My Blog = 7 Sold Out Performances at the Sydney Opera House

Today’s blog represents my 365th of the year. It started on January 1 in response to a 30-day WriteandRun 31 Challenge started by Christine and Matt Frazier. Since I found that I enjoyed the daily writing, I decided to just keep going after the 31 days were past. Before I knew it, I hit 100 straight days and I think at that point it became a daily habit.

So I thought that I would share some stats about the blog that WordPress put together for me.

The site has been viewed over 18,500 times, or an average of little more than 50 views per day. According to WordPress, since the concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. (I am already looking into booking the Opera House for a week.)

October 15th, with 242 views, was the busiest day of the year. That was the day I posted a tribute to my Mom, who had passed a few days before that.

Here are the 5 posts that got the most views in 2015.

1. Commercial of the Week: ‘Parents’ by Coca-Cola Life – 867 views (I have no idea why this blog continued to get so many views long after it had been posted.)
2. Fast Fashion and Disposable Clothing – 376 views
3. Google Search and the Tragedy of the Commons – 362 views
4. Does Hard Work Always Pay Off? – 327 views
5. A Tribute to My Mom – 268 views

I would occasionally post some of my blogs to LinkedIn, and one of them, How My Twitter Following Went from 250 to 253 in Just One Week!, was selected as an Editor’s pick of the day. As a result, the post received over 3,000 views in LinkedIn. Another LinkedIn post from my blog, The 7 Lessons I Learned at Graduation, has over 800 views in LinkedIn.

So that’s an overview of my blog from an external perspective. If I were to look at all 365 posts and pick my own top 5%, regardless of how many views a post got, I would probably choose the following as my favorites, in no particular order:

1. A Tribute to My Mom
2. To My Dad
3. He Likes to Talk about Bowling
4. A Different Type of Marriage Vow
5. Our Lamaze Friends
6. The Ovarian Lottery and Social Issues
7. My Mom and the Ouija Board
8. Goodbye Summer Breezes
9. Time Marches On, So Thank Heaven for Shared Memories
10. Why Compassion Is Better than Toughness
11. Congratulations Patty B!
12. The 7 Lessons I Learned at Graduation
13. A Tale of Two Basketball Games
14. How I Met My Wife
15. How My Twitter Following Went from 250 to 253 in Just One Week!
16. Why I Don’t Always Root for the Underdog
17. Why I Didn’t Upgrade to the iPhone 6
18. Great Customer Service vs. Personal Responsibility

I realize that’s a pretty big list, but what can I say, I like myself…

When I look at the list, it seems that most of the items on the list are personal posts, either about my family, friends, or issues that are important to me. I wish I could write blogs on those topics all the time, but I think that would be extremely difficult. Hence, I also write about what I’ve read in the Wall Street Journal or the Harvard Business Review, or my weekly rehash of United Technologies ads from the 1970s.

I also want to thank all of you who took the time to read what I’ve written and a special thank you to those of you have commented on what I’ve posted. It is greatly appreciated.

Now that I’ve hit my goal of one straight year of daily blogging, I guess my next goal is Cal Ripken Jr.’s streak of 2,632 consecutive games. That means I’ve only got about six more years to go…

Happy New Year!