When I set up the follow box in my sidebar, I decided not to display the number of followers because I didn’t want to feel that I was competing with other bloggers for popularity. I do glance at that statistic occasionally, though, while doing administrative tasks on the blog. A few days ago, I noticed that I was down one follower since the last time I looked, and my first reaction was to feel put out—not necessarily with a nice warm coat like my daughter’s puppy got for Christmas, either!
I found myself worrying that people didn’t like my blog, that I might carelessly have offended a reader without knowing it, et cetera. Of course, when I stopped to think about it, I realized that I was being very silly! Lots of people go through their blog subscriptions at the start of the new year and remove blogs they haven’t visited recently, without making any judgments as to merit. In fact, I had done that myself just the day before!
In our competitive modern society, it can be hard to remember that most of what happens is not about us. The decisions people make about how to spend their time generally are not driven by harsh value judgments; it’s simply a matter of managing a huge number of choices and a limited amount of time. So when people decide not to stay subscribed to a blog or otherwise not to stay in contact, they probably haven’t even thought much about it, but are just trying to simplify a busy life. It’s not personal.
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to “give this planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.” Visit her site to find more Nurturing Thursday posts and a list of frequent contributors.
