I freaked out today.

I freaked out today because I saw a comment from a complete stranger on one of the entries.

It was inevitable, but I certainly didn’t think it would happen so quickly. This is probably an overreaction, but I felt very light-headed when I saw the comment and clicked on the link to see this person’s website.

So today, this whole thing suddenly got a little weird on me. Before now, I guess I sort of felt “in control” over my site and the audience. I felt that I could tailor what I wrote based on what I know about the people I knew would be reading. Without warning, I’m facing head-on the reality of this experiment… and it’s a little unsettling.

I thought that I would feel triumphant when a brand new person took the time to give feedback… and yes, I do feel a little affirmed and definitely thankful.

Mostly I think I’m worried again about the quality of what I’m providing. I don’t feel confident that what I’ve done so far is “ready for prime time” so it’s not as satisfying as I expected. I’m overly concerned about what she, somebody I’ve never met before, thinks about all of this.

So now I’m obsessed.

I spent hours this afternoon resolved to find tools and report-generators that would help me analyze my access logs (which are over 1 MB, now!). I have pretty graphs now that show me the mystery person visited the site only twice and hasn’t returned since, but don’t shed any light on how my new guest found me.

Funny thing is, I think I will feel a little sad if this person never returns.

Because of the funky forwarding I’m doing, I can’t tell if that person came off of Sean’s site or elsewhere.

My best guess it is the whole n-degrees of seperation principle*. Over the weekend, I invited a whole new group of people in on all the fun, and I guess somebody passed along the link to somebody they knew.

That, or one of my “friends” is playing another joke on me.

Incidentally, I think there is a serious flaw in the common belief in the 6-degrees of seperation idea (you know, through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, you can get to anyone in the world), but don’t get me started.