Happy New Stats

 

I guess it has been 4 years, at least, since WordPress gave up sending the report with blog stats. Do you remember it? That one with fireworks for each post written, where the more you had posted the more enlightened your screen was. Yes, that one. The stats explanations were just pure genius. They had been conceived to make you feel a sort of Hemingway in being. Even if you had had just 100 readers in a year, family and unwilling students included, they put it in such a way to make you believe it a success, because, they said,  if those 100 readers had been in line, they could have covered a length up to your bathroom.😳 True! I had never thought about it. 🤔 So, when the following year the number of readers increased, you found out eventually that that line had now reached Santiago de Compostela and God knows what distant country it would have touched now, if they had kept writing those stats. I miss them. They were so rewarding, after all.

Therefore, since WordPress has given up offering such precious service, if we want to make a final survey of our  blogging activities, we have to do it on our own.  Having read so many posts of this kind on the pages of fellow bloggers, I thought it was high time to give a look at my stats too. Believe me, I didn’t do it with a light heart, as I knew I was guilty of having been pretty inconstant last year for many good reasons: first of all, reaching level 7740 of Candy Crush takes a lot time and energy; and  if I play, I cannot think or write. Actually, I play when I don’t want to think.  That said, I have to confess, that I am lazy too. I don’t read as much as I should – and I blushed with shame and guilt, when I read on Chris’s page, who blogs as Calmgrove, that he had read 84 books and reviewed 60 last year. 84!! 😱I usually write when there is some event that catches my attention, school stuff and literature of course, so I produced only 30 posts last year. Of course, I mean to do better, every year I mean to do better, but if they keep adding levels to Candy Crush, I fear it will be impossible.

Yet, to my surprise I saw that despite the few  posts, 2020 had been by far the best year in terms of views (27,479) and visitors (16,162). I am wondering which country my line of viewers would have reached by now. 🤔 Of course, I  shared the jolly good news with my husband, Mr Run,  who explained the data, thanks to his prodigiously scientific mind, simply saying that very likely, because of lockdowns people stayed at home more and read more, even my stuff.😳 Hence, I am indebted to these figures to people’s boredom. Good, thank you, love. I feel better now.😤

Giving a look at what these bored readers seem to prefer, the posts on Wilde win over my musings on pandemic and education, but even this year the top of the posts goes to what I could define that only lucky unrepeatable hit that often happens in an artist’s life, which, in my case,  for the fourth time in a row is : “The Mythical  Method” with 2,877 views; a post I wrote six years ago. Apparently, I am a world authority on this matter, as I find myself  on page 1 of Google. I noticed that every now and then there are peaks of viewers of “The Mythical Method” coming from many different countries, as it recently happened from Denmark, Romania and Poland. I might even fancy myself quoted on some books one day: “The Mythical Method” by Tink. 🙃

As for the viewers, well, one of the things I love the most still is to check the countries they are from, even if I am well aware that very likely they just click on my blog, without reading a single word, well, I don’t mind, as they contribute to make the map of the world viewers  more colourful. My readers mostly come from Italy, of course , U.S, U.K, India, Germany, Canada in this order, but from a closer inspection I have just realized that I lied to fellow blogger Emilio, who blogs as Disperser, as we were lamenting the absence of views from Iceland just few days ago, well, I have 17 and it seems that somebody dropped by from Zimbabwe, Bhutan, Lesotho too and last but not least Vanuatu. Oh dear, I don’t even know where Vanuatu is!

For the incoming year I make no resolutions, I have never been able to stick to one, but I’ll write as much as I can and read your posts, as I love being in touch with you. Thank you for your constant support and wish you all a great year. We deserve it.

60 thoughts on “Happy New Stats

  1. I enjoy looking at all these stats too, especially the countries from which one gets views. I must say reading your post made me go back to check whether I had any views from Vanuatu or Lesotho– alas I didn’t but I did have 4 from Zimbabwe.
    Happy 2021!

