A geyser erupts.

My first full year of blogging is in the books! Or should I say, in the internet archive? Check out this neat sitemap graph of my blog generated by the internet archive.

I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for over a year!

One thing that has become clear is I write more like a geyser than a waterfall. I spend most of my time dormant, and then have a sudden flurry of activity before going quiet again. In the new year I would like to move a little more toward the waterfall model: steady, consistent, and reliable. But, I also would like to have more grace for my geyser-like tendencies. The geyser is beautiful in its own way.

Articles

This year I wrote 34 articles. Well, 35 if you include this one.

My unspoken goal before the year was one article a week, but I’m happy with where I landed. I liked not feeling pressured and being able to write when inspiration struck. That said, I’ve been toying with the idea of committing to writing something on a weekly cadence. I’ve thought about starting a separate newsletter, but that’s more than I want to take on right now. Instead, I’m thinking about doing a weekly review post on this blog instead. That will force me to reflect on my life more regularly, and will keep my 8 email subscribers up-to-date with my weekly happenings.

Here are some stats on those 34 articles:

  • Most popular: My Obsidian Daily Note Template - this is consistently my most-viewed article. It was my first article of the year, and is a technical deep dive into how I set up my daily notes in my note-taking app. I still get an email roughly monthly from someone asking me further questions about how I set things up in Obsidian. Actually, as I was writing this, someone reached out from the article and asked me if I have implemented “heat map habit tracking” in Obsidian (I have not). This article had 243 views in the last 90 days. For reference, the next most viewed article over that span had 17 views.
  • Most words: My Obsidian Daily Note Template - ~3500 words. The runner-up is my recent post on Aqua Notes at ~1800 words.
  • Least words: This Started With A Title - 23 words
  • Personal Favorite: Street Corner - Although my technical explainer posts seem to get more views, I love writing personal reflections. This one felt really raw. I remember experiencing the moment I describe in the article, and then feeling later that day like I just had to write about it.
  • Average time spent writing each article: No idea. I don’t track this. But it’s pretty short I think. Maybe an hour or two? I don’t usually spend multiple days with a lot of editing and researching and refining. I write it and send it.

Microblogs

I also posted 132 microblogs this year. A large chunk of those were in January, because I went through the book of Proverbs and did a post for each one trying to summarize the most salient points in my own words. This was my way of “starting my year with wisdom” and was also meant to get me into the habit of regularly posting to my blog, no matter how uncomfortable it felt at the time.

Traffic

I didn’t start tracking analytics until later in the year, but since September 432 people have visited my blog.

About 62 of those users came back to my site at least once, and on average people spend 1 minute and 9 seconds on the blog.

The blog was a global sensation (hyperbole) with visitors from every continent other than Antarctica (shout out to the one visitor from Egypt representing all of Africa).

People came to my blog from various corners of the interwebs. Direct traffic, LinkedIn, Google, Reddit, and my newsletter service were all big drivers.

Most people visiting my blog were probably using Chrome on a Windows machine.

So, what is my takeaway from all of these analytics? Not much. It’s fun to look at during the end of the year, but there’s nothing actionable for me here. I’m not trying to supercharge my blog’s growth. I just want to write meaningful and helpful words.

Design

I made various changes to the look and feel of my blog throughout the year. You can see all the changes I made since June 10, 2024 in my changelog. It looks very different from where it originally started, which I shared screenshots of in Tear it All Down.

I’m following the KISS design principle: “Keep It Simple Stupid”.

What will 2025 hold?

Your guess is as good as mine. Will I become an author? Will I abandon my blog and run off with my pen and analog journal? Will artificial intelligence and quantum computing and brain chip implants converge to make the written word irrelevant as we all mind meld and communicate wordlessly and instantly? All possibilities.

As far as my blog goes, 2025 will be similar to 2024. I want to write more, and I’m sure I’ll make design tweaks to my blog here and there. But otherwise I’ll continue to write things that I think are meaningful and/or helpful.

As far as my life goes, it looks like change is a brewin'. I’m looking forward to the new year and all that it has to offer. Some things are scary, some are exciting, all will make for good writing material.

I can’t wait to share my perspective in the new year with you. Thanks for sticking around through my self-indulgent “blog in review” post.

I wish you a happy new year and hope your year is filled with love, given and received.