Links

My goal in writing here isn't well defined. I went into incredible detail on my thought process in the beginning and that’s fine. And I guess once the blog existed, I wanted to do it well. To write and think and record some of these experiences so maybe the next time I was faced with something similar, I’d at least have a head start on some of the same lessons.

As things tend to do, the blog, and what I wanted from it, evolved. Some readers followed their links, others followed painstakingly-written early comments, still others I had to carefully lure. I discovered that having people visit – even some of my favorite readers from Michigan or Pennsylvania who don't comment – was addictive. I kept wanting to build a bigger audience, could see that I was getting better in telling my stories, growing more comfortable in this space.

Within that time, during my discovery of a really great set of academic blogs from which I derived my audience, I fell a little in love with many of you. Smile when I see you in site statistics, eagerly click when your site goes bold in bloglines. I’ve worried over you, laughed when you say something funny, and thought about some novel ideas. The community wasn’t something I really expected. I tended to be really passive in reading blogs before starting this one, and assumed that my participation would be perfunctory at best. Finding myself caring a great deal about some of you has been a lovely realization for me. In an 'Oh, thank God I'm not a hermit after all!' way.

In the back of my mind though, the optimal circumstance would involve a link from WaiterRant. There are other blogs I enjoy as much, but his commenters seem lovely for the most part, and his readership is enormous. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get his attention, knew this space wasn’t yet ready for that level of interest anyway, but the goal lingered.

Yesterday, I realized that in the cool way that life sometimes works, I received something better than my goal. I’ve mentioned before that I adore Veronica. I found her through the Waiter, and found her work to be impossibly lovely. I also decided that her level of talent was painful and have no aspirations for more pain in my life. I like what I create here – it’s friendly and easy and, I hope, demands very little from you in reading it. Other than time – it takes awhile to read that much text, I know.

There was a post on Lonely Roads & Psycho Paths about a week ago where Veronica noticed her links around the web. She has my formerly-coveted WaiterRant link and I’m sure gets a nice audience from it. I found myself being so pleased that she noticed my link – it’s probably not doing great things for her statistics, but it does recognize the pleasure I have in reading her. I think those links over there are really worth checking out. I commented, reminded her once again that I love her work, and told her I was pleased that the links mattered to her.

I check links too – am so incredibly flattered when I’m reading a post and notice my name in the sidebar. It’s just special – that someone went into their template, found their list and carefully added my name and address. It makes me happy.

Recently I started to notice that the traffic coming from Veronica wasn’t through comments. Instead, it appeared to be coming directly from her main page. So when bloglines told me she’d written something new, I went over to read, and noticed my site in her links section.

After a moment of pure flattered pleasure, my first thought was to send email and tell her she didn’t have to do that – that my link to her was given without any expectation of a link in return. For some reason, I’m egotistical like that. When someone does something nice, my first question is how I manipulated her into it. Forcing myself to admit that I’m probably not all that powerful, I moved on.

My second thought, and the one that is currently demanding attention, is that maybe that was the goal. To gain the attention of someone supremely talented and relatively new to the world of blogging. To know that she reads and thinks there might be something worthwhile here. I’m so completely flattered, and pleased that one of the goals I had for this space has been unexpectedly met. The idea of a high-profile link suddenly lost its appeal. I’m really good with where I am.

At least in terms of the blog. Other stuff still sucks.