Spreading the love

Happy March!

Over the weekend I realized that I have no idea how many people read the average post here. I thought I had no way to find out until I realized that Google AdSense is basically a hit counter. Based on its stats I seem to average about ten hits per day. Assuming half of them are me, that's five readers per day (more per post), which is actually surprisingly high, I think! Maybe search engines' webcrawlers count as hits? Anyway, I was surprised that Lover's Lanes is popular enough to merit a few people reading it per day. I'd sort of thought I was talking to myself half the time!

And I realized almost immediately that it doesn't matter. I love that people think this project is cool enough to be worth following. I think it's cool too, and I'd much rather have you follow my (mis)adventures than not. But whether my followers numbered a hundred, ten, one, or zero, I'd still want to do this. Because -- and this may be the first time I've been able to say this about an aspiration in years -- because this is something I want to do in and of itself and independent of what other people think of it. Mustering the will is easier with moral support, and if you're reading this, thank you for yours. But if you're not reading this, that's okay too. I am all I need to make this journey a success in my own eyes.

That was a pleasant revelation.

That said, I wouldn't mind if my audience swelled. I want to write a book, after all. I wonder how a blog like this one grows its readership. The stuff I post about these days is all prep work, quotidian stuff, perhaps not of interest if you don't already know me at least a little. But when I get in the car in June or so and start posting tales from the road, from living rooms and laundromats and coffee shops -- in short, when I start doing things most people have never done -- maybe there will be more people who'd like to read about it. How do I find them? Do I run ads? Email webcomic authors who have never heard of me and ask them for free publicity? Call NBC-2 and ask if they want to cover my departure as a human interest story? How do memes -- in Dawkins' sense, not 4-chan's -- spread?

By being good, is the short answer. So I'll do that. Meanwhile, thanks to those of you who drive down Lover's Lanes a couple times a week and see how the neighborhood is changing.