Howdy friends. Or shall I say, friend? I have a mystery one of you can help me solve. In order for me to explain this mystery, I’ll be revealing some author-underbelly. Specifically, as it relates to blogging. See, we bloggers have a dashboard, and like a car’s, it tells us all sorts of things. I supposed it’s called a dashboard because it provides information on where our blog is going, how fast, etc.

Here is a screenshot of my WordPress dashboard, December 1, 2021.

Bloggers can see how many hits their site gets in any given day. And we can see the country of origin. For instance, I can see how many people from the US and other countries have visited my site. This day shows Canada, South Africa, and India. Incidentally, it’s not called Indie publishing for nothing. I get more hits from India than any other country, save the US. Indians read a ton.

But that’s not all.

I can see which posts are read on any given day. On days I publish a post, the site hits spike. New post = lots of views. The longer my site goes without new content, the more my viewer numbers dwindle. Fine. Fine. That’s how it works. The dashboard is motivation to publish posts, and it also tells me which posts are the most popular. This tool allows me to respond to readership. You know, give readers the content they dig, based on the data. Very scientific.

What I learned: Brain tumors boost views. My most-read day was the day I had my head cut open. How to get lots of readers: personal calamity.

Meh, I’ll take less readers and a dull existence where I tell you how interesting I think my life is, and you yawn and skip off to CNN or some other place where people are having their heads cut open.

Newer posts get viewed the most. Sometimes a post is featured in another blogger’s site or on a board that gets a ton of traffic. That will drive readers to an older post. Or popular search terms, etc.

But to my mystery. I wrote a post back in 2017. It’s one of my favorites. I noticed it popping up on my dashboard. At first I gave it no mind because, like I just explained, old posts do show up from time to time for various reasons. But this is different. Someone reads “Rampart” once a week. Faithfully. Who. Are. You?

Is it poor taste, my asking?

As a writer, I often make up stories to go with my reality. I’m asking myself: Why this story? Why once a week? Is it some sort of flash fiction bot that’s honed into my blog? I brought this mystery to my therapist, who can always be counted upon to give me this advice: ask.

Oh, it’s infuriating. She has no idea about the East Coast No-ask Rule. The one where you ask somebody else about the person you’re actually wondering about. I tell her about how So-and-so offended me and I just know X and Y and Z and aren’t I absolutely justified in my thinking? I’ve connected all the dots, I tell her. I’m the best mind reader there is. For me, mind reading’s not a cognitive distortion; it’s a bona fide, resume-worthy skill.

And she gives me the look and says, ask them, Kelly. Ask if So-and-so thinks you’re an A$$. I tell her So-and-so won’t be honest. So-and-so will just say: Of course you’re not an A$$. You’re…opinionated. And Therapist will say I can NOW infer So-and-so thinks I’m an A$$. But I had to ask first.

So I’m asking. Maybe you don’t want to be known. That’s cool. (Not really.) And I’m grateful you like “Rampart” enough to read it more than once.