Where have all the readers gone?

Or, more to the point, where have all the commenters gone?

The Cowboy, we know, is mired in trial preparations. But Tulsa was silent from Monday to Friday. And FG has disappeared as mysteriously as he/she/it arrived in the first place. And those three are just about it for the regular commenting; so, when I lose them, the blog seems mighty quiet.

More pointedly still, where have all my old friends gone??

At the start of the week, I sent out an e-mail to all the folks 'back home' (a roughly even split between the UK and North America, as it happens - with a few more exotic countries thrown in here and there) exhorting them to come and visit the blog, and making a 'recommendation of the week' for them to check out (of course, the infamous 'Asexualismo' post over on the Barstool - I think I'll add that one to the sidebar on here, if I haven't already). And I haven't heard a peep out of any of them. Not one. Not by e-mail, not by phone, not by letter, not by postcard..... and most certainly not in a comment! I'm really starting to wonder if that e-mail of mine got through OK. Perhaps spam filters worldwide are now being ridiculously vindictive towards multiple-blind-copies. Perhaps 'The Kafka Boys' here in China are intercepting my e-mail. Perhaps Yahoo has been suffering one of its occasional "We can be just as useless as Hotmail sometimes!" glitches in service. I shall have to do some follow-up on this.

You see, during my first four-and-a-half years in China I kept all of my buddies overseas entertained with regular 'bulletins' about my new life here: about 1,200-1,500 words of wit, rant, and general froogery almost every week. Although a few people asked to be taken off the list because they were "just too busy" to be dealing with my narcissistic noodlings, the majority actually encouraged me to keep up the habit, and interacted with me by e-mail at least once in a while; a few loyal fans would promptly query or complain if there was any cessation of the usual outpouring for any reason. And in fact, the mailing list grew in length over the years as I added a number of friends-of-friends, former China colleagues fled home, pen friends, blog friends, etc. Yes, the 'bulletin' was going out to 70-odd people every week..... and being 'enjoyed' by a significant number of them.

But..... well, I rather fell out of the habit early this year. My posting on the blogs has been taking up all of my writing energies of late, and tends to cover much the same sort of ground as the 'bulletins' did in the past (though, of course, in a private e-mail - while I still gave all the dramatis personae the anonymising protection of an amusing nickname - I was able to be far more outspoken in my commentary about friends, acquaintances.... and especially employers; and also about my romantic life; or, at any rate, my prospective romantic life, the endlessly fluid lists of women I was unpromisingly 'interested' in). Hence, I was finding it harder and harder to make the time to compose the weekly 'bulletin', harder and harder to think of suitable material to include in it - topics that I hadn't already covered on here. It became too hard. I gave up.

However, there hasn't been a high rate of 'conversion', of former 'bulletin' fans becoming regular readers of the blogs. I know from e-mail exchanges that there are several of them who do look in here, at least on the odd occasion, but don't comment - but that's only a small fraction of my original 'readership'. And so far, only The British Cowboy, Scottish Ali (aka 'anonymous') and Earthling have become anything like regular readers and commenters.

So...... I have set myself to try to chivvy rather more of these folks into joining us here on Froogville and the Barstool. My first attempt appears to have been a resounding failure. But I shall try again. Oh, yes.

"The world shall hear from me again."