitors who link through to the blog from google searches. Currently, the number one search that leads to this blog is: “오승근 떠나는 님아“. Go ahead – try it. Why? I think that for whatever reason, I’m one of the few bloggers who’s successfully posted a clearly-labeled link to a video of this Korean singer’s song.
Recently, someone came to my blog after typing in “the world is messed up” into the google’s search box. That was funny.
I enjoy the fact that I have the ability to “look over the shoulders” of the people who visit my blog in this way. I’ve learned where the google spiders live (Taiwan, Mountain View CA, somewhere in Belgium, Council Bluffs IA) – they often visit shortly after someone follows a link to my blog from a search page, and crawl through various random pages of it.
Since coming to Ilsan, I’ve become very discouraged about some aspects of my “stay in Korea project” – as might be evident reading between the lines (or simply reading the lines, at times) of the blog. Whatever I do next – whether I stay or move on to some other thing – I will continue posting here. It’s cathartic, and entertaining, and it’s a good self-discipline, too. Since the beginning of this year (2012) I’ve posted twice a day.
Sometimes the posts are boring and self-indulgent journaling. Sometimes they’re random “found online” things: videos, pictures, humor, politics, poetry, philosophy. Sometimes they’re evidence of my dilettante’s approach to languages. Regardless, the whole of it is not that different in principle from the paper journals I maintained for much of my life before the advent of blogdom – and I don’t mind others reading along: the transparency is purgative. Which isn’t to say there isn’t some self-editing going on – of course there is. It therefore becomes a sort of self-creation, too. Or self-curation, anyway.
Anyway, thanks to whoever happens to be reading. ^_^
~jared
