Readership Inexplicably Surges / Bloggers Panic

  All of a sudden - out of the blue, one might even be inclined to say - the blog is getting a relatively large number of hits, and those of us here responsible for content are clearly feeling the pressure. Previously, the assumption was that readership was limited to a group of five or six people, all of whom felt some perverse sense of moral obligation to occasionally check in on the fictional lunatic's progress.

"Oh crap! There's a new posting on the dog blog."
"He'll never know if you don't read it."
"Oh, he'll know. I don't know how he knows, but he always knows. It's actually a little creepy."
"You're actually a little creepy."
"And morally obligated."
"Oh, for God's sake!"

When you presume you're writing for six people who know you well enough to be mostly immune to disappointment, and who also feel you have some sort of bizarre, god-like power over them, you can pretty much write whatever you want. Then you wake up one morning and you have a legitimate audience, spanning multiple continents, with expectations, no less. People, in other words, who actually exist, with curious minds, their actions - i.e. reading your blog - an effort to at least 'temporarily stave off the threat of meaninglessness.'  Little do they realize.

They seek meaning, from you, of all people, despite your ill-disguised obsession with disparaging the concept at every opportunity.

"So what your saying is that you put all your energy into saying things you don't mean."

(This courtesy of my therapist, Dr. Suzie Suzuki, whom I'm hoping will be able to help me cope with the sudden predicament of having to be relevant, although I'm not entirely doubt-free.)

"No, I always say what I mean," I tell her. "But what I say often has no meaning."

"So we may infer that the statement 'I always say what I mean' is in fact meaningless."

"Hence my current dilemma."

( You're no doubt wondering why I would be seeing a Japanese therapist. The Japanese are notorious for not even believing in psychology. They prefer to see human behavior as a function of the influence of obscure nature spirits, residual samurai impulses and, oddly enough, cranial size. The Journal of Japanese Cognitive Research, to which Dr. Suzuki is a regular contributor, is actually a comic book depicting the zany exploits of precocious preteens whose amazing superpowers are frequently misdiagnosed as symptoms of early onset psychosis.)

"Perhaps your readers read in an effort to demean meaning, discredit it, as it were; they unconsciously seek out the negation of meaning, which conveniently coincides with your fairly facile efforts to hoodwink the blog-reading public with pseudo-philosophical claptrap."

"If only I could believe that."

"In any case, I should measure your head."

After determining that my westernized skull is far too small to contain a fully functioning adult brain  - which I'm guessing is not a good thing - Suzuki informs me that I'm suffering from Retrograde Blogger Anxiety, or R. B. A., symptomatic of a more comprehensive and, needless to say, more debilitating Social Networking Phobia, or S. N. P.

"To put it in layman's terms, you have until now based your tenuous identity on a sort of solipsistic self-denial."

"Say what?"

"The comfort derived from an anonymous non-existence has been usurped, your counterfeit superhero status exposed."

"Are you getting this stuff straight from the comic book?"

"Are you suggesting it's not a valid source of therapeutic insight?"

"Just tell me what to do."

"It should be obvious. Face your fear, look the beast directly in the eyes, howl at the waxing moon, eat more tofu."

"Uh..."

"Okay, fine, I have no idea. But I am definitely going to start reading your stupid blog."

More on this later. Until then, Welcome New Readers, whoever you may be.....