Image description: Map of the world showing density of visitors by country. The USA is coloured dark pink, the UK medium pink, and the rest of the world pale pink—with some countries (mainly in Africa) showing blank.
Like last year, the number of people who came to read something increased—but not by much. I posted slightly more often—68 posts—but many of them were brief and informational, notices of appearances and so on.
The Top 5 countries from where my readers log on haven't changed at all from last year, but the next five were a bit different, with China appearing for the first time, displacing Sweden:
- US
- UK
- Canada
- Australia
- Germany
- France
- China
- India
- Netherlands
- Ireland
Of the Top 10 New Posts, seven were about my books, and one each about my horrible summer, war in Europe, and realistic Covid death tolls. For some reason, no one seemed to want to read about bright and lovely things like flowers, Kelley, love, or cats. (I'm curious about whether other bloggers had the same experience.)
The Top 15 Overall were mostly perennial favourites—though for the first time since they were written Huge News: Multiple Sclerosis is a metabolic disorder (2011), Books about women don't win awards (2015) and Lame is so gay (2011) fell off the list—with just three new ones* sneaking in:
What lies ahead for this site? I don't know. I do know that this blog isn't going anywhere. I enjoy writing the posts and people seem to enjoy reading them. It ticks along nicely. Plus, this year's Twitter debacle is just another confirmation that we all need to own our own platforms. Even if I thought all those other social platforms really were being run as public utilities for the greater good (ha ha ha), I like being able to say things too long for Twitter and not pretty enough for Instagram. This is the best place to do that.
Do I want to start a newsletter? No. For the simple reason that this blog functions as a newsletter. All you have to do is subscribe (in desktop view just look at the top of the right hand sidebar; in mobile platforms, scroll right to the end of an individual post), and every new post will be delivered directly to your mailbox the minute it's published. No muss, no fuss—just like any other newsletter, except that a) you don't have to pay a dime, and b) I'll never share your data with anyone for anything. Plus, on a blog you can talk back if you like.
I would like to get back to posting longer and more interesting things. When I last checked I had well over 300 posts partially drafted. Many are from years ago and so will no longer be relevant, but I'm guessing a few others might be worth revisiting. But even if I deleted them all tomorrow, I have a list as long as my arm of things I'd love to talk about. It's just a question of whether I have the heart—that mix of hope, health, energy, time, and sheer bloody-mindedness that long-term blogging requires to be successful. But I like this blog; I've been doing this or something like this for nearly 30 years. So stay tuned for another blog post soon—tomorrow? Monday?—about what to look forward to in 2023.
See you on the other side...
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