I'm at home, sitting on the kitchen table. I just took my boys to school and I'm about to start my work. I'm writing this message directly to you. And you are reading it. Hello!
Isn't that funny? I've been trying to write consistently, and it gives the impression that I am this serious person with some serious insights. But no, I'm just writing. Sometimes you respond, you send a nice email, other times it's complete silence. It ends up being like an entry in a journal, for me to stumble upon at a later date and reflect: "Oh yeah, that's what I was thinking that day."
My job is a 2 hour drive away, so I rent an office close by. There I can focus and clearly delineate work time from home time. I don't like working when I'm home with my family. So I have some time to talk to you.
Last year, I spent some time digging through my server logs to find who is reading me. I wanted to know who you are, and why you are interested in reading me? But I can't get an answer from just reading the logs. Instead what I found is that you and most other people come here via RSS. My rough count shows that there are 10,000 of you, or at least 10,000 unique IP addresses that ping the websites whenever I write something new. There are around 2,000 people subscribed via popular RSS readers like feedbin or Feedly. 1,500 of you also subscribe via email which I have neglected this year.
It's weird because this data is invisible most of the time. I forget that when I write something, anything, the odds are that someone will find it intriguing. In fact when I look deeper into the logs, I see people are referred by other blogs I never heard about. And they mention me by name, "and then Ibrahim said this or that." It feels so personal.
I often forget that this is all so human. That, what we call the small web is people not just writing, but telling us something. When I have an insight, or read something interesting, I'm telling you about it. Not directly, but in an asynchronous way. You get to know or read about it on your own terms. The small web has never died, it feels like it did at some point because it has remained small. But I don't think I want it to become any bigger, or any louder. It's right where it's supposed to be.
I'm breaking the 4th wall today just to say Hi.
Hello!
How are you?
I hope you are doing well. The world is weird sometimes, but you are not invisible. I see you. I hope you are having a good day.
