Interesting. My hit counter report has pretty much achieved stasis. Every day, there are 32 people who check in on Singletails. I know of seven people in the world who are readers. Eight, counting myself, as I suppose my checking to make sure that my html is doing what I want it to do shows up as a hit. So that leaves 24 people. As far as I know, I'm not linked in too many places, but let's say that five people are folks who see a link from Singletails somewhere and click on it. That leaves 15 of you.

Who are you? Do I know you? Did I give you my little orange card at some point? Do you wander into your local Internet Cafe in some farflung city and check in on my doings whilst you sip your latte or bubble tea or Venti Awake tea with two tea bags?

Such an odd enterprise is blogging. In the blogs that I read regularly, I will sometimes be reading an entry and think to myself, "Uh oh. I know where this is going." I'm usually right. So I've come to 'know' these strangers whose blogs I read. Quite possibly, you know more about me than my therapist does. And, even more eerie, you might know more about me than I do myself.

And I have no idea who you are.

I imagine myself sitting on an airplane. I have the window seat. We land, taxi down the runway, come to a stop, and there's much shuffling around as people collect their stuff from under the seats and the overhead compartments. The person who is sitting in the aisle seat--let's say an elderly woman clutching a carry-all bag--turns to me and says, "You know, I get so tired of you complaining about your job when you do absolutely nothing to change the situation there at work. Oh, and I hope you realize that once you open the bottle, hydrogen peroxide only lasts a few weeks before it becomes useless.. Love your blog overall, though!" And with that, she disappears down the aisle and is nowhere in sight when I get to baggage claim.

If this were a movie, and I was a character being played by Sandra Bullock or John Cusack the soundtrack music would be getting sort of creepy as I make this realization.

---