Small Time Blogging Milestones

So hard to keep track of events and their dates; the Phactor isn't like Aunt Nan who remembers the when and where of everything. But the Phactor was reminded just now by a reader's inquiry that the Phytophactor blog just passed its third birthday a month ago on Darwin Day (Feb. 12, 2011), and a few days ago passed the 600th blog post. On average that's only one blog every two days, but my frequency has increased over time to about one and a half a day. That's most readily apparent because the 500th post came just 2 months ago. Readership has increased steadily from about one visitor a month to over one visitor a day! OK, visits to this blog actually average about 150/day about three times the average a year ago. Today marks the addition of the 50th Phactor Phollower, and like age, that seems like a nice round numbered milestone. How flattering that 50 people are so disturbed and desperate. My 1st Phollower is a relative who took pity upon the emptiness of it all, and it took a long time to reach 30, but since then new Phollowers have been adding themselves at the rate of about 1 every 10-12 days. That trend isn't expected to continue because the Phactor is running out of relatives. And of course all of this is rather small time, the basic fate of the independent blogger. The sell-outs get way more traffic, and one or two have enough content to justify it.
Sorry about the number of political/social/academic rants of late; one of the reasons to blog is to blow off steam rather than letting it morph into pent up anger, or higher blood pressure, or violence, although only a beating of a verbal sort is in my otherwise gentle nature, and quite a bit of what's been happening lately has been steaming me up. So thanks for sticking with me. And you should know, for better or for worse, that the Phactor is one of those kind of people with whom you can have an honest disagreement without him thinking you are an awful person; misguided maybe, but not awful. But gardening season approaches and that always improves my mood, as does daylight savings time.