The Topography of Success and Failure

I've never been addicted to any substance, except for coffee. However, I would imagine that my compulsion to check the statistics of my game on a daily basis is comparable to heroin addiction. Without all the sickness and death involved.
There are a lot of ways to check statistics of web sites, and I'm usually using Google analytics. I sometimes use the Facebook stats as well, but it's a much more mellow substance.
The statistics look like an insane topography map of mountains and valleys. The mountains usually occur when me or one of my partners go on a marketing spree, and new users flock to our site. The valleys... well.

My reaction to these statistics can be a basis for an extensive psychological research. At the beginning I was elated whenever I saw a peak in the graph. It would make my day perfect. The decreases would depress me, making me think I should take a different profession, such as gardening or sheep herding. After a while, the peaks started to frustrate me as well. "Why now?" I would think "What was better Yesterday than the day before? Why can't users enter my site without my help? It's easy enough, you just have to enter the common search string 'Loadingames Misfortune' and it's the first result!"

Last week, apathy sunk in. A peak causes me to think "huh. check this out.", a valley gets me to say "oh well", and the long plains of mediocrity invoke "well, that makes sense."

So why do I keep entering day after day?

My name is Michael, and I'm addicted to my site's statistics.

This image was take in the tiger leaping gorge trek in China. There were days when the mountains and valleys I saw were much more breathtaking.