Why is that?

Each day, He looks at our statistics, and gives me the "news" about how we did the day before.

Lately, it seems that in a typical week we'll have at least 2 or 3 days when our readership is down significantly from what we have become accustomed to.

"What do you think that's all about?" Sometimes implicit; sometimes explicit -- that's the question that He seems to want me to answer somehow.

I don't know exactly. I have lots of theories:

• It is summertime. People have lots of other things to do besides hang out and read blogs.


• Maybe we've run out of things to say that actually matter.


• There is Fetlife, and maybe a whole bunch of other on-line communities. Maybe the day of the blog has passed. Maybe people are choosing to invest their time elsewhere.


• Maybe we've just finally hit the threshold of boring-ness that has driven all but the most committed folks off for good.


• Maybe we haven't posted a butt picture in a good long while.


• Maybe I've come to a place where I filter and edit so much that the words lose their ability to provoke any sort of response.


• Maybe we haven't had a good, old-fashioned, OMG what a mess - style crisis recently.


• Maybe I've just lost the touch (or the sound) that causes people to want to spend time here.

I'm not a readership junkie. I don't have the inclinations or skills to write the sort of hot, provocative entries that drag people in and make them hungry for more. I don't write fiction, and I don't embellish facts. I laid my soul bare here so long ago that there's almost no one out there who hasn't seen it naked a thousand times already.

The truth is that most of what we write here is about our lives, and most of what goes on in our lives is pretty ordinary (if you don't count the fact that there are three of us). We work, and fix an evening meal, and eat and clean up, and watch a bit of television, and head to bed -- so we can get up and do it all again the next day.

We usually "play" on Saturday morning; if nothing interferes. It is pretty routine, and not something that generates much verbiage here because I'm betting that hardly anyone wants to hear that "paddle, strap, cane" refrain every single week. We don't go to play parties, because there's no place in our community where that is a viable reality for us. We haven't traveled to any major events in awhile because of schedules, and cost, and timing. So, we've effectively dropped completely out of the public scene. We are "poly" in the most stable sense of that word. We don't have a gazillion partners, webbed in all sorts of fantastic and complicated ways. There are three of us, basically. Sometimes, there's the hint of another partner for Himself. We've been all around all the various emotions that creates, and maybe come to some sort of level place with it. No real way of telling until one of them actually shows up.

We're probably just "old." We think we've got experience that is valuable and wisdom gained over years of living through it all, but I suspect that we value all that "wisdom and experience" way more than the majority of folks who are decades younger ever will.

There are connections that have been made along the years here. There are people who have come to feel like a part of our family in various ways. The need to reach out and create some sense of community has been met in this place. I'm content with that; glad for the ones who stop by now and again, and perhaps leave a word or two when something captures their imaginations. This is, ultimately, a journal -- not private obviously, but still largely written for in-house consumption. I think it is pretty amazing that anyone reads here at all.

So, I really don't have an answer to the "what's happening to our statistics?" question. I'd explain it if I could. But, since I never knew what caused the readership to grow, I have no idea what might be causing it to decline. And, if I did know, I really wonder what having that information would change in terms of how this story gets told... If it really was about the regular posting of "butt" pictures, would I then calculate that it was important to put my ass on display in the interest of driving the numbers up? Hard to imagine; especially since I hardly ever get any comments on "butt" pictures. What's to say? Or maybe it really is that I need to have a full on emotional melt-down and screaming hissy fit every now and then. Sigh. Even I find that tiresome. But those are things that are, at least on the face of it, doable. Those things are things that are within reach. If it really is true that the numbers have dropped off because it is summertime, or because Fetlife has drained people's energies and forced them to make a change in focus, there's not a thing to be done about that. It is what it is.

swan