That lovely yearly "State of the Blog" post

 When I saw my numbers this year, I have to say... between declining me and declining pageviews, I was disappointed.  July was a decent month... before, it was so so... after, it was pure dumpster fire.  Sometimes sitting on the deck of a sinking media, waiting for the band to finish chorus # 672 of Nearer My God To Thee, isn't fun.  But for those faithful, prepare for me to try to make the boring interesting.

So blogger tells me that this year, I have posted (so far) 191 times with this one (and, I think, the scheduled Wednesday Bible Study), and have had around 52,000 pageviews (about 270 per), with 519 comments including my replies.  Far from an empty house, but when you consider I had at least 3 posts with 100+ PVs last year and the best I could manage this year was an 83 at this point... wait, didn't you say Blogger stats said 270 per?  Yeah, funny that... I must have gotten double points for me and Laurie looking at them.  Or something.

All I have to say about my "pageview graphic" is that June 9th and October 22nd must be "spammer holidays".  Or to put it another way, if it was a seismograph, we had a major tectonic incident from June 3rd to August 3rd, and someone got drunk and ran into the machine in October.  Most of the rest could be called "Baby bunny's heartbeat".

I hope I'm not picking on a serious ghosting reader who just comes from weird spots, but three of my "top referring URLs" lead to sites for a) iron on designs for soccer jerseys, b) a graphic artist site that seems to favor orange, and c) a site that promises all kinds of seemingly innocent forms you can print but is ominously titled, "visa letters application" dot com.

My search keywords included two or three entries about Nancy Holten, a woman who waged an "annoying campaign" to win Swiss citizenship on her third try (and I never heard of until now), one about "garments of sha'aṭneẓ," (which I learned is the Jewish term for the mixing of garments of different types, which the Old Testament forbids)... oh, and one labeled, "drying panties."  I must have done that post in my sleep.   

 

My top nations visiting were lead by the USA, natch, followed by: Sweden (more on this later), France, Germany, Indonesia, Canada, Russia, the UAE, Japan, and Romania.  A special shout out for those 49 visits from Bulgaria, without which none of this would be possible.

This year, I ended at 700 posts the institution known as Time Machine with our final Halloween Bash.  Hopefully that will give me more time and impetus to do more picture posts.  That way I can give you more interesting things like this:  "On our walk the other day, I got more proof that Misty is mixed with coonhound.  The same dog that walked past a reasonably-fresh deer carcass without a backwards glance three times, stopped to sniff at something small in the grass on our way to the woods.  When I looked, I found she had sniffed out...

...a tiny raccoon's face..."

Anyway, here's this year's top 10 (or so) posts:

Tie 9th- Wednesday Bible Study: The End Of All Things- Philippians - Featuring lessons learned from Paul breaking up the fight between the two women.

Tie 9th- Time Machine (Feb. 5th) - which featured members of the Silhouettes as "guests", and the debut of Home Free and Don McLean's updated American Pie.

Tie 9th- Wednesday Bible Study: The End of All Things- 2 Thessalonians- featuring Paul and his "Irish goodbyes".

Tie 9th- 3 Day Weekend First Morning Walk- the day we went over the bridge at PFW and saw three deer come out into the river.

8th- The Better Part, Week 2- from the week of the "Great Insurrection".

7th- The Better Part, Week #28-  the week I commented on Susan Southard's "Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War".

6th- Wednesday Bible Study (the one time I forgot to put that in the title), The End of All Things: Zechariah, Zephaniah, and Revelation Part 2-  one of those amazing leadings of God that had me combine these three chapters into one coherent story about the End of Days.

5th- The Monster Blogging Has Become- My rant when Blogger decided it was too lazy to send our posts out by e-mail.  And other things.

4th- Just A Bunch Of Nonsense- a well-named mish mash about my prostate exam, hockey, and that mysterious reason why Sweden got #2 on my "nations most visiting" list.

3rd- Wednesday Bible Study: Drive-By Isaiah part 10- The hinge to the Isaiah posts where I shift from the mainly prophetic to the mainly historical, AKA "You never listen, Hezekiah".

2nd- The Better Part, Week # 27- Riding that wave of people reading in July, and Charles Stanley's explanation of why we should pray.

 

And the most viewed post of the year (with 11 days to go, I know)...

The Better Part, Week #7 - featuring two punk kids that taught me a lesson in forgiveness.

 

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I'm thinking that the Better Part posts, only intended to be a one-year thing, will probably end with 2021.  The Bible Study will remain, even if it is only teaching me, because no one needs it more than me.  The much-shorter M10 posts will go on, but give me a chance to open Thursday for miscellaneous junk.  I have hopes that this sorry world might generate some actually funny stuff and give Martin World News a second breath next season, and perhaps Misty and I will have better luck with picture adventures as she gets older (and hopefully drops to MY speed before I drop to Grandpa speed for good).  Stay tuned to see the great blog upsurge of 2022!