  2. My stats were never encouraging enough to brag about it but Twitter has a feature that marks every time you get a new reader and where they are in the world. Useful but again, in my case, not impressive. In 11 years, what I’m the proudest of is the stuff they will probably get lost first when I’m gone: the file with over 5K stories, posts, photos, collages, stuff, everything that taught me so much about myself and the world and times we live in. But alas, all those millions of words – that Grammarly weekly flatters me telling it’s among the less than 10-percentile of writers they monitor, just to keep my patronage, of course – won’t become a global mania any time soon. Most likely, some orthographic mistake will be all that’s left of all that. But it doesn’t matter: nothing comes close to the satisfaction of just being able to do it. Not that I’d ever had a choice on the matter, for writing was never a hobby but a need I couldn’t live without, just like food and love. And not that right after feeling good that I’ve done it, I’ve failed to find it incomplete and frankly pretentious and dismissable all that. But I didn’t erase them, despite my reservations. Maybe this week I’ll kick the habit as they used to say in the 80s. But I don’t believe it. Happy New One.

    • I stated blogging for my students at first. My purpose was to explain topic in a way I might catch their interest . Then it became pure satisfaction, as you said. The blog started to attract people, voices from many part of the world so that after all this time of interactions I can truly call some of them friends. Hence, now I can say that I blog for myself only…..when I have time. 🙋🏼

  3. “Let our New Year’s resolution be this: We will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.” – Göran Persson

    Wishing every day of the new year to be filled with success, happiness, and prosperity for you. Happy New Year.

    • Thank you very much, Kelly. As for the quote, I fear humanity is taking exactly the opposite way, but let’s be optimistic, at least the first day of the year !🙋🏼😘

  4. I do recall those old WordPress stats. That’s how long we have been blogging! Good for you I say if your views were up this year! I smiled at your shock of people who announce they have read a bizillion books. I shake my head in disbelief as my mind couldn’t settle long enough to read much of anything.
    Always a pleasure to connect with you. When people ask us if we will keep blogging we speak about the joy of meeting others from around the world. Often our personal tour of Rome is used as an example. Hoping one day we can repay the kindness in Canada.

    • It always a pleasure to hear from. You didn’t have grandchildren, when we met yet. When (?) this pandemic ends ,we would like start traveling again as we used to. Japan is the first on the list, but Canada may come right next. Wish you all the best. Stefy.

  5. I had to go back and check total views . . . 31 from Iceland, but none this year. I don’t have Lesotho and Vanuatu, but I have Malawi, Brunei, Guernsey, Benin, Surianne, Mayotta . . . and others that don’t roll off the tongue with any familiarity.

    Also, 30 posts and 16K visitors . . . impressive. I had 480 posts and only managed 13K visitors . . . but then, I don’t exactly endear myself to many people.

    By the way, when I search for “The Mythical Method” I get your post . . . but not exactly. I get your words in a PDF attributed to Marilena Beltramini:

    Click to access new_the_mythical_method.pdf

    The PDF is your post word-for-word with a foreword quote by Eliot, so I hope you gave her permission to post that as her own . . . unless you go by an alias and that’s you.

    Your post comes up first if I use Google (impressive that!), but I typically use DuckDuckGo as my search engine and your post doesn’t come up in a DuckDuckGo search (so, don’t use that search engine; keep using Google).

    Lastly . . . my, what an enormous bathroom you must have!

  6. Happy New Year, Stefy. It sure was a nice surprise to see the stats at the end of the year and see how a single blog connects with readers from around the world. But, alas, change and adaptation are the lessons reinforced in an unprecedented, mostly tragic year. It is important to remember as a writer, quality not quantity matters. Your posts are always insightful and thought-provoking. So keep up the great work at your own pace.
    The silverlining of the Covid-19 crisis was that I did have time to work on my first book, Serendipitous Discoveries from the Bookshelf. What surprised me is that even at 400+ pages (about 100 essays), it is only 6% of the nearly 2,000 posts written over eight years. Tempus fugit. I not only had booklovers in mind when I wrote the book, I also included many essays devoted to education, to inspire students, teachers, and mentors. During the pandemic, frontline medical personnel are often cited as heroes, but it is clear to me that the silent heroes are the teachers who had to adapt quickly and work tirelessly to educate the youth of the world, who one day will be in decision makers and leaders. I pray that they will be far wiser than the leaders of today’s world that made poor decisions and did not care to serve the common good.
    Cheers.
    Alex

    • Your first book! What a great achievement. Since you used only the 6% of you material, I guess many others will follow. Will it be available on Amazon? Thanks for your words and constant support. Have a splendid year. Stefy.🙋🏼

      • Hi Stefy: Yes, the book is available as a Kindle edition or a paperback book. As you surmised, there will be a volume 2, and 3, etc. However, now that I have published the first book, it serves as a catalyst to publish books on various topics that fascinate me. I am beginning work on my next book that will focus on rare and beautiful words in the English language. Cheers. Alex

  7. So, my dearest teacher. You have hit the point! I was playing all the times on WP, and I have just thought that when I don’t earn any money here, why should I pay for it?! Now I did have pay, because of my consciousness! I have got a lot asking; if I could pay, and I couldn’t ignore anymore.
    Anyway, out of this. I love your writing and I don’t want to miss anyone of them.

