3rd Blogiversary.
On Wednesday, May 14, 2003 I started The Smallest Minority. According to Blogger, this is my 2117th post, and according to Sitemeter, this blog has received (as of this writing) 557,464 site visits and 675,975 page views since I signed up for the service in, I think, June or July of 2003. According to Haloscan, there are over 10,000 comments archived. TSM is, according to The Truth Laid Bear, a “Large Mammal” in his “ecosystem,” curently ranked 832nd out of over 50,000 blogs tracked. Technorati ranks TSM as 10,278th out of the 39.4 million sites it tracks. Depending on how often I post, and how popular those posts are, my site traffic ranges from 450-850 hits a day (about 550 lately, since I haven’t been writing much).
At the Nation of Riflemen shoot up at Ben Avery a couple of weeks ago, a reader came up to me and said “I’ve been reading your blog for the last four years!” What I said to him was “You couldn’t have. I’ve only been posting for three.” Forgive me. I was feeling ill. What I should have said was “It only seems that long!”
I’ve met, both online and in meatspace, a lot of great people through this blog, and had hours and hours of interesting and thought-provoking (and research-provoking) discussions. And it’s provided me a place to vent, most importantly. I am pleased and somewhat humbled by the fact that there are so many people out there willing to take the time to read what I write, much less comment on it. I know that you’re busy, and I appreciate that you spend some of your busy day here.
I am also encouraged to see more and more voices like mine out there. The number of “gunbloggers” when I started was, as far as I knew, pretty small, but it has grown and grown over the last three years. We have a voice, and we’re using it. This is a good thing. And we’re being read – this is a better thing.
Anyway, the point of this post is to thank you for dropping by. I write this stuff mostly for me, but if no one read it, I doubt I’d keep it up. Like most bloggers, I experience periodic episodes of burn-out, and also like most bloggers, real life interferes from time to time. But I don’t have any plans to stop any time soon.
Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day, everybody.