My publisher asked me for usage and traffic statistics for my blog, bedlamfarm.com, and I realized – this was embarrassing – that I didn’t know what the traffic is, exactly, so I asked Mannix Marketing, my partner, Web designer and maintainer, just how many people are seeing my blog, now entering its ninth year of publication.

The stats came today, and I was surprised and somewhat humbled. So far this year, 3,675,638 million people have viewed the blog. Of those, 714,804 are what is called unique users, the total number of individuals who come to the blog and often repeat their visits.

Of these visitors, 34.5 per cent return regularly, 65.3 per cent were new to the blog. I am very proud of this figure, I have worked very hard on this blog just about every day for nine years, it is the creative focal point of my life.

Many people – literary snobs especially – do not yet consider blogs to be actual writing or literature, I am proud to be off of their radar where I belong. I consider the blog my great work, a living memoir, if it were published between hardcovers I believe it would stand up as an innovative memoir and hopefully, an authentic story of one man’s life, good and bad.

The blog has changed and yet, stayed the same. I don’t permit comments on the blog, it is dialogue, not a monologue and I don’t wish to spend my life sorting through unwanted advice and arguing over my beliefs. Comments are allowed on Facebook, the blog feeds there every day.

In 2008, I cracked up and wrote about it on the blog, and I began taking pictures and published them on the blog. I believe my photographs have become as important as my words, they tell the story of my life as effectively as my writing, they have helped, I believe, to fuel the blog’s extraordinary growth.

Two years ago, as the costs of publishing the blog mounted and my income declined, I started a voluntary payment program to keep the blog free and to keep the blog going. Slowly, but surely, the payment program is a success, helping me to maintain the blog and my photography. The blog does need about $5,000 worth of updating for mobile platforms, I have not yet been able to do that.

Several years ago, after much trial and error, Mannix and I reached an agreement to offer the current design, meant to be simple and to give equal treatment to my words and photos. I love the design, it looks as good to me today as it did when it was designed.

I said when I started out that I wouldn’t spend all day proof-reading and working on grammar, but writing and sharing my ideas. Aside from the upset stomachs I have given some retired English teachers, that is a good formula for me.

But perhaps the biggest change in my writing and the blog has been the arrival of Maria, both as a regular presence on my blog and as a writer in her own right with her blog. People used to write to me, now every message seems to be to Maria and me. We have our separate work and identities, but we are united in our love for one another and our commitment to a creative life.

To my delight and astonishment, people very much want to follow that story, our story, her presence permeates all of my work. Love does that. The blog was growing before Maria came into my life, but it is growing a lot faster now.

I am totally committed to the blog, I publish on it almost  every day, usually more than once and it has helped me develop my photography into something sometimes akin to art.

I have kept my pledge to be open and share my life. That is not always easy, but it is always good.

Some days you get the good Jon Katz, some days you get the bad, but you get the real one either way. I have kept the blog free of the often poisonous and disturbing hostility that seems to be built into the Internet infrastructure. I am proud of that, the real world sometimes intrudes, but mostly I ignore it here.

When I began the blog, it was controversial, it still is considered a frivolous and base form of writing by publishers and many writers. People told me I was making a big mistake, but I love the informality, interactivity and freedom I have here as a writer. Nobody can tell me what to write, and because I am stupid, I am free, just like Beavis & Butthead. Almost no one working in corporate media has this kind of freedom.

I believe I am working to build a future that can be a model for other writers, and that is becoming so. There are millions of blogs on the Internet.

My focus is on the farm, its animals and rural life, but my subject matter has broadened. I write about spirituality, health, aging, community, trees and nature, farms, people in my life, the struggle to define animal rights, sometimes – this year – even politics. I write what I wish when I wish, and while that often upsets people, I believe it has helped to grow the blog. People want to think, even if they don’t always agree with what they are thinking about.

With these numbers, I believe I have made a dramatic turn towards the future, I believe I can remain a writer, build an audience, and grow and change.  I never imagined having so many people follow me in this way. I guess in this context, I am a best-seller again, I never sold that many copies of any book.

The blog has greatly enhanced and improved my writing, and I am so grateful to all of you for sticking with bedlamfarm.com.  I am also grateful to Maria for sharing my life in so beautiful and affirming a way. I promise to keep working on bedlamfarm.com every day and pouring my heart and soul into it. Both reside here in a very important way.

I appreciate your putting up with me and sharing this journey here.