Choked

I'm upset about things with my other blog. Things had been going incredibly until a few days ago -- I was getting a minimum of 2,000 page hits a day, with a maximum of 4,500. My hits graphs were constantly going up, up, and up, with about 10% growth per week -- compounded, that is. I mean, I'm in the top 180,000 websites in the world, for God's sake. Considering there are 40 million blogs, alone, in the world (of which I'm in the top 10,000), I've been doing exceedingly well, with very little promotion.

And suddenly, whomp. I decided to do some merchandising, so two things happened -- 1) the frequency of my posting slowed down for a few days and became rather prosaic, which is sad but is bound to happen, and then 2) I announced I had merchandise for sale.

All of a sudden, boom. My hits went down by about 70% in one day, and have wallowed at that point ever since.

I began suspecting Statcounter was malfunctioning, as I'd added a third project to my free acount. So, I took the "store" for merchandise off Statcounter, and added a second hits counter to my sex blog, to guage the accuracy of Statcounter. Unfortunately, SC looks accurate.

And it breaks my fucking heart.

I work HARD, man, to keep that blog good and fresh. I'm not perfect, weeks will be off from time to time, that's the nature of being a creative person. Life can drown out the voices in your head that give you ideas, and then you're stuck wallowing in mediocrity for a few days.

The fact is, I love this writing gig, and I love my sex blog, and I'm proud of what I do. I'm proud that I'm a normal girl talking about the things that not enough people talk about. I'm proud of my dedication, my variety of topics, the voice I write in, and more. It's not by sheer fluke that it's cut a large swath, traffic-wise. I'm fortunate I've had the success I've had, but it certainly took more than some blood, sweat, and tears on my part. I'm brutally honest about my life, my failings, my fears, my fantasies, and it pays off, because people identify.

Perhaps they identify too well, so perhaps suddenly launching into merchandise somehow makes me seem less genuine. Not fucking so. It means I'm a member of the human race and I need to have money to pay for two of those four essential components to every human life: Food and shelter.

I wish I could live my life on ideals alone. I wish it were that simple. I wish I could live on love and honey and sunshine, but sadly, I can't. Either I make blogging turn into a full-time, paying gig, or I rejoin the workforce of the world and compromise this lifestyle I've come to love, the lifestyle that allows me to write as much as I've been writing in the past couple months.

I put myself out there, with brutal honesty, talking about all the shit I've gone through to become the woman I am today solely because I know how fucking hard it was to walk that journey alone. I know how lonely and difficult so many of those nights were. I know how much life hurt me, and how despondent I'd become, and how great the trials and tribulations were to get where I am now.

I would hope that my openness and empathy and honesty has led to others having an easier time of their own struggles, or at least that I've caused them to feel that they're not as alone as I once felt I was.

That I need money to survive on doesn't make me any less genuine. Perhaps I was wrong to have been so flippant in announcing my store, but I thought it was funny, I thought it was in keeping with the voice I've written in before. Evidently, I may have misjudged my appeal.

And like I say, it breaks my heart. That blog's become like a child to me. I nurture it, dote on it, measure its growth daily. I dream of great things for it. I want to play a role in revitalizing romance for others, in helping people get in touch with who they are again.

Perhaps my sentiments about all this are being exacerbated by the PMS I suspect I'm suffering, but I'd be depressed and angry about this with or without PMS. Like I say, I put a lot of time into that blog -- I answer people's emails, research things to help them in their lives, share my own experiences, anything I can do to make an impact. To have it all go up in smoke so quickly, for perhaps such a stupid reason, is sad. It's simply very sad.

And I think I deserve better. But I won't sit around like some kicked puppy, yelping and licking my wounds. I'll prove I'm better than that. So, you don't like the fact I believe I need to make money? So be it. That's life. My bank account disagrees with your POV, and I suspect I can, indeed, have my cake and eat it. I just need to backtrack a little in order to do so.

I don't have to be happy about it, though. More hard work, more time, more waiting, more frustration. But I won't be capitulating and removing the merchandise. I have needs, whatever the fuck the public wants to think, and unless they want to throw money at me, those are the difficult choices I need to make.