A fun peek in the rearview mirror for my blog in 2023. This is the first year I’ve ever done this. Maybe you’ll see something you like that you missed. But first: a thank you. Whether you’re a longtime reader or recently discovered this blog, I send you my gratitude for taking the time out of your day to read the words I share.
Top 5 blog posts written and viewed in 2023
- The Kindness of Strangers
- Look Down at Your Bellybutton
- One Last Laugh Before the Afterlife
- The Canoe Ride from Hell
- No Parent Has Any Earthly Idea What They Are Doing
Top post viewed in 2023
How to Administer Ear Drops to a Small (Very Strong) Child
I wrote this essay in 2014. It still brings in thousands of visits each year through Google much like When Geese Attack, or How I Almost Got My Ass Kicked by a Canadian Goose.
It’s less a how-to essay and more saturated in humor and a parent’s experience with a young child having chronic ear infections. Thankfully those days are (mostly) over in our household. My daughter was three years old when I wrote this. Time flies.
My favorite posts written in 2023
I’m not including the ones listed in the Top 5 above as they are already captured. These are my personal favorites — some which did well and others which fell flat in terms of reader traffic for whatever reason:
- Put Your Shirt On. You’re Making Me Self-Conscious
- Seeing an Old Friend Is Good for the Soul*
- How Not to Fish
- I Don’t Care What Political Beliefs My Friends Have
- Cage Match: Your Dad vs that Famous Person
*It’s possible this short essay overtakes one in the Top 5 by the end of 2023. It seems to have resonated with a lot of folks and it was only written three days ago.
Total words written
102,361 words
Wow! For context, 100,000 words is a 400 page book.
Top 5 countries where the most readers live
- United States
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- India
And a map of the entire world which shows you where all readers who visited this blog call home. It’s bananas to see it in visual form. Of the 195 countries in the world, roughly 175 of those countries stumbled upon my little blog at some point between January to December 2023. Is there no Internet access in Greenland?
- Dark orange = largest share of visitors (United States)
- Light orange = visitors from other countries
- Gray = no visitors (yet but maybe one day) from these countries
Here’s to 2024
Every year I consider pulling the plug on my blog. Every year, I choose not and I’m glad. Writing is how I make sense of the world. I write plenty of words I keep privately no one ever sees but me. To have a website where you post some of those musings publicly has a therapeutic quality to it.
I’ve been blogging since 1997 (crazy). Does it feel weird having a blog at my current age? Um, yes, especially when I see someone where I live now or where I grew up that says, “I love your blog!” But I think not having one would feel weirder and like a piece of me was missing. I don’t loathe the term blogger anymore. I embrace it. I’ve been doing this in some way, shape, or form since I was 15 years old and a few of you have been with me all along the way (all the way back to the Geocities days). I plan to continue until I’m well past 50 years old. Maybe 60. Maybe 70.
Here’s to 2024 — a blank slate and a blank page to spill ink on 🙂 Whether you are a regular visitor of this blog or someone who found it only today, I send you my gratitude for swinging by.
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