To Follow or Not To Follow...That is the Question

Look at me; the Shakespeare of the blogosphere. I've been wanting to broach this subject for a long time and I feel that now that I have 100 followers,

{thank you thank you thank you}

it's time to muster up the courage to talk about blog following and the method behind why we decide to follow someone.

Please don't take this as a plea to get more followers, nor as criticism to the people that follow me.  I thank you from the very bottom of my heart {you like me, you really like me}.  These are basically the thoughts that have been going through my mind and I wanted to share. It just so happened to fall around the time I hit the 100 follower mark.

Okay, blog following.  Do you ever feel overwhelmed when you sit down to your dashboard or your Google reader?  I mean, I get a block of time in the morning and a block of time at night to take care of my blog posting and reading.  When I read blogs, I truly intend to comment on most of them.  To actively engage myself in what I'm reading.  I do this just as much for myself as I do for the actual blog writer.  I find myself not being able to comment as much when I'm trying to caught up on blog reading.  I hate that!  However, I love the blogs that appear in my dashboard and find myself continually adding more blogs to my blogroll.  

Bottom line:  I get behind on reading blogs and this caused me not to comment as much as I would like.  There's just not enough time!  I don't like that part but I don't know how to fix it.

Now, what makes us decide to follow?  And the kicker, are blog followers the sole contributor to our success as a blogger, however you may define success?  

Oh lord.

Here's the process I go through when deciding to follow:  I read the first blog post.  Oh, this is good, I say to myself.  I decide to read the about me section.  Oh, this person is just like me! I must know more.  I then click on a random month in the blog archive and read the top post from that.  If I like it and immediately want to know more, I'm a follower.  

It's no scientific method, but it works for me.

As far as my second question goes, I think the number of followers you have depends on how you define success.  When I started expanding my blog, I wanted to grow my following.  I've expanded and am hoping to expand more.  However, to me success does not only lie with the number of followers a blog has.  To me, that's not a true indicator of a successful blog.  I want authentic communication between me and the people subscribing to my blog.  It's not enough to have x-amount of followers if no one will participate in what I have to say (ie COMMENT).  What good is a huge blog following if no one comments?  For me, I would trade a huge following with low commenting to a smaller following with active commenters.

I guess I'm saying I need validation, which another way to say I am a comment monger-er.  

What do y'all think of these truly deep and insightful questions I've posed?  And yes, it's okay to tell me I am completely over-thinking these things.