Nobody Reads
my Blog T-Shirt

Is this shirt a way to outwardly show grief over your vastly unappreciated blog, or is it a segue into the "Oh, you have a blog? What's the URL?" conversation? There is nothing wrong with trolling for new readers. If you're not advertising, how are you going to convince the world that your opinion is important?
http://www.jinx.com/men/shirts/geek/nobody_reads_my_blog.html

I found a neat ad for a T-Shirt which I have included above. I have been thinking about blog readership. I put a site hit counter on my blog to see if anyone is reading the blog. I get an email now and then, so I know it is occasionally being read, but according to my site hit counter, hardly anyone is reading it.
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So why do I write the blog. It is not religion. There is nothing that says I have to write a blog. So why write it? It is a good question. I could direct my energies in different directions, couldn’t I?
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The thing about any efforts toward art is that you want an audience. Even Emily Dickinson, a poet who made almost no effort to get readers in her life-time, wanted readers. We know this because she made little booklets of poems called fascicles, bound by ribbon, and gathered and protected in her room.
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She made no effort to get published in her life-time, but she clearly hoped someone would read her poems eventually.
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I wrote a short-story in high school about an artist who poured his passions out on a canvas, struggled to get the painting just right, and when it was as perfect as he could make it, he destroys the painting. Why? Because it was the act of creating the art that mattered, not the audience. If Emily Dickinson really didn’t care about having readers then why didn’t she work until the poem was perfect and then burn it?
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Obviously I want readers. One of the draws of painting over writing is that a person can glance at a picture, take it in instantly, and BANG you had an audience. When you write something – it just takes more effort on the part of the reader to receive the art.
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But my feelings are hurt by the low readership of the blog. Why? I just explained to myself that it takes a lot of effort for a person to read something. And there is so much reading material available. A person can’t read everything. Can they? Naw. The thing is that I have taken some of my blog articles and posted them on another site:
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http://ezinearticles.com/
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http://ezinearticles.com/?Stinkin-Thinkin&id=1437532
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The ezinearticles site has a counter, and according to their counter almost 500 people have hit on my articles. This tells me that people who don’t know me are reading my articles, and people who do know me almost never read me, even though I am sending them daily email notices.
Of I want readers, and want to be a nice guy, then wouldn’t it be logical that I just submit articles to the ezinarticles site and stop bothering my friends and relatives?