Not sure what it means, but I’ll celebrate anyway!

Do you realize that there are quite a bunch of you?

It’s when you reach certain milestones that you really start to think about their meaning.

Today I reached a new milestone – 200 WordPress followers.

For some reason, the 127th or 43rd follower never made a huge impression, they were just a random number. It’s the round numbers that somehow bring about some deeper thought or sense of celebration. Why would that be? Aren’t they also just random numbers?

In any case, I am quite shocked that 200 accounts decided to follow me.

But what does it really mean?

Let’s face it. At least half of you are affiliate marketers, hoping to strike it big. (Share with me, does that shit even work?)

But then there’s also a couple of you readers that follow, and apparently also keep coming back. There are the ones that read regularly, and let me know by leaving a like.

A small number of you are now also regularly joining me in the comments. This has only recently started happening, and I’m not completely sure how or why. For a long time, I only interacted with one reader that sadly passed away last year. Somehow, new blogger buddies have arrived this year, to fill the initial void they left. I love your insights and interactions on my posts, so thanks for that! Several of your blogs have inspired me to new posts in a subject area I already wrote in, or to opening up new cans of worms. It’s an interesting community here. We’re all different, yet, we’re all on the same path. There’s something very welcoming about that.

Some of you may be here to read rants about the ins and outs of academia. Some may be interested in ecology, or the status of some of the research that keeps my days filled. Maybe you like traveling, or go through parenting struggles just like me. Maybe you’re just here for the snake posts? Please tell me some of you are here for the snakes! Let me know in the comments below what you’re here for, what you’d like to see more of, heck even what posts you hate…

Regardless of what you’re here to find, I love that you took or take the time to read. I appreciate you coming back, and I’d love you to share your ideas on my posts. Writing is cool and all, but it’s the sense of community that makes blogging blogging. If I didn’t want to interact with anyone, I would have written all those books in my head a long time ago.

Let me end it for today by thanking you all. All 200 of you. You may not all read, and some of you may not even be real, but it’s the small proportion that is, that makes me continue!

See you tomorrow!