Happy New Year Everyone!
Uninspired by the speed of community building and frustrated that my blog hadn't gotten the traction I would've hoped for I spent the last Tuesday of 2009 feeling bitter and unable to even sit down to compose a year end post. I hadn't posted in a week or so and my stats and daily hits were plummeting. Was this going to be the moment I let my Blog slip down my priority chain, go on an indefinite hiatus and return to watching old reruns of Seinfeld at night? I've been at it for 7 months and I'm extremely proud of what I've turned out so far but I know myself well enough to know that if I put it down for too long its unlikely I'll be picking it back up again.
Then Wednesday something happened that's inspired me, clarified for me the incredible power of the medium and left me in a Frank Capra state of holiday renewal. I've been wrestling with it and thinking about the possibilities ever since. That morning I noticed on the "referring sites" page of my stats I had a bunch of hits from Google.cn. Overnight someone from China (via Google.cn) had translated my blog and all of my posts into Chinese. How cool is that! Someone on the other side of the world is interested in what I'm writing about. Could there be a market for my thoughts and stories in the Far East? I felt like Spinal Tap when they're on the verge of calling it quits and Nigel, the excommunicated lead guitar player, returns to tell the band that their single "Sex Farm" was on the charts in Japan. Reinvigorated it was the empirical evidence of the power and reach of the global medium of blogging and the internet I'd needed. The entire world is now a potential market for readership and language is no longer a barrier. I sat down and outlined my next ten posts.
