Paranoia

I don't normally do this, post about blogging. For me my blog is really a little self indulgence that allows me to write about what I want and how I want, with the added bonus of a few readers leaving their very welcome comments. But lately I have begun to feel a little paranoid. It's got worse than those simple times when I would check my Google analytics and feel blue if the little red figures indicated my readership had gone down, and unjustifiably elated if they were green, indicating I had attracted a few more readers to my wifflings. To be honest I don't understand many of the figures thrown up at me there, so this is about as complex as it gets.

I have moments when I think I ought to devote myself to furthering the cause of my blog. I long to be one of those bloggers whose posts attract zillions of comments, but since I rarely find the time to comment on other blogs, I think this is perhaps a little unreasonable of me. Trouble is life and work tend to come between me and devoting myself entirely to my beloved blog, so I suspect it will never be more than a hobby with a few much loved followers, whose comments I absolutely lap up.

However, just recently I launched a modest campaign to boost my number of followers from 49 to 50. This amounted to putting a little box on the blog and begging. You can imagine my thrill when some kind soul took pity on me and decided to follow the blog. Cue streamers, champagne and much (virtual) celebration. I had arrived, I had 50 whole followers (well I assume they are whole, but as some don't even show their faces I could be wrong).

But the other day I returned to beloved blog only to find that one of my followers had deserted. The horror of finding myself back down to 49 was almost too much to bear. What had made this person who had once loved FDMTG so much that they had signed up for regular bulletins to decide that enough was enough and that they wanted out. It's as bad as being unfriended on Facebook.

Was it something I said, something I'd done? A post that went down the wrong way? I suppose I shall never know as now they don't follow me anymore. Given that my blog is more about personal satisifaction than a desire to garner new readers, or at least that's what I like to tell myself, why does it bother me so when one jumps ship?

Perhaps it's because now I am back down to an uneven 49, rather than a neat half hundred. At this level of followers one more or less really counts. No doubt if I was wallowing in followers I wound hardly notice if I slipped from 1,049 to 1,050, but I am way off those dizzy heights.

I shall try not to let the question of the missing follower keep me awake at night, but if you do stray back to my blog, I should like you to know the upset you caused by deciding not to follow me any more.