Happy Blogiversary To Me

I started this site three years ago. Since then, I've had, according to sitemeter, 57,765 unique visitors and served 69,771 pages (plus a few more because I don't think I put a traffic tracker on right away). Last year that number was 16,000 visitors and 20,000 pages. So it's been a good year. Based on current stats, next year will only get better.

People have this view that blogging is just this fun little diversion where you talk about what your dog ate or what movie you saw last night. This site started as a diversion, maybe a post a day. This is my 3,635th post, which averages out to about 3 1/2 a day, but I'd guess that has gone up to 7 or 8 a day this year. For political blogging, in this age when the news never stops, it's much deeper and richer, and I feel like the collected output of this online journal represents a public policy education that outstrips any political science class I've ever had. I do this because I have a love of country and a desire to see it work for the greatest number of people. It can be tiring, to be sure. You sometimes can feel overwhelmed, a case of information overload. But in the 3-year history of this site I've only taken one extended break, for about two weeks after Hurricane Katrina because it was just getting too big.

(By the way, just so I can add some news into this post, FEMA is asking for money back from students who they initially encouraged to apply for assistance. That's all class. They decide after the fact that they were being too generous, and ask for money back? Seems like they're trying to recoup the fruits of their own incompetence. Ahh, life in the Bush Administration...)

This next year should be great, it'll start with a bang, as next weekend is the California Democratic Party convention. I'm going to try and bring you as much color and flavor of the big meeting, which will feature speeches by every Presidential candidate but Biden and Gravel. I'll also get a sense of how the Party is progressing all over the state. So stay tuned.

Anyway, I'm going on and on, but I wanted to thank everyone who's stopped by over the years, including my precious few regular commenters (start commenting, people!). This started out with maybe 10 hits a day, and even then I couldn't believe that people found me. Now we're cruising at over 200 unique visitors a day during the week, and even though that pales in comparison to the big boys, it knocks me out to think about it. When I did stand-up more, it would be an event to play to a crowd of 200. Now that's the daily average. It's humbling to me, and I sincerely thank you.