Eight Years - Go Figure!

I don't know that I would've dreamed I would still be blogging eight years after my first post.  I might've imagined that once my health things had been resolved, then I could just quietly stop posting.  But, no, I've quietly KEPT posting!  I've made baby steps towards trying for a bigger online audience; maybe in year nine, I'll take even bigger steps!  There are many more things I consider writing about, then I talk myself out of it.  I probably need to stop doing that...

Things I worry about that I mainly don't post:  the (imaginary) warranty running out on my implants.  I was told when I got them that they have a shelf life of ten to twenty years.  I'm kind of close to ten years, so I worry.  I have a friend who had the same surgery as me and her body rejected her implants.  She is so desperately ill, it makes me feel guilty and I feel badly.  Then I worry.  My feet, which bothered me about fifteen years ago, have started acting up again.  So I worry.  I'm doing a bit more flying for work lately and I'm terrified of having a DVT problem like my sister did in 2014.  So I worry.  At the same time, I'm feeling pretty upbeat about the theater I'm seeing and about the new friends I've made lately and my old dear dependable loved ones.  I guess, if I have to admit it, it's an even balance between worry and feeling upbeat.  That's something to cheer.

On the other side of the coin, in this new blogging year around our planet, I'm also thinking a lot about what might happen if there isn't a complete political change next year.  Can I continue to live in this country that is run by people with no empathy?  Where would I go?  Can I continue to be silent?  I do what I can, with marches and petitions and fundraising and charitable contributions and voting, but some days, it just doesn't seem like enough.  And living my small but generally-enjoyable life seems to be a cowardly way to go through these terrible times.  I read Twitter like it's a newspaper, meaning that I'm only reading the feeds of people with whom I share opinions.  And most days I want to cry.  I fantasize about meeting some of these politicians and crying in front of them, asking them how they can live with themselves.  Their venality (and the voters' blindness) is completely beyond my comprehension.  I wish the Magic 8 Ball could help.  Though I do conversely feel that I stand up for myself in small ways more often - is that a result of feeling so powerless a lot of the time?  Hmmmmm.

Blah blah blah, right?  Let's talk about fun stuff - numbers!  At least my blogging numbers.  I recently topped 100,000 views!  That seems amazing to me!  How in the world are there that many people who have looked at my blog?!  Of course, I have a Facebook friend who recently posted he just topped the two-million-view mark.  So...I guess I'm small potatoes.  But it still seems like a lot to me!  Now that I have a Facebook page exclusively for the blog, I do feel more of a responsibility to post with better frequency.  I see shows at least twice a week, so getting my thoughts about the shows out in a timely fashion is a goal.  Although I'm still loath to post about shows I didn't enjoy.  There's enough negativity in the world (as I am always complaining), so why add to it?  I read on Twitter the other day that someone wished people would stop writing personal back stories before they actually review something.  That made me think.  I mean, I'm not actually a critic, but I like the personal back stories!  I think they add context and then the opinion doesn't exist in a vacuum.  I mean, yes, you either like a show or you don't, but with context, you can help the reader decide for themselves whether to take your opinion with a grain of salt or not.  If that even makes sense.  So I've decided to not listen to that Twitter-person and keep to my own style.  What little style there is, anyway.

In the past eight years, I've written 832 posts that have been looked at over 100,000 times!  Wheeeee!  That's crazy, right?!  Interestingly, last year I wrote 69 posts, which is the same as the year before.  I still wonder why some posts are more popular than others and I'm still unsure why most of my posts from the last few years have three times as many hits as my earlier posts.  Is it that no one was interested in my health posts?  Maybe, though when I was going through my travails, I found some blogs helpful (some were depressing, too, I guess).  Oh well.  Ours is not to wonder why.  

I love that half of my views are from the US and Italy (though the Russian number makes me nervous - I'm guessing they check on my ballet blogs when I mention Russian dancers and not on my vaguely political musings).  Though the stat in the photo at left is interesting - where the heck is Unknown Region?!  Can my computer not detect the location?  Are they in outer space?  The possibilities are intriguing.

Without further ado, here are my post popular posts (with links this time!):

All-Time Most Popular Posts:

Review – Street Theater, 10/23/15, 416 views, LINK
ABT Fall Season - GUEST BLOGGER ALERT, 11/13/13, 374 views, LINK
Burrowing…but not, 10/10/17, 362 views, LINK
Review - The Healing, 6/17/16, 311 views, LINK
Terror and Rage, 8/16/17, 309 views, LINK

Not much movement in the top five, though one did fall off and a new one snuck in.  I find it interesting that two of my more personal, political-y pieces are in my top five right now.  Perhaps my goal for this year is to do more of them and see what happens.

Top Posts since April 2018:

ABT 2018 - Don Quixote, 6/26/18, 212 views, LINK
Review - Twelfth Night, 8/13/18, 199 views, LINK
Review - The Ferryman, 10/22/18, 194 views, LINK
Review - Teenage Dick and a little extra, 7/3/18, 192 views, LINK
Reviews - The Confession of Lily Dare and Three Tall Women, 4/19/18, 189 views, LINK
Preview thoughts on I Was Most Alive With You, 9/24/18, 183 views, LINK

Yeah, yeah, I know, there are six posts up there instead of five.  When a Craig Lucas play is so close to top five, he must be mentioned.  It's a rule.  I guess I don't see a trend or theme in those top posts, except that they were really popular productions.  People probably just landed on them in random searches of the internet.  I could probably do a deeper dive into analytics and stuff, but that seems like a lot of work.  I'll just be happy that people are finding me.  I could actually invest funds to insure people find me, but, again, that just feels weird.  In my ever lasting 'avoidance and denial' way of life, I guess I'd rather just let chance guide my blog's future.  At least for now.  We'll see how I feel in year nine.  Thanks for sticking with me, everyone!  I appreciate it more than I can say.  Hopefully, I'll start thinking about my reviews more quickly so there's a lot less lag time...

(Regarding the pics in this post: I love the Schoolhouse Rock song "Figure Eight," sung by the sublime Blossom Dearie.  So I had to include a little screenshot of that piece, along with the other goofy "eight" images.  Always grand to have that song floating through my head and I'm also always ready to show off my loopy ideas.  I've also started a loopy random Throwback Thursday-type thing on my blog's Facebook page - I found a random date generator app and it spit out some dates to play with.  Here is a link to the post that was randomly selected for this week - it didn't get many hints when I posted it, but I think the universe is trying to tell me to keep the faith:  OVERJOYED.  May that be true for all of us.)