I often wonder what kind of person reads my blog. I can make guesses but generally I’m in the dark. I don’t keep metrics on my website, I don’t know how many people like, dislike, subscribe, click or whatever. I have no notion of what smileys they would use in their response or anything like that. There is no convenient little form on the website that people may complete out in order to ask me questions. My address is on the website and, with a little hunting, can be found. I don’t list the email address in the actual form it would be used – this is in an effort to minimise the number of robotic comments that would otherwise drown the website in a tsunami of spam, a deluge of defamation or an avalanche of antipathy. But if you want to send me a message, and please do, you can find the email address under the “Me” tab on the menu bar.
Why do people visit my website (if indeed they do)? Although some people may read posts and disagree profoundly, I guess that this is a minority. Very few of us will buy a newspaper with opinions diametrically opposed to our own. We might do it every once in a while to get something approaching balance on reporting but it’s unlikely that we will persist with this self-flagellation. On the whole, people buy newspapers that agree with their outlook on life. I think blogs are much the same. People do not generally continue to read a blog if its views are consistently different from one’s own. I certainly wouldn’t. Life is too short.
So this leads me to the obvious conclusion – that your public preferences, interests and private predilections are similar to mine. Perhaps not similar overall but close enough, some of the time, to find it worth returning. I only mention this because I would like to know something of your preferences. On the whole, you and I must have something in common or else you would not have read this piece or the many others on the website.
Eventually I begin to form a picture of you as you probably do of me. I think you probably have a dry sense of humour and a sceptical view of novelty. I guess you enjoy good food and can tell your foie gras from your liver and bacon. I’m suggesting you prefer French reds to Californian whites, British bitter to continental lager, Jags to Beemers. I think you would rather have a small dinner party than a huge disco, stimulating conversation to deafening shouts, malt whisky to Bailey’s, a weapons-grade espresso to a bland Americano. Perhaps you even like Wagner, although I struggle to believe that there is many more than one person out there who does, other than myself.
I would like to believe that you enjoy my writing, not just my opinions. I like word games, alliteration and hyperbole. Sometimes I choose words with studious care, like an engagement ring. At other times I grab a handful and throw them, Jackson Pollock style, onto the page. I like to keep dying words alive – like outwith, so rarely heard south of Kelso. I like making words sing and dance or stand, like a guard of honour, in unflexing line. Do you feel the same?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you are nothing like me. Perhaps you prefer skeleton dry clarity to the well fleshed verbiage of circumlocution? Maybe you merely tolerate these lexicological longueurs in the vain hope that I will eventually get to the point.
Maybe you know me. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you have a picture of me in your mind, quill in hand, writing, after midnight, by flickering candlelight. Or perhaps you see me dictating into my computer in the bright morning sunshine, sips of coffee bringing words to mind, blinking in the light.
When you write a blog, or anything really, you invite opinion, agreement, disagreement, anger, laughter and a whole bundle of other stuff. On the rare occasions that I do receive direct feedback, it is usually pertinent, well-written and unambiguous. Mostly it is to agree, in general, with something I’ve written but to question detail. Sometimes it is to argue a counter position, forcibly and directly. Most people don’t write to me if their experience is neutral.
At the end of the day I can only guess why you read my blog. What do you get from it? Will you return? Did you return even? I would love to know your thoughts.