Daddy Winebucks

I remember back in my software days, when we first starting selling through Amazon, that daily rush of going on our product page and scrolling down to see where we ranked in sales for the previous day.  And while it was hard to feel competitive in a field in which we had virtually no competition, that any victory was a hollow one, I was powerless to not look.

Seeing us ranked sometimes as high as #5 in all software sales was really exciting, a highlight to the start of each workday.  To think that somewhere out in the world, there was another developer, searching their own rankings, seeing themselves hover at #788 and wishing they were us.  What a buzz!

But alas, humility has a nice way of leveling your life, so now, as I view my blog stats at the start of each day, my general mood is more of a buzz kill.

Visits to Daddy Winebucks look more like an EKG readout or Richter Scale chart than they do say, the stock market of ten years ago.  Put another way, if my stats were like my 401K, well, actually they are.  Maybe I should stop looking at them too.

When I started this blog last August, it was not with the intention of building an audience.  I truly did it in advance of a possible blog for the wineries, a way to familiarize myself with the form so when it came time to “blog” for real, I could do so confidentally.  But somewhere along the way I realized that it was another great, creative outlet for writing.  I’ve since joked that I should write my novel in progress as a blog, as I seem much better at working in 500 word intervals than trying to navigate the world of 50,000 words.

And yet each day I peek at those blog stats, I get my fuzzies when I see double digits and must admit to feeling a little down when I see that once again my “rank” is 5…

For those who do read this regularly, my sincere thanks.  I’ve no intention of quitting, for like Van Halen in the late 70′s, I’m still going to play for 2 people as though they’re 20,000…

Cheers!