Blogging

Blogging is cool. Won't someone please pay me to do this all day long?
So Blogger has this great 'Stats' page where you can check how many pageviews you're getting, what sites are sending people to your page, and where readers are located. There are no less than 55 Not-So-Blue-Mama readers in Russia. How fuckin cool is that? Other countries include Latvia, France, Canada...it blows my mind. What value can these people possibly be finding here?
Its completely selfish. Bloodletting, nothing more. Purge it. Get it out, so it can't fester inside. If, in the process, I can feed my Narcissism as well, well...all the better! Its cheaper than therapy. It allows my interpersonal relationships some breathing room - I mean, really, who wants to listen to me go on and on about this shit everyday? 55 Russians, that's who!
My family has some concerns. They run pretty far to the phobic side of the technology spectrum. How can I put this stuff out there? What if it costs me a job? custody? What if a reader burgles my home? Geesh. I thought I allowed too many dark imaginings to see the light of the day...
My blog runs on the very longest end of The Long Tail. There is SO much content available - its no longer about trying to appeal to a mass audience. Its about helping your niche audience find you. There's all sorts of tricks of the trade - SEO, posting across different social media platforms...I don't bother with any of it. Hell I don't even tag most of my posts. Google 'Depression and Motherhood' and not-so-blue-mama doesn't even make the first 10 pages of results - though the results are around 60% blogs. With bloggers who are much more attuned to SEO, tagging, etc. than I am...
So, I'm pondering putting some time into this. Tagging my posts. Signing up for other Social Media sites and posting there. Actually trying to improve my Google ranking. Perhaps even getting off Blogger and onto my own URL at some point. You know...work. Of course doing all that only makes sense if I'm going to post consistently which, let's face it, I tend to ebb & flow.
Any advice/success stories/cautionary tales from fellow almost-bloggers? (Cause feedback on not-so-blue-mama is not-so-great)
I imagine it would blogging for me. Can you take what you love to do, turn it into work, and still love it?