HELLO, I'M HERE. ARE YOU THERE?

To those for whom it is already 2011, Happy New Year.
To those for whom it is not yet 2011, catch me tomorrow.
To those for whom 2011 is already ancient history, I wish you health, happiness and peace no matter what calendar you follow.
To you Chinese, I beg that you pray for me.  I have 11 more years to go before completing the 7th cycle around the Zodiac.
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Now, here's a thought.  Not a new one.  One I have spent a lot of time with and expect to spend a lot more time with going forward.  I am even intrigued by it right now.  I think that there will be some human, somewhere who will read this.  In fact I really believe that there will indeed be a human who will read this.  The intriguing part of it is, I don;t know who that human is and more than likely will never know.  Believe it or not, it really feels rather strange to be in this position.  
It all started when I was still young and I wondered how the radio announcers knew that there were people listening to them.  I had to really twist my brain around some tortuous logic to get an answer that was really not to convincing to me.  I got myself to answer the question to myself by reasoning that the announcers themselves listened to the radio and came to the conclusion that there were some announcers whom they liked and some whom they did not.  I had to twist myself around the same logic for other things, like newspaper reporters, movie actors and actresses and authors of books.  I was mystified by the separation that existed between the sound and the human making the sound.  The real mystery was that we, the listeners were developing emotions resembling those of real, live, tangible, person to person relationships with the voices that we heard over the radio.  It also seemed that the voices over the radio were developing "relationships" with us.  Not that, whomever you may be, was real creepy to me.
I had the good fortune to get something of an answer to my thought from my brother who had a fairly long term career as a radio announcer.  He said that over time the audience grows and also over time, the audience comes to know you in person through certain inter-active social events.  
After a while, says he, it gets to be like you're on the telephone but no one answers.  You don't mind because you really don't want to talk to them anyway. (I just made that up for effect.)
So now, here I am, writing away and although I know that someone, somewhere, somehow is going to read what i write, I confess that I can say "I know" because I believe it, not because I am absolutely, scientifically sure that it will indeed happen.  It is rather challenging to convince myself that I am really contributing to the social and spiritual treasure of the world by what I do.  Every writer has the same challenge.  Well, not every author, just about 98% of us.  I have to tell you, it is very fulfilling sitting here and contributing to the world's pool of written ideas, not matter how many will actually read what is here.  Let me just say that I do it as much for myself as I do for you, dear reader.