Post-Mortem Legacy

Quite frequently an artist or other creative professional will receive very little acknowledgement or appreciation while still in this mortal coil. It is only after they have left us all behind that we finally see what we could not, or would not, before. If these so-called starving artists could receive the benefit of their post-mortem fame, they would certainly be well fed indeed!

I am musing upon this because I discovered recently that Blogger (as of last June or July) has added a Stats tab to the administrative pages of each blog. I don't know why I didn't notice it last summer, but I looked at my stats for the first time about a month ago.

I was particularly happy about the almost real-time updates of blog statistics. I can look at them frequently throughout the day if I so choose and find out how many people have been visiting my blog today, yesterday, last week, etc. I can also discover where they have been coming from and what kind of searches they do to find my little corner of the universe.

For example, according to my stats page, I have had 1,393 page views since last July, 161 of them last month. Yesterday, I accumulated 17. Today still shows 0 views on the list, but the graph shows 10 throughout the course of the day. My main audience hails from the United States, but the U.K. and Russia take 2nd and 3rd place. China, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, Poland and South Korea also made the list. I have found all of this very interesting, but have no idea what to do with this knowledge. I haven't carved out any sort of niche in the blogging world with my little ruminations. I merely strive to update friends and family about my various meandering experiences and perhaps share a few cute moments and cute crafts with the world.




Some of you may know that once upon a time I was an Activity Days leader. I also had an Activity Days blog that I updated with the fun times I had with those girls. That blog has a total of 41 postings, the last of which I wrote in April 2009. I don't give that blog much thought and have considered shutting it down simply because I haven't done anything with it in almost two years. The only thing that keeps me from doing so are the occasional requests for more information or documents that I mentioned using. I cheerfully email those out and then move on with my life.

I decided today to look at the stats on that blog. I had never done so and was curious if my erstwhile activity was receiving the same attention that my current blog is getting.

My reaction to my findings: WOW!!

Pageviews Today: 14
Pageviews Yesterday: 151!
Pageviews Last Month: 3205!!
Pageviews all time history (as of June 2009): 17,815!!!

Um. Wow.

I shant bore you with the details of countries and referring websites, except for one. While I was chatting with my absent husband online, I came across a referring site that knocked my socks off!

You can find the website here. My little Activity Days blog is mentioned in the 3rd paragraph.

My response and my resulting typed message to my husband was: HOLY CRAP

I sent him the link and, after finding the reference to me, he responded with: WHAT?!?!?!?!?!???  You're a celebrity!!

I quickly tried to shrink my ballooning ego and said: In an extremely small circle, yes.

I am flattered to be mentioned by anyone anywhere for any reason at all.... except for bad ones, that is. I am astounded that a blog that has been mostly neglected for almost two years is getting extraordinary traffic, at least in my apparently naive opinion.

So, what I'm trying to say with all of this is: I appear to have died and received my post-mortem legacy and minor fame.

At least in the Activity Days Blogging world.