How The Other Half Lives

How The Other Half Lives - How nice must it be to be an Andrew Sullivan. He holds a fund drive, and rakes in $80,000 twice a year. Then, he takes off the entire month of August. And when he comes back in September, he'll still be getting a hundred thousand visitors a day, and he'll STILL earn a living from the site, and he'll still one of the Big Four Blogs ( Instapundit, Mickey Kaus, and The Volokh Conspiracy along with Sullivan).

At this time last year, Shot In The Dark was averaging about 20 visitors a day, mostly friends, relatives, and a few politics junkies drawn by my constant, shameless cross-promotion on the E-Democracy MN-POLITICS mailing list. During the run-up to the election, it rose to between 30-50 a day.

Then Instapundit linked my fisks of Garrison Keillor and attacks on the MN DFL's culture of hate, giving my humble little blog a couple of 10,000 visitor days. Through the winter I averaged 250 visitors a day - which boggled my mind. It only got better - I currently average around 800 visitors a day, with occasional spikes when the likes of Reynolds or Lileks or Powerline link me.

By the way - yesterday was a fun milestone for this blog. It was the first time Instapundit linked me without my sending him an email saying in effect "HEY, CHECK OUT WHAT I'M WRITING ABOUT TODAY! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!" (although the Professor has been gratifyingly and flatteringly amenable to my writing in the past year or so). So in the midst of this very difficult year, it's fun to see something going right.

And while my donations link doesn't pay the mortgage, it covers my hosting (and, some months, a bit more), which is not only a relief, it's flattering. Thank you all.

But because of that, it's very, very hard to settle for any time off. Something - my ego, maybe - thinks it'd be a personal setback if I took a week off and came back to 30 readers a day, again. I got here (whereever "Here" is) by writing. A lot. It's been fun - my morning ritual involves getting up at 5:30AM, rounding up the usual suspects (when all else fails, Doug Grow and Laura Billings are bottomless sources of fodder) and dashing off a couple of posts. But it's also work, trying to keep enough quality (hahahaha) material coming to keep you all coming back. There are times I truly envy some of the Twin Cities' excellent group bloggers, like Powerline and Fraters Libertas, with a deep stable of excellent writers (to say nothing of people like Lileks or Reynolds or Sullivan, who are just plain good enough to do this all. The. Time).

This screed has no point, other than to say I'll be taking the weekend off. REALLY off! Not in the "Yeah, Mitch, you say that every week, and then Saturday night you post five column-feet on something or another". I mean, I'll see you Monday.

I am, however, going to try to see Lileks at the fair tonight. So if you're around, say "hi". How will we meet each other? Simple; just stand in front of the "Patriot" booth and yell "BLOG! BLOG! BLOGGIE BLOG BLOG BLOG!" at the top of your lungs. I'll find you.

Til Monday, thanks for reading. I truly, genuinely appreciate it.