40,ooo Hits: Who Woulda Thunk it?

So in all honesty, this particular bit of braggadocio is perhaps just a bit premature (by a couple of days by my own estimation).

But if current stats for this blog continue to hold, we should see our 40,000 visitor by around next Wednesday or so. Currently, we are at 39,000 plus change and the daily hit rate has been hovering at about 250 a day for the past month.

So at the risk of breaking my hand patting my own back, I have to say this is quite an acheivement--and one I never, ever expected to see when I started blogging some eighteen months ago.

So perhaps a little history is in order.

I started The World Wide Glen: Welcome To My Thoughtmare back in October of 2005 when I simply discovered it was something I not only could do, but could do fairly well. Despite my past as a rock journalist, I had long since put that particular muse on the back burner as I attempted to put my own life back into order.

Which is why in those early days--working at a job I absolutely hated and wondering why I was so fricking depressed all the time--I wrote mainly about personal things back then. I spent a lot of time remembering past glories, like my days as the Shockmaster, and wondering--to be quite honest--just what the hell had happened, and why that particular party train had come to such an abrupt halt.

Some of my friends got a kick out of it, and indeed they ask me today, why I dont continue to bare my soul for all the world to see on this Blog O' Mine.

Well, the answer for one thing is that most people aren't terribly interested in reading about the dirty laundry of someone they don't even know.

But beyond that, a couple of funny things happened along the way. First and foremost, I joined up with the sinister cabal of Blogcritics and discovered that their massive audience of over 100,000 visitors a day would bring more than a few residual hits to my own site when reviews and articles of mine were published there.

But more importantly, I rediscovered my own writing muse, which had lain dormant for years--for reasons I won't go into entirely here.

So back when I used to meticulously calculate who was actually visiting the World Wide Glen, I marveled when we reached first 5,000, then 10,000 hits in about eight months. Then around last August, that number began to explode. One of the first things--besides Blogcritics of course--which caused those numbers to jump was when I published a particularly sexy photo of Sopranos starlet Jamie Lynn Sigler, which in a shameless attempt to drive those hits ever upward I will republish here.

But the other weird thing that started happening was that people started to notice what I was writing about. When I wrote about the demise of the record store on Blogcritics, I was contacted and interviewed by no less than ABC news about it. I'm not sure if the link still works, but if it does you can view the interview they did with me here.

Then I did this article for Blogcritics about Howard Stern pretty much on a lark.

The article called Sirius-ly Funny: Now I Remember Why I Miss Howard Stern got noticed by Stern himself and was read on the air by the man himself, and linked to his website.

So this was a true turning point for The World Wide Glen. One, which by this time I had begun to regard as a possible way out of a life I was dissatisfied with to say the very least.

This was last fall.

Which I have to be honest and say represented a particularly low point. I was working in one of those temp jobs which paid so low and represented so little a chance at getting anywhere, that the blog was really all I had in the way of a chance of getting noticed.

This will forever be remembered by yours truly as the broke and under-appreciated as hell years. Hell, I guess even the best of us have to be occassionally humbled and I can guarantee you that particular lesson was not lost here.

Thankfully things have since changed for the better.

Remember those 5000 hits I told you about that it took me about six months to get? Well, I've surpassed that this month alone.

As for my regular, day to day employment situation? Well, through what I absolutely believe was an answer to prayer, I have "come home" to a sales job in the music business where I am basically able to call my own shots as long as the job gets done.

What more could a guy like me ask for at this stage of my life? To Almighty God I give all due praise here by the way just in case the big guy himself is reading. Meanwhile, I am able to indulge my rediscovered writing muse right here.

As for that novel I've been working on since eternity itself? Well, stay tuned is all I can say, but the signs are better for it seeing the light of day are better than they've been in years.

So tonight I celebrate my 40,000 hit for what I've often referred to as my "stupid little blog."

Who woulda thunk it?

Coincidentally, a guy whose magazine I used to write for--a former close friend actually--is tonight celebrating the relaunch of that magazine just a few blocks from my house.

There's a ton of history there, as friends reading this of course already know. Without going into that history here, I'll only say that I wish him the best on his relaunch (as I always have).

But ya know what?

For me, life is pretty damn good. And I've got 40,000 hits.

Joke em' if they can't take a fuck.