Have I become that boring?
So I did a lot of “work” the last couple of weeks on the back end of this site. I was having some issues with duplicate entries in search engines, being flagged in Google and the like. It all had to do with leaving old templates in place so there wouldn’t be dead links. Without getting into it too deep, I fixed my .htaccess to redirect properly, setup some SEO optimizations, and hopefully fixed the issues. Its actually done a lot of good – check the results. 
Thats not what I wanted to talk about though, but its a good lead in. After fixing all the SEO stuff, running my analytics and watching my stats get cleaned up, I noticed something. I only get about 20 -30 IPs a day that aren’t search engines, spiders, etc, and its dropping off slowly. I know a good third of these IPs are me as well.
I am not really complaining, as I don’t really write here for others, but invite them to join me in my journey if they like. I do appreciate the traffic I get. The thing is I have been blogging a long time. I remember when sites like Mudville, Blackfive, etc started. Their readership grew as they did. I was pulling down 1100 users a day several years ago (although much fewer commenters) when I reposted news articles and other FOD. I felt the site lacked any substance or anything worth capturing for the future, so I stopped.
During my last deployment, my readership grew a bit, and I think most of them have stuck around or at least periodically checked in. During that deployment Iraq was hot news. It was the most violent time in the war since the invasion and people were interested in my daily patrols in hell.
However, this tour has not been nearly as exciting. This is a completely different Iraq, so I asked myself, “Has this place really become that boring?” I curtailed my public soap boxing and am not that controversial. I write about my daily goings on here in the big sandbox, and when not deployed, the little things in my life. There is just not that much going on here to write about though, unless you want to read about what I am watching on TV, what was served in the DFAC, or how bad the dust has been. That’s why I started the Twitter.
I am beginning to wonder if this has run its course. Although its for my own edification, if its not capturing the life I lead, what’s the point?
Short URL: http://bit.ly/b6zO6M
Guess if there’s not much to write about, there’s not much to write about…but I would prefer to read more than a tweet or twitter or whatever it’s called! I read to be connected…it’s blogs and/or the news, and the news doesn’t tell us anything. So that leaves the milbloggers…lack of “excitement” in Iraq (a good thing, I think?) and all. So many of the blogs I followed have disappeared for various reasons in the past year. I hope yours doesn’t too.
Take care.
Seadoc was one of the first blogs I ever read. I came originally for the blogging talk and stayed for everything else (working on an oil rig, hurricanes, getting married, buying a house, having a baby, going full time military in the middle of a war, etc. – no where else was that kind of blogging going on – all great stuff). I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.
One day when I found out someone very close to me would be going to Afghanistan, my first thought was “Doc!” And it hit me that I hadn’t read your blog in a long time. Despite being there when you changed domain names, you had somehow fallen off my radar. I don’t know if it was something on your end or mine, but I looked you up to find out what was going on, and you were still on your first deployment.
All this is just a round-about way of saying you’ve made me wonder if I started reading your blog today, if I’d stick with it. Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. That in no way should be construed as anything personal towards you. Not at all. It simply demonstrates the way times change and people change. Back in the early days, if you found even a somewhat interesting blogger, it was easy to stick around. Today, I run across hundreds of blogs, maybe thousands, that I never return to. They’re probably interesting, but I don’t stick around long enough to find out.
So, no, I don’t think you’ve become boring. I think you’re just more quiet. It does seem like you blogged more often back then.