So... who are you anyway?

As this is sort of a momentous occassion (having presented you with my 500th post), I have a confession to make: I'm addicted to my Site Meter. I visit it about a dozen times a day. Its the last thing I check each night before shutting down the computer and going to bed. Why? Because it tells me about you.


That's the one frustrating thing about running this blog, dear reader... you're just not very talkative. Now I don't mean the ten or twenty folks who regularly leave comments or send me email -- to those of you (you know who you are) I am incredibly grateful. You provide the feedback and information and interaction I so thoroughly enjoy. You make the effort of putting together this blog each weekday that much more rewarding. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Its the other seven or eight hundred of you I'm talking about. We need to chat.

Really, each day I'm astonished to see that you visit me from all over the world. That boggles my mind. I'm ecstatic to know that my little blog is reaching someone in Dubai and in Dublin, in Hong Kong as well as in Hamilton (my home town).

You can see from these stats below that many of you just drop in for a brief visit ( the 0:00 timeframe means you're just looking at the first page without clicking anything... Sitemeter can't record the duration of your visit unless you click on stuff).

Its the visitors who stay for a while but leave no comment that I'm really curious about.


For example... Mr. Mandeville, Louisiana (below)...


He found me via a Google Image Search and stopped by twice for approximately 15 minutes in total to look at this:


And then clicked through to look at my Flickr Beverage set:

And then *boom* -- he's gone without a trace, leaving no comment. This drives me nuts! What was he searching for? Is he a designer? An illustrator? A student working on a research paper? Is he a she? Mandeville strikes me as a person with a mission -- and I'm dying to hear what it is.

My friend Ward Jenkins recently wrote about you guys on his excellent blog, The Ward-O-Matic. I did not know it (and perhaps you don't either) but you, dear reader, are a blurker.

Blurker (BLUR-kur): n. 1. One who reads many blogs but leaves no evidence of themselves such as comments behind; a silent observer of blogs. 2. One who reads many blogs but has no blog of their own; a blog-watcher or blog voyeur.

Now I must admit, I've done my share of blurking - even on the blogs of the people I know and love. And I understand you may not have a lot of time for fiddling around with comment passwords and usernames, especially if you are shy, busy, or just don't have much to say... but to all you blurkers out there, why not take a minute today and pop your head up into the sunshine! Tell me a little about who you are and why you visit here. Where are you from and what do you do?

I'd really love to know why you drop by every day and what you think about the blog. What would you like to see more of? Or less of?

C'mon... I promise not to bite. ;-)