I’m going to come clean about something: I’m a bit neurotic. Now some of you just choked on the “a bit” part and I want to let you know I think you’re mean, I know who you are and I’m eyeballing you. Yes, that’s right. Eyeballing you. I was fessing up to my behavior to my friend April, because I knew that as a good friend, she’d sit and laugh at me. She did. However, I also knew it would be a very supportive, non-judgmental sort of laugh. It wasn’t. Deep down though, I know she cares.

The whole thing came up when I posted on a forum I never post on. I’m quite the accomplished lurker and really, I haven’t felt the need to share my thoughts. No topic has grabbed me and demanded my keen and invaluable insight (I say that tongue-in-cheek). I prefer to sit in the shadows and watch and judge like any good lurker would. Well, I got this idea in my head that I should say “hello” and introduce myself, because I thought “what the heck, that’s harmless enough” and it was, if you’re a normal person. For someone who is neurotic, you say “hello” and then you wait and wait and watch and see if anyone has said “hello” back and you count those “hellos” and compare them to the responses others have received in their “Hello” threads. In fact, you check regularly like you’ve created some new religion called “Refresh” and you’re its high priestess. You, the reader, don’t need to know how “regularly” regularly actually is for someone whose neurotic, but it’s probably 100 more times than you would check it and I’m low-balling a bit.

Around the same day that I said “hello” I was feeling spunky and decided, “I’ll invite a bunch of people out for an event!” I sent everyone a note and followed-up by also creating the event on FB to hit all of those people whose emails I didn’t have. That gave me two things to check on fanatically, wait for responses on and worry about. It added diversity to my crazy. “Did any one say hello, yet? Maybe someone has said they’re coming to my event.” On day two, the number of new people who said “hello” back and the number of people who said they would attend my event stabilized. Both numbers remain pitifully low for my taste and now the only number to watch is the number of declines that grow and surpass the number of people who actually said “yes!” or the number of new threads that were started and now bury my “hello” post. Still, ever hopeful, I check and re-check throughout the day in the hopes that maybe someone new and unexpected has said “yes” or maybe “hello”.

The act of writing about this just compelled me to recheck the numbers. I couldn’t write another sentence until I indulged this need. Although really, let’s face it, it doesn’t take much prompting. Great. Looks like a new person declined without bothering to leave a cheery note on the Wall claiming a conflict or at least feigning some regret. So hurtful. I’ll check back later.

I suppose since I’m on a roll, I should make one final confession. I compulsively check my blog stats, too. This is not actually surprising. I can’t help it. The only thing that would make this task more exciting for me would be if I could have Google Analytics collecting my data. It doesn’t just show me the raw number of readers, it shows IP addresses, domains, cities, states, and countries. I could spend long moments pouring over the data. Unfortunately, the way I have the blog hosted now, it won’t work. Curses. Now I just have the numbers, which while fun are not as fun as seeing that someone on the local newspaper’s domain looked at my blog. That information is like crack for the crazy and let me say I lived off that for a month. A little addendum to that confession, since clearly I’m the kind of person who would insanely monitor their stats, is that I “may” slightly misrepresent the number of people who look at my blog to my readers. I have a habit of always referring to you as my “10 readers”. If I crunch the numbers and am honest, I have 11. The extra one is an avid Sam fan. Thank you extra blog reader, adding you to the roster made my day! Maybe tomorrow Dad will finally join my reader roll and I’ll finally have 12. Oh, elusive 12. (Hush April, stats said post margarita at the ice cream shop, stay post margarita at the ice cream shop.)

So, there you have it. A small list of my crazy. I’d ask for responses, but then I’d just end up adding another thing to obsess over and April really doesn’t have the time to listen to a riveting evaluation of my life based on blog stats and “hellos”. She claims something about how stable people have a life.

Now to go look at that invitation.