Self-Absorbed Boomer at Seven

When I started this blog on August 30, 2005, I think I would have been surprised to know it would still be going on that date in 2012. Never underestimate the force of dogged narcissism.

What I didn't anticipate was that it would make me world famous. I'm typing this with tongue firmly in cheek, but my Site Meter tells me that I've had visits from just about every nation on earth. Most of these have been the result of web searches for images of Grace Slick (my all time top draw), paintings by Pierre Bonnard, and such. Few, I think, have led to repeat visits, although I suspect I do have some regular readers in far-flung places. Last night I had visits from Barcelona, from a search for "Michael Simmons on Dylan's Tempest";  Lisbon off a search for the tall ship Kalmar Nyckel, which led to my "Sail on Cape Cod Bay" post; Szczecin, Poland (formerly called Stettin, and made famous in Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech: "From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic...") from a search for "old small tug," resulting in a hit on my "Tugboats galore"; and Surabaya, Indonesia (made famous by Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill in their musical Happy End with the song "Surabaya Johnny") off an unspecified search that led to my "iPod log 8: long morning walk".

My daily visits and page views have grown steadily if not spectacularly over the years, mostly because the more things I post about, the more likely I am to attract hits off web searches. Still, I think I've gained some steady readers. Linking to Facebook helped, though I now get most of my comments there instead of on the blog itself. I might do better if I gave up being, as one friend put it, "relentlessly eclectic," and instead stuck to baseball, or music, or some other topic. Still, I hope there are a few of you out there who can appreciate, if not the full range of my interests, at least enough of them to keep looking in from time to time. Let me know, though, if you think there's any way I can improve the blog, and thanks for your loyalty.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.