Well? How Did I Get Here?

I’ve hit a blogging milestone of sorts.

Over the last week I’ve watched as first my original Blogger version of “The Edge of Vanilla” rolled past the 25,000 hits mark. I started that blog back in August, when I decided that I wanted to branch out from my Live Journal. Although I no longer use Blogger as a journal, I still post stories and some of my more creative pieces on it because my StatCounter tells me that people still link there from other blogs. I guess I don’t want to hang a big sign saying “Yeah, I know you clicked here from somewhere else; now come over to my real blog.” Although, this may not be such a bad idea.

But that’s not the milestone I’m really here to write about.

Back at the end of October, I recreated that blog here on WordPress, mainly because I’m a sucker for features. In the animal kingdom, I’d be one of those creatures that gets lured in by shiny, glittery things. While the free version limits my ability to customize the pages or add Java-scripted toys (more shiny things), I like the way WP handles most of the other features. For instance, in addition to having blog posts, I can have a separate bank of “pages” which I can format for other articles. In addition to the ubiquitous “About” page, I’ve added a page with links to my stories, a page with TMI, and a page for reading and other resources.

There is an old Zen parable in which a monk tells his students “The world is vast; why do you put on your robes and pray at the sound of a bell?” Likewise, for some reason we think of “milestones” in terms of numbers ending in nice round zeros (oh, and the law of fives, of course). Except for “sweet sixteen,” most of us will be treated to birthday extravaganzas on our 30th or 50th or 75th. But what about all of those poor, neglected numbers in between? I mean, 37 is a prime number, why don’t we have Hallmark cards for that?

The reason, of course, is that people aren’t digital. We’re analog creatures, and we like to space things out because it’s easier to process the information. We count by fives and tens because we’re used to our fingers. I’m sure that if we had only four fingers on each hand, we’d count by 4s and 10s (Yes, we would. Think about it).

Anyway, I’m completely rambling because I’m writing this at work and keep getting interrupted to, well, do those things that allow me to pay the mortgage.

Over the weekend I’ve been watching my WordPress blog hit counter climb past the 50,000 52,201 mark, a number I considered something close to the order of infinite when I moved over here a bit more than six months ago. So, needless to say this is quite an ego boost for me, and I’d certainly be remiss if I didn’t pat myself on the back during the traditional “You like me; you really like me!” post that generally accompanies these kinds of milestones.

Personally, I have often wondered who reads my blog – not specifically, mind you (especially if some of you are my family members), but in a general kind of “You really find this interesting?” sort of way. This came up recently when my wife had the day off and decided to read some of my stuff after I begged her gave her the links and left the browser open for her.

My wife? Ah yes, I hear the sharp intake of breath from those who think that no good would possibly come of allowing their partner in on their sexual thoughts. I can tell you from experience, however, that for the ten years that we were not communicating, there wasn’t a whole lot of “good coming” to speak of, and we’ve since learned that – for us, anyway – it’s much less stress to get things out in the open. Neither of us is wonderful at it, although in a bit of role-reversal I found myself having to be the initiator in conversations about intimacy and emotions. That is one of the reasons that I thought she might benefit from reading this; while I do tell her about some of my favorite articles, I thought she might benefit from reading them as written.

She had a few comments. One was she loves it when I refer to her as “Mrs. Edge.” I think it’s because it makes her feel like a character in a story. Or maybe because it’s got a cool connotation to it. Another was “Why do you have so many hits? Who the hell reads your stuff?” I’m sure that she meant that in a good way. And surprisingly (sort of) she really liked my recent post on men who see their kink lives as “conversion projects” and try to disguise their own fetish interests by claiming that it’s supposed to be for their partners.

Damn. I just bought her a leather halter top from Stormy Leather. Please, please, please don’t let her discover Bitchy Jone’s blog.

But interestingly – and to the delight of my own ego – she did ask when I was going to write more hot chastity porn. Some people just never seem to get tired of it. And interestingly enough, this may be the answer to my question.

That said, thank you everybody, for reading. And thank you even more for commenting. Let’s all do this again in six months when I can celebrate 100,000 101,423 hits.