He was the god of new beginnings and perspective on the old, not selfishness and age-old greed. And my perspective on the past? It’s that we’re condemned to continue it, at least for the immediate future. So…today I’ll use one of Janus’ faces to look back your favourites from my past year’s postings under my own name. While my subject matter didn’t change much from previous years, my style did. Since people respond a lot more to soundbites than blogs, I switched emphasis, using my photo library as backgrounds for my own thoughts and whatever quotes that caught my fancy.
Damn, it worked! Over two million sets of eyeballs saw my stuff on FB, Twitter and directly on my blog.
I wasn’t particularly surprised that some quotes by famous folk topped the list, which made me truly appreciate all the people who spent some time with my own thoughts. I was surprised, however, that some of my photos and 600-word blogs finished in the top rankings, as well. A million thanks are due to all the people who liked, shared and retweeted me.
If you feel that Alice in Wonderland is an appropriate way to kick off the new year, you’re agreeing with nearly 17,000 other people.
If you prefer to reflect on the source of so much political angst, join nearly 15,000 others. Along with Lewis Carroll’s Alice, these James Baldwin and Martin Luther King quotes ranked in the top ten of every metric I looked at.
Neck and neck for the next place on the chart are the optimism of GK Chesterton and the cynical realism of Garry Kasparov.
After five quotes that most likely reminded people of what they’d already heard before, a top finisher was my memory of a conversation with Thomas Berry. Sure he wrote it and it’s been quoted elsewhere, but it made me feel good that something someone told me in person was appreciated by so many other people. Guess I should thank several great white hunters for bring the issue to the public eye, as well.
I’m thinking that, while many people have already heard this meditation quote, it’s a deer and meditator at Colorado’s Shambhala Mountain Center that helped it up in the rankings. And I wonder, which one of them had the sense to come in from the noonday sun?
Next, with one of the year’s highest engagement rates [likes, retweets, shares and so on] were two photos and words of my own [one with a slight tip of the pipe to Rene Magritte].
Proving that a good headline and topical subject can build readership is the fact that two of my blogs on the same subject came close to the top of the list – and combined, would have been number one with nearly 26,000 readers. What were they? My rants against FB and time-sucking social media. Feel free to go online to read them –
Why I spend less time on FB these days – https://jpmaney.com/less-time/
Brain-drained and exhausted by everything? – https://jpmaney.com/exhausted-by-everything/
And what really surprised me was that a few individual photos finished in the top ten and to twenty rankings. As I said before, I appreciate the FB and Twitter “likes” but never expected so many shares and re-tweets.
Sullivan’s Quay. A somewhat similar shot was picked up by a local tourist group last year, but I never got around to tracking down the statistics. [Aren’t you glad?!]
