Serendipity or luck?

As you might expect - because of my self-imposed walkabout – my visitor stats have steadily declined and plateaued out. This morning, I saw the weekly Sitemeter report that's been sitting in my inbox since Sunday and, for no particular reason, clicked on through to the live (current) stats. I was shocked. I had more than double the number of visitors in one day than I'd had for an entire week!

I needed to get to the bottom of this aberration, so looked at the visitor details. Well, to my surprise, most of the visits were coming from Times Goes By, Ronni Bennet's site. So, I clicked onto TGB and found that Ronni has started something called "Featured Elderblogs" - a special sidebar area with links to five blogs from her blogroll, each group of five posted and featured for one week.

I have no idea how Ronni is choosing the weekly group of blogs, but guess what? My blog is in the first group of five for the week of June 29, 2009.

I don't know if it's serendipity or pure blind luck, but there it is. It comes at a time that I've been questioning my priorities about blogging versus other things in my life -- hence, the walkabout.

Ever since I started blogging, Time Goes By and Ronni have been an inspiration to me. I'm sure she doesn't remember, but she helped me in my early days with blogrolls and other small, but significant things, just as I'm sure she's helped countless others in the same, kind way. Though likely unintentional, by including my blog in her featured links this week, she's put a boot to my derriere and made me make some choices.

Sometimes I waffle between being the type of person who thinks everything in life is connected and happens for a reason to one who is pragmatic and thinks that things happen – period. Today, I'm leaning toward the former.

I guess it also means I've finished my walkabout.