Stats are weird and make me feel all squooshy

I've been away from Mac Attack for a long time, and now that I'm back I find that the Blogspot gurus have changed a bunch of things -- for good or ill, I'm not yet sure.  One of the things that's new is that whenever I log in, I am immediately shown a graph of how many people have viewed my page each day.  This data is graphed onto a chart that looks like the ticker tape from a heart monitor.  For instance, about 6 people saw the first post I put up and the next day 32 people logged in and then 37 the next day and then only 5 the day after. If I click on yet another button, I can see another kind of graph that breaks down the information even differently -- I can see not only how many page views per day but also how many hits each entry got. 

And I'm getting a little annoyed and turned on by that information.  Oooh, all these people are reading me (feels good).  Wait, only 8 people checked in to "The Dead are Annoying"?  Are they already getting bored of me?  They MUST be getting bored with me (frustrating though expected.)  In other words, I feel pure ambivalence about these pesky heart monitor graphs.  I want people to read my page.  But what if they're spam bots?  Then I want them as far as possible from my electronic space, with their "Hello you are good writer I have many fantasy want to meet me whoops perhaps you are already married big guy" comments or their offers of penis enhancement. 

And what if the people who are just reading in order to figure out ways to make fun of me?  (Yikes, this paranoia is pure middle school.  That's a great place to be, mentally...) 

On the other hand, stats are a great motivator for the Nanowrimo writing project.  I love to update my word count after each writing bout, and see how many words I've written for the day, as well as where on the graph my output fits -- it's like getting an A. 

Yes, this is not a facet of my character that I'm proud of -- I wish I could write only for myself, to lose myself in the work, and not care where I stack up next to anyone else -- but it's a facet that's a fact.  So I might as well acknowledge it and use it to keep myself going.

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Nanowrimo word count, day 11:  23,694
Words today:  2125