Sarah Pressler, on her blog:
But the thing is you can just write for the sake of sharing your thoughts with the world at large. Or mostly, just for the sake of getting your thoughts out of your own head.
It is true. Your blog does not need to make money. You do not need to track analytics. In fact, I believe you are better off if you do not do so. Do not look at your readership numbers, your follower counts, your “hits”. Ignore that. Just write.
Three years ago, I wrote:
But writing, for me, is my way of deep thinking. I then get to edit my thoughts. What a beautiful idea! To write something down that you’re thinking about and, rather than the thought simply going away, you can go back and and begin to craft that idea and mold your own opinion until you can fully come to a conclusion.
It is still true for me today. Writing is how I get things out of my head and can form firm opinions of those things. Sometimes I publish those thoughts, other times I do not. But I have no idea how many people read them.
Side note: If you look at the source code for my site you will see Google Analytics. It is because my site is powered by the Barley platform – which tracks all page views. But I do not look at them personally. Probably haven’t looked too closely at those numbers in a few years.