I never expected to be known. I wrote for an invisible idealized self on the other side of the wall. As did my forbears – Montaigne, Thoreau, George Herbert, Emily Dickinson, souls who sang to few discernible, but to their twin projected to futurity. Theirs was less humility than disguised pride, a belief one might be read when the rest were buried. A victory in posthumity is satisfying to contemplate – who can say you nay!

My published writing evolved from pretention to intimacy by slow degrees. Like many a young buck, I strained to show my stuff. Some of it wasn’t bad – it’s survived rounds of cuts – but my motives make me blush. I was way too eager to impress, to omit the discreditable to enhance my allure. Many makers are early show-offs – Shakespeare, for example – but it takes genius to pull it off.

The more comfortable I got talking regularly in public – I’ve been filing periodical words almost sixty years now – the more I longed to confide. I wanted to be known for who I was. Not that my published persona was a lie, only so partial it amounted to fiction. I also kept my eye out for my job. An editor and publisher must sound a certain way, for we speak for our institution. We are almost politicians in that respect.

As I dared more candor, the ache of my private confessions seeped into my public pose. I got comfortable admitting flubs and flaws – the world didn’t end. I also gradually forsook any dream of popularity. If I couldn’t bear to read a bestseller, what made me think I could write one? Also, the diction that pleased me grew more recondite. Not many these days thrill to Dr. Johnson or the later Henry James. Obscurity unshackled me. The fewer one’s readers, the larger one’s license.

I undertook an experiment to enlarge my readership more from duty than desire. I owed it to my kids to see if my remains might be worth anything. A pile of six million words, half published, half private, was a grotesque bequest. What were they to do with me! They had their own lives.

I also felt I owed my other progeny, my words, their chance at a future. I didn’t believe they deserved subsequent attention, but in case they could attain it, I didn’t want to let them down. That meant a deliberate pursuit of popularity, for only popularity persuades publishers to promote writers to potential readers. Excellence is of scant concern to today’s producers of books, as their results attest.

My experiment’s success dumbfounded me. I’d expected indifference, would have welcomed it, to rock on retirement’s porch at my blissful ease. Best efforts are all we can ask of ourselves. I had tried to appeal widely and failed. Case closed.

Instead, my words attracted dozens, then hundreds, then thousands; the pace of new arrivals still accelerates. I feel like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, swamped by the assistance he’d sought, or like Jack with his wondrous beanstalk. Bless you, my friends, old and new! But how came you here and who are you and what might you expect from this adventure? You are so many, mostly faceless to me, only via dopey data can I gauge your response. I don’t want to let you down, but as important, I don’t want to let my words down, diluting my purpose in seeking your applause. My purpose, for more than a decade, has been to say what I see – as forthrightly, engagingly, euphoniously as I can, to daily bear witness to our moment. The number of my readership must remain a secondary concern.

So I say. But does my heart concur? The siren song of celebrity, the admiration of friends! Tinsel, I insist, gimcrack, distractions, phooey, but even so they tempt. What if twenty thousand readers multiplied into eight hundred thousand, as five hundred readers turned twenty thousand in a mere six months! That won’t happen, it’s crazy, but those are the sort of sirenic somersaults in which my dreams indulge. Down, boy, down!

Then I shudder, What if this balloon pops? The bigger they are, the louder they thud! Easy come, easy go. Could my pride endure the shame? How much cozier obscurity! Maybe I should play it safe – but what does that mean? That this is an experiment, never the same topic or timbre twice, must contribute to its appeal. And why shouldn’t the audience graph continue to slope like the Matterhorn? There are one and a half billion English speakers – a million is still only a drop in the bucket.

I do not know where we are heading or whether I can ride this Pegasus without falling off. Far from giddied by the numbers, I am scared witless, beset by dread. I’m composing this longer-than-usual missive to recover my calm, to “right myself by writing myself,” in my well-worn phrase. I seek no sympathy – surely this is a “nice problem to have” – but a problem is still a problem, which calm attention might shrink, like a laser a tumor.

Gradually, I’m getting a feel for why we convene. Many of us have been much alone – with our concern for the world and love of words. We had few pals on the same wavelength, to celebrate or condole with. Careful expression, one of our joys, is today an esoteric interest. So, alas, is moral exploration. Turns out, thanks to the investigative genius of algorithms, we can locate one another, scattered over the earth, and combine here daily, in a companionable congregation. Other online wizards supply insights useful in our dire hour. This project’s product, our “takeaway,” in marketing parlance, is solace and delight.

I mention this at inordinate length because I’m committed to candor about my psyche’s whereabouts, and not to describe my present perturbation would constitute deceit. We are together on this wild ride to wherever we end up. Bless you for your adhesion and encouragement.