Freshly Pressed: The Aftermath

Ah, it was wonderful, being Freshly Pressed. But it has its downside as well.

Before Being Freshly Pressed (BFP), I was perfectly content with my 72 followers, which meant that about an average of one new reader per week was joining. I was proud of my stats, which showed that my record number of visits in one day was 139. People from an average of ten countries visited my blog each day, and I enjoyed seeing them on Feedjit.

(I did wonder for a long time if Feedjit was in fact live, because I could never catch a visitor showing up on it while I was watching, until one time I decided to sit and watch until one showed up. I waited for about 45 minutes, I think, until someone did, and I was finally assured that Feedjit was indeed live.)

And then, out of the blue–in the sense that I never expected to be selected the very first time I submitted a DPchallenge post–I was Freshly Pressed. Where was I when I got the news? In a coffeeshop downtown, killing time, waiting to take my daughter from one place to the next, and for the first time in weeks I didn’t have my computer with me. Oh, the agony!

For hours, all I could do was work on my imaginary acceptance speech in my mind: “Oh, thank you, WordPress! This is such a great honor. First of all, let me thank my parents, for giving birth to me, and my amazing husband, for working his tail off while I’m at home blogging, and my precious children who mean everything to me–well, almost everything, because obviously being Freshly Pressed is the achievement of a lifetime, one that I could never dream to accomplish. I also need to thank all my wonderful readers all around the world and, and, oh my, I’m shaking . . .”

When I finally got home that evening and started up my computer, I was ecstatic. The high was unimaginable. During the 30 hours or so that my blog was Freshly Pressed, I saw my  record number of hits in one day soar to the incredible height of 424. I now have 92 followers–that’s 20 more than BFP–and I just loved watching Feedjit. About every minute someone popped up. I could watch it all day: Oh look, someone from the Palestinian Territories, and here’s one from Spain . . . and Malaysia . . .

But then I got scrolled off the Freshly Pressed screen and things inevitably went back more or less to normal. I now have more followers, but it’s probably not a good use of my time to watch Feedjit for visitors anymore; I have had 26 visits so far today, and dusk is fast approaching.

And that record number of visitors in one day will stay forever on my stats, a bitter-sweet reminder of those  30 hours when I was in the spotlight. A number that I will never reach again.

Yesterday I was in the international limelight and today I’m a has-been. I’m washed up. I sit here, in front of my computer, gazing at the Feedjit screen, willing the visitors to pop up the way they did yesterday, but alas, it’s futile. I might as well start drinking to drown my sorrows. Maybe, when I have sunk so low as to be living under a bridge, estranged from my loved ones and most importantly: without electricity and a wifi connection, I will finally be able to forget.

Look on me with pity as you pass by (I think I’ll take up residence under the Mopac Bridge, since I am especially fond of it) and remind yourself: “There but for the grace of WordPress go I.”