Good Golly, Miss Molly

Trey Smith

Like most blogs, we use a statistical service -- Sitemeter -- that keeps a count of visitors and provides a variety of information. One of the tools featured is the referral source -- where a visitor came from on the web. I look at this information frequently because, well, it's interesting, to say the least.

Today, while taking a gander at Sitemeter, I noticed a few visitors came from a web site I'm not familiar with, so I checked it out. It turns out that The Rambling Taoists came in 2nd for the International Journal of Qigong & Taiji Culture's 2012 Readers Choice Awards.

I'd be lying if I wrote it didn't make me smile. I'm not saying I immediately started turning cartwheels or ran around the local neighborhood shouting in delirium, but it does give me a nice feeling.

I certainly had nothing to do with nomination process. In the 8 years of this blog, I've never entered a contest or nominated this blog for anything. That's not why I started it. I didn't have hopes of being the most popular blog visited blog either. I started it because I write and this is a platform for writing.

As I've mentioned before, I think clearer when I write things out. Scott is the same way too. I don't know if it's true for the Baroness, Ta-Wan and Shawn, but I bet it is!

Putting the words to virtual paper and then reading over them helps me to formulate my ideas better than simply thinking them or saying them out loud. It's been this way since I was a wee lad.

As Scott has stated more than a few times, what we each do here is really nothing more than contemplating in public space. One of the benefits we possibly derive from this exercise is born of feedback from others -- people like you. Your comments and emails cause us to rethink what we thought. Sometimes we change our minds; sometimes we don't.

Speaking solely for myself, your responses are very important to me. It allows me to see the various topics broached through a different set of eyes. While I initially may disagree with your perspective -- at times, vociferously so -- it does make an impact on me. It is not uncommon that, after my defensive postured has waned, your words and thoughts hit home and I have been known to contemplate them deeply for days on end.

And so, that's why this blog is here. It's not to win awards or reap recognition -- though that's nice -- it's here to help the 5 scribes become better people. It is YOUR continued involvement that makes this possible.