  8. Complimenti, Stefy, e ancora Buon anno! Candy Crush is a worthy adversary in this year of all years, and I hope you’ve got it out of your system now…

    I am never sure about those country stats, in past years I seem to have had a number of suspicious viewings from Russia and similar states, which may account for the increasingly frantic spam mail I note in my spam folder for a very small selection of posts and, confusingly, photos in my media gallery. Ho hum, thank goodness for Akismet.

    Thanks for the approving mention of books read by me, but I’ve actually now posted reviews for all of those books — you may have been misled by my initial target of reading 60 titles this year. But they’re far outweighed by a total of over 7000 on Candy Crush. (Okay, I’ll let it drop now!)

    Vanuatu: I seem to remember it was famous for one of two things, either for being the centre of the so called Cargo Cult, in which they used to worship the silver things which they used to see fly high up in the air over the islands; or else they once worshipped Prince Philip as a god wearing a penis gourd. I may of course have all of that wrong…

    • Now, that you made me think about it, are you talking about those mails, which require your urgent help, because they have some millions euros/ dollars…. whatever and really they don’t know what to with them and so they have singled you out as recipient of that sum of money? Many of them come from these fascinating coutries, in fact. 😀

      • I’m talking about the comments from multiple sources on the same pages which all begin “Muchas gracias. ?Como puedo iniciar sesion?” — the illiterate ones which claim my photo is written extremely well — the ones which want me to click on a porn site link — the ones which… Well, you get the picture!

  9. Hi Tink
    Wow – I forgot about the wordprsss stats reports
    And you are right – they did have a great way of inspiring us.
    And I have some personal goals for blogging this year but decided to not state them on my blog so I can be flexible (lol)
    And when I hear that had 30 posts – well it reminds me that we all have different goals with and modes with our blogs
    And not just saying this but I love how you blog when you feel the call!
    If that makes sense
    And sometimes bloggers can be such a bore when they lose their essence or get in the weeds with hustling for some goal they are befuddled with and listing for!
    And I do admit to getting annoyed in December by bloggers – which hardly ever happens
    But tired of the chit downs to January 20th – the change of presidents here in US (unfollowed one blogger because really- everyday that is your post – come on man – )
    Was a little wary of too many music posts – felt like a sprinkle of music posts because daily four songs or just way too much music for what I prefer when I scroll my feed.
    Anyhow – when annoyance creeps in I just pull back and let some space from the blog refresh
    And never tried candy crush but it does sound like the fun “non-thinking” activity that allows the mind to decompress
    Happy new year amiga

  10. Resolutions can really be damn hard to work out, especially when our lives are so unstable with teaching. I didn’t get as much posted as I would have liked this year either, nor do I have the time to read as others do, but we do what we can, right? 🙂 We just need to keep in touch when we can, because writing and reading should be joys, not chores. xxxxx

    • Exactly, otherwise it would become another job and in that case I wish to be paid. The pleasure of connection with so many different people and countries is rewarding enough for me. Cheers. Stefy. 😉

  11. I have just taken the time to read back some emails which is how I receive notifications of your blog posts and I found this. It gives me the opportunity to let you know how much I enjoy reading your work. It is always engaging and I have a great respect for the professional integrity that you convey. Your students are fortunate to have you as a teacher. One day they will realise this. Some of them already do.
    One thing that I enjoy is your reflections upon the great classics of English Literature as in your most recent piece on Wuthering Heights. They help me to reconnect with those great works. By the way, I realised over Christmas that I have never read Dombey and Son and so it is on my reading list for 2020.
    I wish you both success and happiness in 2021. I firmly believe that every person who seeks to give of themselves to others, often against all the odds, is subverting the illusory worlds of the demagogues and building something that will last.
    Keep on Keeping On.

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