It is Sunday night, 8:32 PM ET. There is a blank WordPress screen staring back from a $180 laptop, purposefully cheap because at some point an iced coffee or Guinness will be sprinting between keyboard buttons rendering it completely useless. Across from the screen sits a man, twenty pounds lighter than he was 35 days ago, blood steam devoid of alcohol, searching for something interesting to say about the Chicago Bears.

The Bears need a quarterback.

The Bears have a decision to make on Alshon Jeffery.

They Bears need professional contributors in their secondary.

Pass rush is always welcome.

Better edge blocking a plus.

Blah.

Blah.

Fucking.

Blah.

Many people have found DaBearsBlog for the first time in the last year. Our traffic has nearly tripled. So let me state this now as clearly as possible, specifically for you newbies. I’m never going to waste a second of your time just filling space. If something hasn’t actually happened or I don’t have an interesting opinion (at least in my own head) on something Bears-related, you’ll never see posts for the sake of posting.

I don’t care about clicks.

I don’t care about traffic.

Those numbers do one thing for me: allow me to gauge the interest level of the fans at particular times. This season, for example, our site traffic did not decline in December. This was a three-win team playing out the string in front of an empty Soldier Field but our day-to-day traffic remained consistent (and substantial).

What did this tell me? Keep writing. Stay in it. The fans are.

Things will start happening soon, the NFL calendar tells me. And when they do I’ll meet the fight in the OK Corral. Until then? Poll questions, pictures and links. (Or go to my Twitter feed where all I do is waste people’s time.)