The Month's End

Tattooed on shin I use to kick-start my word-processor each morning is the motto 'never look at your blog statistics'. Today I ignored the advice of my own shin and looked at my blog's statistics. Though it's been a month of hard blogging, my fortunes haven't improved, though I did have a late surge yesterday thanks to visitors from Mumsnet. But does it get more humiliating than that? Mumsnet are taking over the country. They're all over the TV, voicing their bland middle-of-the-road opinions from their highly staffed offices in the middle of Mumshire. Their own political party can't be far away. I can't fathom their power. Every newspaper seems to have a quote from a representative of Mumsnet. They're like a slightly more scary version of Skynet. And now they're my primary source of traffic. Out of desperation, I hit Google with my question: 'How to improve blog traffic'. It led me to an American blog, run by a smiley Californian with his face in a round picture. He had good advice such as 'writer killer content' and 'be funny'. I can do neither. It only leaves me the third bit of advice: 'write less'. That is easily done. I blogged every day in January. I can't see myself blogging as much in February. I don't know... Tonight I feel miserably defeated. My article didn't even elicit a reply from the editors I'd emailed and if I was going to hear anything it would have been today. They didn't even reject me with a polite 'no'. Just silence. Horrible isolating silence. Yes I'm dejected and yes, yes, must carry on… But what's the point when even my best work gets me nowhere? God! This is the way the month ends, not with a bang but with an unfinished caricature of Michael Gove. Pitiful.