The Stratagem’s Archive

Tag: reflections on creativity

  • Before You Celebrate Your First 100 Downloads, Read This

    I thought my writing was finally reaching people. My metrics told a different story.

    I’ve been writing on WordPress for about 8 months now — still a baby writer — and in that time I’ve published 7 PDFs.

    Five of them were personal reflections. Two were fitness-related, based on how I personally trained over 280+ weeks.

    Over the last 7 months, I watched my total PDF download count steadily climb to nearly 190.

    As a new writer, I was shocked.

    I’ve never thought anything I’ve made actually resonated with other people online — so seeing those numbers go up month after month felt like proof that maybe my work was finally landing somewhere.

    I let myself feel hopeful.

    I thought:
    “People are choosing to download this.”

    There was just one problem.

    While my PDFs were being downloaded consistently, my blog views, visitors, likes, shares, and subscribers weren’t following the same trajectory.

    If nearly 200 people downloaded my work, why wasn’t anything else moving?

    • No increase in followers.
    • No comments.
    • No returning visitors.
    • No meaningful time spent on the blog itself.

    Just… downloads.

    At first, I told myself that maybe the people downloading my PDFs were just hard to track.

    Maybe they were using private browsers.
    Maybe they were in incognito mode.
    Maybe they were behind VPNs.
    Maybe they opened the PDF offline after downloading it.

    In my head, these were real people — just statistically invisible ones.

    But over time, I learned something I didn’t expect as a new creator:

    Downloads don’t always mean readers.

    Bots crawl websites constantly. They scan pages, follow links, and yes — they can download files like PDFs. Sometimes it’s for indexing. Sometimes it’s for scraping content. Sometimes it’s automated vulnerability checks.

    And they don’t just stop at your blog.

    I noticed that even my Ko-fi page — where I keep my other creative work like sticker designs, D&D story expansions, and concept art — had a few external views that I couldn’t account for.

    Before, I assumed those were curious people checking out my work.

    Now, I’m not so sure.

    Coming to this realization forced me to separate what the numbers were showing me from the story I wanted them to mean.

    So now, when I check my stats, I try to keep a few things in mind:

    • A download is not the same as a read.
    • Traffic is not the same as engagement.
    • And early growth isn’t always human.

    Despite everything that’s happened, my stubbornness would let me pause for a moment, then have me keep publishing. Even when engagement and views are quiet.

    Since I don’t have advanced analytical tools for my blog, I, The Archivist, will never know for sure if anything happened on my blog was due to a person or a bot.

    If you’re a new writer watching your download count rise faster than anything else — celebrate carefully.

    Make sure your reality isn’t running ahead of your assumptions.

    That doesn’t mean your work doesn’t matter.

    It means that when you’re starting out, your metrics can’t be your only source of truth.

    If you’re early in your writing or creative work and your numbers don’t seem to match — don’t immediately assume you’ve failed, and don’t immediately assume you’ve “made it” either.

    Look for signals that are harder to fake:

    Someone spending time on your page.
    Someone clicking through to another post.
    Someone subscribing.
    Someone replying, sharing, or bookmarking your work.

    Even one real person choosing to stay is more meaningful than 50 automated downloads that never read a word.

    I’m still new at this. I’m still figuring out what real engagement looks like.

    But I’d rather build something slowly with honest signals than rush to celebrate numbers I don’t fully understand.

    If you’re building too — keep going.

    Just make sure you know what you’re actually measuring.

    Explore The Archives:

    Here are a few articles about other things I’ve written over time:

    If You Made It to The End

    I support this work myself. If you found value in it and want to help keep it available, optional support is here 🌊.
    I’m making a sticker design based on my Chaotic Life Strong PDFs. This is what the draft looks like as of right now.

    My Chaotic Life Strong inspired sticker draft

    If you’re curious to see what the end result will look like and would like to have a copy, check out my Ko-fi page by waving below. It’s my secondary creative archive.

