Lucky Number 13

A while back I wrote about My Own Personal Superstitions (and I have a couple more that I forgot to mention in that one). I don't consider myself a particularly superstitious person, but when I started to think about some of the things that I did indeed feel superstitious about I could see how I might appear that way. That blog was written on a Friday the 13th. I do generally tend to like avoiding the number 13, but here's a case where I'm very glad to see that number.

Today I got my thirteenth follower on this blog! I know there are blogs out there with hundreds--and even thousands--of followers. I'm not a big-time blogger--merely a guy who decided to try this out and see if I could do a little writing and get some of the thoughts in my head down on paper (or in this case, online). Overall I feel that I have succeeded in doing this. How many people actually read what I've written may not seem like such a success, but it's all relative. I had been stuck in the single digits for over a year as far as followers go. A little while ago I finally broke into double digits. For whatever reason, 13 seems like a pretty big number to me. I realize that there might be a few people who are following me by e-mail, RSS feed (whatever the heck that is) or some other way, but the "Followers" are the only ones that I can actually see on the blog.

A few months ago I discovered the fact that you can see, follow and keep track of the stats on your blog. Not sure why I never noticed this before, but I hadn't. Anyway, since then I've found that I have a bit of an obsession with these stats and trying find ways to get more "hits" and "views". It's interesting to see how many page views I've gotten from random-seeming Google and Google Images searches. My numbers have no doubt been helped out by these searches that unexpectedly brought people to my blog. I'll take those numbers, even if I didn't really "earn" them.

Throughout this fascination with the statistics I've been trying my best to remain true to who I am and what this blog is supposed to be about. While I've written a lot about the past (specifically my past) I've found myself writing about more up-to-date events lately (the 2011 Drive-In Super Monster-Rama vs. Happy New Year 1976 for instance), but these things are still very important to me personally. It's still all Monster Dad territory. There will always be a confusing mess of posts from me ranging from old horror movies to some of the funny stuff my daughters say (and everything in between) on this page.

I'm going to do my best to keep with what got me to where I am with this blog. There might be stuff I could write about that would get me more page views and followers (political stuff, the latest news events...), but like I mentioned all the way back in my first post, Who is Monster Dad?, that's just not me. I'm also going to try to pay less attention to my stats and numbers. If this blog can possibly mean something to someone, then I hope that that someone can find it--even if it's only one person and not a thousand.

I guess that's all there is to say on this subject. Now it's time to get back to being Monster Dad. I'll do my best to ignore the numbers. ...But I do still think it's cool that I now have thirteen followers!

Thanks for reading!

...and feel free to become a Follower!