For the last few weeks, I’ve been refreshing the New York Times home page, the Johns-Hopkins coronavirus dashboard, and checking the stock market 45 times a day. For now, Revzilla still wants me to provide content for Common Tread, but I can’t help but think that, A.) Most of what they sell is made in China and they could soon face a pretty big supply chain disruption, and B.) A major recession seems inevitable at which point few people are going to think, “I should buy a new crash helmet.” The sad truth is that in the U.S. at least, all motorcycle spending is discretionary.
At a time like this, motorcycle journalism seems like a less-than-essential part of a less-than-essential niche industry. I’d be more useful if I got a job stocking shelves at a supermarket.
Or, maybe not.
This post which, TBH, is really not my best work, was still seen by 27,000 people. I figure that all told, they were distracted for over month. Maybe that’s good for something.
The other day, Lance sent me a note mentioning that my recent post on the impending (now definite) cancelation of the 2020 TT had been Common Tread’s most-read post over the first few days of March. He mentioned that it had been looked at by 27,000 visitors to the site.
Of course, many people probably just glanced at it – perhaps they read a sentence or two – then moved on. But it triggered a bunch of comments, so some people read it all the way ‘through.
That got me thinking: If the average person spent even two minutes on my post, that works out to 27,000 people X 2 minutes = 54,000 minutes.
That’s a lot of minutes. 37½ days-worth, to be exact. At a time when a lot of us are sitting around at home, any distraction’s welcome. So that post, which only took me a few hours to research and write, provided readers with 900 hours of distraction.
For now, maybe that’s enough of a justification for me to keep writing.