Act Two, Scene I (Cue Sound of Crickets Chirping)

Hello . . . hello . . . hello . . . . Echo . . . echo . . . echo . . . . Is anyone out there?

No, this isn't another shameless ploy to elicit comments. Trust me, THIS TIME I have a good reason for asking. I ask because, roughly seven days ago, my blog stats went silent. Now I realize that in the grand scheme of things, that's not like a submarine going silent (anybody remember that great West Wing episode?), but it's a little unnerving nonetheless.

I've never talked about my stats publicly, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that if I were to draw attention to my stats, you would see how few people actually read my blog and that would just be, well, humiliating. I've thought a few times about allowing my blog to be listed on Google's blogroll for all the world to see, but by now I've put so much personal information out there that the fewer people that stumble onto it, the better.

Another reason I've never brought up my stats is that I didn't want anybody to think I was tracking them and passing judgment on them if they didn't visit my blog at least once a week. No kidding, if I didn't write the thing, I wouldn't visit once a week! But I digress . . .

The thing is, I'm too cheap to pay for anything other than a free service. My service essentially keeps track of visits, so I know that I average 18-20 visitors a day; whether or not they're unique is beyond me--I don't pay for that information. And already I am bored with this post so let me cut to the chase.

About seven days ago, one week ahead of schedule, all tracking information on my blog ceased. I say "one week ahead of schedule" because my service sent me an e-mail stating that they were upgrading their platform and that all statistics would blah blah blah blah." Seriously, my attention span is no greater than a flea's. But the weird thing is, I cannot even begin to describe how DEAFENING the silence has been! I went from being accustomed to receiving reports that said, "Daily Visitors - 25" to "Daily Visitors - 0." Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. You get the point.

Now, for a person who is prone to self-doubt (truly, I believe Doubting Thomas must be a twig on my family tree), even though my heart KNEW that the silence must be a result of the technical goings-on at SiteMeter, my head caused me some serious concern. "So that's it, then? I've done it? I've finally gone and alienated every last one of my readers, or bored them so thoroughly that they dropped me like a bad penny? Or worse yet, they all got together behind my back and decided to show me just how bad my writing is by uniting in force and deleting my blog ON THE SAME DAY, thereby producing that big fat goose-egg!"

Okay, so maybe I wasn't quite that dramatic. But those zeroes stacking up day after day did taunt me, oh yes they did. So I went and signed up for yet another free service that, if anything, tells me even less about my readership than I knew before. I am nothing if not consistent.