My three top posts in views are Le Gourmet (A Greedy Child) (3), An American in America (2) and Don’t Feed the Fears (1). An American was an interview and as such it was circulated to a wider circle than usual by the interviewee and his family. However, that post continues to get a few views each month, I think because it comes up on the WordPress “related post” function quite often (for some reason). The Fears post was shared on Facebook by a friend when it was first published and that generated a lot of traffic, but did not get any more views after the month following publication.
Greedy Child’s traffic has been a mystery. It got the regular amount of views when it was first published. However, it continues to get views, sometimes not in insignificant numbers, each month. Writing 101’s recent assignment in statistics spurred me to look into it. The views come from Internet searchs. Most of the time, the search terms are unavailable. However, when I do a Google search for the Picasso painting after which the post is titled and which acts as its illustration, the post on 1874 comes up fourth. Mystery solved.
However, did this mystery need to be solved? It reminds me of the Gad About Town’s post on metrics and my response from what seems a long time ago.
Mark Aldrich asks in I, Toward a Metrics of Me:
Am I my numbers? Am I my metrics of me? Everything in the world can be counted, and that number can be known and disclosed, but more often than not this one fact does not make it information.
Now, I’m better at editing and it’s been a year since my last written reflection on metrics. Here is my response to Mark Aldrich today.
The saddest thing is to have trouble imagining a vast and infinite world, to have an inconsolable ache to be measured then compared. Looking at my metrics was my mortal morality, my answer when the going got tough. When the going got tough, the tough got going and I reached for my metrics. My metrics would get me through. It would sort me out. I would know where I stood.
Then, an essay into the realm of the spirit, an immortal morality, a life without metrics. All the rationalizations and indignation crowded in, raising their hands officiously with questions and concerns. But, the metrics link just didn’t work anymore. The link was broken, never to work again.
There are people out here, not just numbers. I don’t need to be right now because my strong man metrics is gone, and I’m just me. I can hear others better now because my confidant metrics is no longer whispering in my ear. I can give people the benefit of the doubt now because the asshole-police metrics hung up its badge. The way I interact with life is infinitely more . . . direct. I’ve removed the middle man metrics.
Now I can believe that there is a vast an infinite world out there because I’ve seen it. It is post metric.
Exhibition 1874 