tales of Suchita

Every time I hit publish on a blog post, I am visited by this bug of checking my stats every five minutes to know how many views, visitors, comments and likes I have got.

Most times, the stats are not enough. Sometimes, they surprise me. And rarely are they off the roof. The weirdest part is the posts that get off the roof stats are some of my poorly written pieces…at least as per me.

While it is almost impossible to figure out what works for your audience or what doesn’t – unless you run after each of them and force them to give you a feedback; not always feasible and it may be illegal to stalk and harass a stranger like this – because I swear the only reason my last post worked was because of the image I used – there is one type of reader that I had not been taking into account while obsessing endlessly over stats, Alexa numbers and follower counts.

Who is this unknown entity? The silent reader.

I didn’t know what this word was until I got a random message from a friend saying she is really enjoying reading my ‘what one year of blogging has taught me’ series. My immediate reaction of course was to tell her – why the heck do you not comment? At least like the post if not comment? Surely that isn’t too much to ask? What am I supposed to do with your WhatsApp message of I’m enjoying reading your posts? No one sees that!

And that last thought right there made me pause. It made me feel a little ashamed to be honest. Here was someone (a non blogger no less) telling me she was reading my posts. Here was someone telling me she is not only reading them but also enjoying them, which means there is like a 90% chance she is looking forward to them. And here I was, being ungrateful for having a reader because it doesn’t come in my stat, doesn’t show other visitors that I have a loyal reader and doesn’t help me feel better about my writing.

So this post is dedicated to all the silent readers – who are around, reading, absorbing, enjoying – but not saying anything. Thank you for not feeding my ego and my need to be publicly appreciated or validated. Thank you for reminding me that good writing trumps everything else – comments, stats, likes and followers. And most importantly thank you for reading what I write.

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March is my one year blogiversary month! And I am going to celebrate by penning down what I have learnt in this one year. Stick around for more.