Interesting trend.

If I look back at this blog’s history, I have been writing here off and on for a number of years (read about thirteen years). Since 2020 I have had various attempts to write some form of short content or post every single day. For the most part if I had between one and five views on any given article, post, rant, or image I thought that was pretty awesome. Now that means my yearly views were typically well under 500 for a calendar year. It has only been recently, like the last three years where I have seen one to two thousand or more views. Not ideal if your goal is monetization, but pretty good if all you wanted were more eyes than just your own to see your micro short stories. This year has been especially good. This July I had more eyes on my old posts than several years combined, which is mental. This year I am over 4,500 views, which is incredible (for me). I’m sure Mr Beast would shut down that wing of his content creation department of it drew my kind of numbers, but I’m proud of it. At least 140 people have downloaded, and seen my first two books of collected interconnected short stories, and that gives me a fuzzy feeling in my stomach. Now I have no idea if this upward trajectory of views will persist beyond this month. I’ve hit more than 500 views in December alone, a milestone in and of itself, regardless of that all-star July, which is an extreme outlier, and not the norm. What I’m saying is, I’m not here writing these things for money, that’s fairly obvious I think, but rather as a means of free expression. Am I happy to see more people tuning in to read what I’ve written, YES! Of course I am, thrilled to bits, but it can all fade back to the zero to five views per day, or jump to 2,000 views per day, and I do not imagine I would change much of anything about how I write, or what I write about.

Since the finest details I can find are just higher than usual views of the archives, with no title names, or categories given, I can’t even begin to guess what sort of things have garnered attention. That’s a blessing, since it means I simply cannot lean into any one specific topic to try and exploit the trend. But on the flip side, it’s a curse, because I do not know what I’ve done to garner any attention whatsoever. Which frustrates me to no end. At least you know I’m not pandering to you! That may count for nothing at all. Ha!

I would love to do more mini war gaming terrain in the new year. Perhaps not on the two foot by two foot scale of my previous big projects, but I like it, and it’s fun, and I do see people finding my D & D terrain articles every so often. Gives me the chance to paint, sculpt, model with tooth picks, and balsa wood, and foam board. All very fun, and kind of forgiving materials to use. Sadly I don’t have a tonne of space in which to store bigger builds.

Speaking of space, as in physical room inside my home, and not the cosmos. I disassembled the Lego/Train table yesterday morning, and put the train tracks, and vehicles in one tote box, and all of the Lego Friends kits into one 76 L tote box. It took me a couple of hours to break down all of the Lego sets, and pull all of the bricks apart. I am NOT getting rid of the Lego, but I do want it organized better. So a tidy bin for all of it is by far the best option. I did not break down the Harry Potter sets, the Minecraft sets, the Encanto sets, or the Deep Sea sets… So I could likely fill a second half size tote bin with all of those. Plus the parrots, potted plants, dinosaurs, Simba, and a Seal that I know are kicking around in my kids bedrooms. My AT-ST will never get torn down, I have it up on a shelf out of the way.

I remember vividly putting a lot of those Lego Friends kits together for my girls during the many Lock-Downs we had in 2020-2022. The prices on Amazon and at Walmart skyrocketed, so we bought stuff on Facebook marketplace, and washed every single brick in soapy bleach water before I put them together. We have a stack of building instructions about a foot tall between the four of us. I think I even had some Super Mario Bros Lego too! Wild.

I think we have lost or misplaced a few trains over the years because I could have sworn we had more than the handful I found. Thomas the tank engine had a fairly firm grip on my kids when they were very little. Talking trains with faces… What could go wrong there! But that morphed into Peppa Pig, and Paw Patrol, LOL dolls and beyond. Oh and Shopkins can’t forget the Shopkins. So very many Shopkins absolutely everywhere in this house. I’ll be sad to see those boxed up eventually.

This is the second morning I’ve woken up thinking it was Friday, and yesterday was only Tuesday, so go figure eh!?! Mental. I should go empty the dish washer, and see if I can find any other Lego sets to tear down this morning.