The Day the Traffic Died

Almost a month ago, all my stat counters started telling me there were zero pageviews at this blog. Zero. Typepad finally blamed it on Goodreads and their widget code (you'll notice I temporarily removed all my Goodreads widgets) spitting out faulty HTML or something like that. Both Typepad and Goodreads responded very nicely as they are good people, and I'm sure I'll have my widgets back soon, but it sure was weird during the very month I'm celebrating my ten-year anniversary of blogging here that ALL THE TRAFFIC DIED. It was like someone just came along and flipped a switch.

Goodbye, Surrender, Dorothy. Thanks for the memories.

I spent one evening contemplating if I should just shutter the blog. I figured there was something legitimately wrong and not just that everyone had disappeared, but it crossed my mind that the people who told me they had totally been here in the past month were lying to protect my ego. (It's not necessary. I am not kidding when I say I have no ego left over this blog. I have it for my books, but not my blog.) I wondered if I should keep writing even if no one was reading. 

It's a good question, isn't it? 

Ultimately, though, even before I removed the Goodreads widget and the statcounters started ticking again, I decided I would keep writing ... even if nobody read it. I don't write here as much as I did before I started working for BlogHer and writing novels, but this is where I come when I have that thought while staring off into space at the school pick-up line. Surrender, Dorothy is the junk drawer of my mind. It has a copy of my resume, sure, and links to my books and some posts I liked highlighted in a list that needs a massive update (although that wouldn't matter if no one was reading, see how we create this unnecessary busyness for ourselves?), but it also has a series of pictures I thought were funny when my daughter was four and some missives about politics and current events that didn't end up changing any policies but made me feel better in the moment. I like going through junk drawers, and I like having this blog. 

Someday life will slow down enough for me to poke through my own archives and look at all my junk, and here it will all be. And won't that be amazing?