Chasing Numbers

Chasing Numbers
I spent years in accounting and I was damn good at what I did.  I have to honestly say I actually enjoyed my work for the most part.  I recently was talking about numbers, don’t ask, with a friend about them and I told her that the reason I liked numbers was that they were the one constant in the universe.  One and one is always going to be two, four and four is always going to be four, no matter what core ideology you want to throw out there, but those basics would remain the same.
After leaving the work force per say and I started taking up writing.  First to see if I could write a book and finish but along the way I found I enjoyed that as well and have continued to write.  The thing about that is that I thought I had left numbers behind me.  Come on, how much adding and subtracting do you do when you write horror, outside of counting bodies that is.  That’s writing but it isn’t counting the number of books you sell or how much money it has added to your accounts.  In my case I still don’t need anything past the first year or two of grade school to figure that one out.
Today that changed however.  I realized something I really hadn’t before now.  The numbers count.  Excuse the pun there.  If you don’t get those last few sentences ask a writer who is making money at this endeavor and you’ll find out what I mean.
No it isn’t the money, although I wish I were making more at this, but at the people who pay attention to you.  Those little lines that form into those all-important numbers should be very near and dear to you.  The more you see those things rise in your social media sites and other places are what tells you whether or not you might sell even one book.  Your chances of making anything off the decision to take up pen and paper depends on those numbers.  So here I am chasing numbers now when they used to run at me head first.
‘Oh we need to pay a million dollar invoice?  Not a problem.  Let me just check to make sure everything is as it should be and I’ll get that taken care of.’
Instead now it is.
‘Where are they hiding?  Is that a possible person who might be interested in what I have to say peeking out from behind that social media sight?  Oh wait standing down the aisle from me is someone looking at a book like I write.  Have they heard of me?  Should I walk up and introduce myself?  Maybe I should offer them one of my cards?’
How do you handle all those numbers?  For the first time in my life I have no flipping clue.  I’m winging it every step I make.  Don’t get me wrong I’ve had some great authors mentor me through a lot of this but they are about as lost as I am when it comes to finding the answers to some of this themselves.  You see they are trying to maneuver through this maze as well.
What I am doing about all this?  I haven’t got a frigging clue but whatever I’m doing I’ll keep doing it until someone tells me to do it differently that has a sound idea of how it all works.