Who I Want to Be

As part of the #Octoblog Challenge, I’m taking a serious look at my blog.  I’ve got a list of blog projects I want to tackle, from cleaning up my race report page to changing around categories to improving things on the back end like meta tags and categories.

But as I was making the list, I started to remember why I started this blog.  I wanted it to be a place where I could talk about my running and other athletic pursuits as well as whatever I wanted to talk about.  I wanted to use it to hopefully meet new people.

What I didn’t want was to become like every other blog.  I don’t want to write a post because it’s the popular thing to write about.  I don’t want to write a post because I want to increase readership.  And I certainly don’t want to be the person who has to trick readers into showing up.

I admit, I have gone back and forth on whether I want to be part of a particular popular blogging group.  I don’t want anyone else to have to “report” to on what I’m writing.  On the other hand, there are a lot of perks offered to that group.  And let’s be honest, we all like perks.

It turns out, it doesn’t matter.  I don’t have enough “unique visitors” to apply.

And you know what?  I don’t care.  I’m not going to resort to tricks to get people to visit so I can up my numbers.  Sure, I’d like more people to be reading, but I want them to enjoy reading the blog.  I certainly don’t want to become what I call a “hate read,” someone people read just to mock them.  I’ve seen too many great blogs turn into sites that I don’t want to visit because they’re trying to fit into a certain mold or meet certain requirements.

So that’s my decision.  I’m here because I want to be.  Will I still do product reviews?  Sure, if it’s something I’m interested in.  But I’m not going to change my blog to fit a mold just to be part of the “cool club.”