I thought for a while about starting a blog before I actually began writing. I was held back mainly by the fact that I wouldn’t be able to know who read it. It opens up some voyeuristic possibilities, makes me wonder how much I should say about anything (what if my boss read it? my mother? my professors? my young cousins?). Would my friends be okay with me writing about them? I try to keep it relatively anonymous, just in case, but really, if someone tried hard, he or she could find out a lot about me here. And I think I’m okay with that. What I didn’t expect, though, was that I would learn something about my readers…
I don’t know who you are (unless you mention that you read this), but I know how many of you read this on a given day. I know if you clicked a link to get here (and what link you clicked), and if you clicked a link on my site. I also know if you’re linking to my site on your site. And I know if you Googled something and clicked my site as a result…
I know that the internet is an open environment, but I was surprised when people Googling “Limited jeans reviews,” “MyChelle cosmetics,” and their names started coming to my little site. The author of one of the books I mentioned early on linked to my blog from his personal blog, saying thanks for writing about his book. I thought that was kind of cool (though not as cool as helping Michelle Kwan find a thesaurus), and his personal blog is actually really interesting (I might write more about that later — I haven’t actually “reported” on that particular book yet). The best, though, was whoever Googled this last week:
I think I disappointed that person — I’m reading Margulis’s book on color correction in photoshop, and the word “asshole” does appear on this site, but has nothing to do with Margulis, who I think is pretty humorous. Anyway. I think it’s entertaining. And a little creepy to think that all of those Google search strings I’ve crafted can be seen by anyone with the right technology.