    Tiny Wave 👋

    No pressure—just a way for me to say thank you for spending time with The Archives.

    Otherwise, I’ll see you all later in The Archives.

  • The Writings on the (Rage Room) Walls — Are We Striving to Leave Something Behind?

    The Walls Are Covered in Writing From Ceiling to Floor

    When I first started working at the rage room part-time months ago, two things immediately caught my eye:

    1) how my eyes burned from how bright the black lighting was.

    2) how much history—from names to social handles to straight-up graffiti—had been scrawled across every wall and ceiling over the four years this place has been open.

    As I became an employee, I never questioned why people were more excited to write on the walls than to break plates or spray neon paint.

    It took me over five months to realize something quietly profound—somewhere between the crashes of sledgehammers on glass and the clang of crowbars on wood.

    I started to wonder:

    Why do we write books? Compose songs? Build companies? Contribute to something larger, even in small ways?

    And then it hit me.

    I was asking the same question I’d been quietly asking about my own blog, The Stratagem’s Archive.

    Is my blog really all that different from a rage room wall—an ever-growing collage of words, reflections, and fleeting marks? An attempt to leave something behind, knowing it could just as easily be painted over one day?

    The more I thought about it, the more I realized how similar it was. The excitement of writing something meaningful, not knowing who will see it—or if anyone ever will. And yet, we do it anyway.

    Maybe, in the end, we’re all just trying to leave some kind of proof that we were here.

    People’s Excitement is Palpable Towards Those Bright Neon Pens

    Every group that’s come through before and after my time here has one thing in common: they always write something on the walls.

    I’ve seen names, birthdays, and declarations of love written in neon pinks and greens. I’ve seen angry messages—“I hate your guts and hope you suffer”—scribbled right next to doodles of anime characters or someone’s best friend’s name with a heart around it.

    Once, a couple came in for their anniversary. After their session, they asked if they could write on the walls. I said yes.

    When I checked back, I saw their names written in a gorgeous, looping scrawl right across the mural of angel wings—the one spot we ask people not to touch because it’s meant for photos and memories.

    My coworker wiped it off minutes later. We both knew it had to go. But as the ink faded, I couldn’t stop wondering if, for that couple, those few neon words were their way of saying, “We were here. We loved. We lived.”

    When I brought that up, my 21-year-old coworker told me, “Don’t think too hard about it.”

    So, naturally, I thought too hard about it—and wrote this instead.

    Would It Be So Wrong to Not Be Remembered?

    Let’s ask something uncomfortable:

    Would it really be so bad if we weren’t remembered?

    We’ve built entire systems to preserve names—colleges, hospitals, parks, cars, snack brands. Hershey. Ford. John Hopkins. Epicurus. Confucius. We build monuments to the idea of being remembered.

    But what if the quiet act of living fully was enough?

    I don’t advertise my real name anywhere on my blog. I don’t have social media. I’m practically a ghost in the modern world. And honestly? I like it that way.

    Sure, The Stratagem’s Archive is public. Anyone can stumble across it, read my reflections, and wander through my archives. But this is my mask. My little corner of anonymity and freedom.

    I don’t want to be famous. I just want to leave something honest behind—something that glows quietly for a while before it fades under the next coat of paint.

    Because maybe that’s enough.

    Maybe we don’t need to be remembered forever—just long enough for our light to touch someone else’s, even for a moment.

    Reflection and Call to Action

    Thanks for spending a few minutes here in the Archive with me. If this reflection sparked something in you, share it, like it, or subscribe to follow along for more quiet musings, prompts, and experiments.

    Or, if you’d rather stay anonymous, you can always send me your thoughts directly at—whatimtryingoutnow@gmail.com—I read every message. Whether you write publicly or quietly, we all leave our marks somewhere.

    Here’s to leaving them with intention, even if they someday fade.

    Reflections of Rage Rooms and Memories: