He noticed today that the counter on his journal menu seemed to be going up pretty quickly. It added over 100 hits in the space of about 24 hours, more than he would normally get in two weeks. When you keep a web page with a counter you find that a lot of the hits you get on any given day are your own, checking uploads, making corrections, checking the corrections, checking to see if anyone has signed the guest book, admiring your handy work and fretting over your handy work so a lot of what the Sole Proprietor sees on any given day in his totals are really his own footprints.

He doesn't count how many are his and how many are visitors because it would be a pain in the ass to keep track on the one side and the results on the other side would be depressing. If you took all the people who have ever looked at the Sole Proprietor's site and multiplied them by two and then had them surf in three times each and added a whole bunch of Sole Proprietor visits, you wouldn't come to a hundred. The Sole Proprietor knows this, he can handle the math when its simple.

The answer was on If You See Her, Say Hello, a journal that he'd found maybe a month or so ago through a series of links that had started with a Journal Ring site and led to a site named DJR for Dear Jackie Robinson. DJR, which is now If You See Her, Say Hello, was good. The design was light and subtle and elegant and the writing was first class to the point of intimidation.

The Sole Proprietor has not been a great journal reader. He's not sure he likes reading his own. In fact, mostly he doesn't. It can be depressing. He says he sounds like a dork, ha! ha!, but actually he does. This is no big deal, it just means he works a little harder. He carps a lot, but its useful in getting him off the dime. No sympathy required. He reads Rien Post's journal every morning (nine hour time zone difference) after he gets to the office and he will often surf the Journal Ring sites, many of which he follows, if not daily, then often, but that's about all.

DJR/If You See Her, Say Hello was an eye opener. The sites she listed on the DJR Awards page were eye openers. He gave one of these url's to K at the office last week without particularly thinking, for example, and she admitted today that she'd contracted an instant and consuming addiction as she was not only sequentially reading all two years worth of journal entries on that particular site (firedrake, a lady with a proper attitude toward photographs), but she was probably going to start a journal of her own beginning in the new year.

Which is good: K is a graphic artist and PhotoShop - Illustrator - Quark Express maven who will produce something special. She's also a sassy-assed wench who will write with intelligence and exuberance. He would say "sassy assed bitch" if it didn't have just a hint of approbation and disapproval not to mention rudeness. Wench works, but its dated and suggests a lack of awareness on the Sole Proprietor's part as in dumb fuck with platitude.

So, the Sole Proprietor, reading a recent entry in If You See Her, Say Hello, sent her an email with a comment and included his url. In the back of his mind, of course, was the little voice saying "maybe she'll take a look at it and like it". Wow! You never admit to these things, there's too much ego involved, but a little part of you hopes it might be true even though you'd say to the world and to yourself, well, this is, um.... Well, he's not sure what he'd say to the world, but he sure as hell wouldn't admit deep down he was hoping for some sign of approval. Not he. Deedle-dee-dee.

In sum, she liked the site and she said so in her December 30th entry. One mention and a hundred hits. Amazing.

So, back to stage center. Need to stop this incestuous mentioning of other journals except as an occasional side bar outside the main narrative. Rollins advice keeps whispering in his ear: "I really can't bear web journals that drone on and on about the process of keeping a journal on the web. Shut up, already, and write." Yeah, but he's got another one out the door and done.

All the rest of these crazy assed bastards have been doing this for actual months and months. They are beyond hope. They write these things every day before breakfast. Right? You, Prop, have some way to go. You need time. Like this afternoon when you can write that thing about Clinton that came to you in the bathtub this morning. It was funny in your head, can you make it funny on paper? Yeah, sure, why not? He's the Sole Prop. His journal had a hundred hits last night.