Mingling Above My Station

Something's not right here. Yesterday, Dust in the Light was listed among the top 30 blogs on the TTLB Ecosystem — a "Mortal Human." Today, it's hanging on at number 36. I should be touting this — proclaiming it. So why am I embarrassed to admit it?

A more productive question can be gleaned from the two blogs on either side of mine: Right Wing News, with its 2,000+ daily unique visits, and Daniel Drezner, with 3,500+ daily visitors. What am I doing in this company?

I don't ask these questions out of insecurity, with an eye toward comparisons of innate value. Rather, I'm curious what Dust in the Light's placement actually means; although, I don't know that it's a question to which I can find a satisfactory answer. It could mean, for example, that I'm in some sense a "blogger's blogger," with relatively few readers, but a disproportionate number of whom blog, themselves. Perhaps some high-profile successes on my part have simply earned me mention on the blogrolls of people who don't read Dust in the Light regularly.

The fact of the matter is that I'm thrilled to have any readers at all. Moreover, as Bryan Preston has mused as well, blogging has afforded me inspiriting opportunities. But there are stages to these things, and sometimes, shark-like, we must remain in motion just to keep breathing. A good TTLB rank doesn't attract advertisers, which contribute to Right Wing News and Drezner something that would certainly ease my breaths: revenue.

That, I guess, is the real question — particularly in my dire circumstances. Whatever the mechanism that has placed Dust in the Light among for-profit bloggers, how do I join them in more palpable ways? Noting that the book that he narrates is only "the draught of a draught," Moby-Dick's Ishmael declares, "Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!" Patience I've got, and my strength is holding. But in the dispiriting way of the modern world, for lack of cash, I'm rapidly running out of time.