BitterSweetLife

Do you ever wonder about your blog’s cosmic significance? In the great scheme of things, what is your corner of e-estate worth? In the shadow of the wheeling planets and the inexorably fading sun and all that, am I making a difference? Does my blog matter?

Cultural snobbery aside, this is a fascinating question. One reason is because blog worth is so difficult to track. I, of course, have an advanced supercomputer which tabulates my stats, sorting them into relevant data. If you’re reading this post, within minutes my computer will have determined your relative degree of coolness, among other things, such as your basketball IQ and reading tastes (based on things like visits to kusports.com and your ebay history), the cumulative total of which ranks your desirability as a guest. You could say I dodge the question of worth by turning the tables on my readers. If this blog isn’t getting it done, it’s your fault.

Actually, not even BitterSweetLife is immune from moments of soul-searching. Why do people come here? When they read this stuff, do they go away thinking or gagging? Is this blog performing its intended purpose of tri-continental domination?

To top it off, the real question is, How could one know? Site statistics are obviously insufficient in this regard, like a CBS opinion poll. Mere hits don’t reflect cumulative blog-effect.

Neither does blog-esteem on the part of the author. I could be feeling like a world-beater and write something deplorably smug. I could be ready to smash my hard drive and write something full of profound melancholy.

In the end, maybe it’s a matter of calling. You blog because you’re a blogger. Asking why you’re a blogger and whether you’re a good one may reveal, ultimately, that you are not one. Then again, sometimes the best writers are those who censure their own work severely.

In the end, we’re pretty much adrift on this one. Does my blog matter? At the very least, I’d better be somewhat convinced in my own mind, a good part of the time. It’s that fluctuating element of certainty, like three-point accuracy in March, that is strangely elusive.