traffic and purpose

Remember that movie in which three guys with smalltown angst drag some straight chairs to the middle of the lone road that runs through their desert town and sit there as relaxed as if they were on a front porch, thinking and talking about life and the universe? In the background appears a small, amorphous blob that slowly grows and takes on details, and in time we see (but do not yet hear) a huge semi coming straight at them. The locals seem oblivious and go on talking. At the last moment they lazily rise, stretch, and drag their chairs off the road without even seeming to notice the annoyed horn blast from the big rig as it roars by and dopplers off into the distance. There won't likely be other traffic on the road that day--maybe not for several days or weeks. Though connected to the whole world by a good highway, visits to that anonymous little outpost are as infrequent as shooting stars, as brief, and as unpredictable.

That's my blog traffic paradigm. Once in a blue moon someone stumbles onto my site, stays from one second to ten or so, then skitters away. The odd thing is, instead of one hit, I usually get ten or twenty before they disappear again. And if I get really lucky, someone actually reads something, or even comments.

I've read some good advice on how to increase traffic, much of it having to do with getting linked, indexed and searched, pinged and noticed. Some advises trying to build a consistent voice and high quality content; still other suggests keeping things brief and eyecatching and avoiding long diatribes. It's all good advice for increasing traffic and "stickiness" with eye and mind candy. Entice and please the readers, who are assumed to have short attention span and be most entertained by the most direct, spectacular and sensational imagery.

But is that what I want my blog to be? Is that what an online journal is? Something in me says I should write what I what I want to say, the way I want to say it, and let it find its own form and length. and not be very concerned who, if anyone, notices it, reads it, or likes or dislikes it. There are millions and millions of personal blogs out there. I think that trying to compete with them artificially for attention is a total capitulation of purpose. Personal journaling isn't fiction, after all--unless it panders to readers.

And as far as traffic goes, I'd rather have one or two thoughtful readers a month than hundreds just passing through because my site happened to be in their electronic paths. Those one or two are why I blog at all instead of journaling longhand to myself as before.