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I’m a Man Of Many Words

Fandango32 Comments

67557C99-854A-4E95-B81E-93E7122DDDD8How man words? Well, according to the highly reliable and completely accurate WordPress stats, I wrote 385,508 words on my blog in 2018. Those 385,508 words were spread across 1,644 post during the year, for an average of 235 words per post. That’s not a lot of words per post compared to a lot of other bloggers, but many of the prompts I respond to have word limits of, say, 100, 150, or 200.

I posted an average of 4.5 post per day last year. My blog was visited by 27,770 visitors, an average of 76 per day. My posts received 117,582 views, an average of 322 per day and 72.5 per post.

My 1,644 posts received 41,262 likes (113 per day and 25 per post). Also, 24,916 comments, (68 per day and 15 per post).

And as of midnight, December 31, 2018, there were 1,607 people following my blog.

Excluding my daily one-word prompt, FOWC with Fandango, here were my most viewed posts each month:

January: Couples Counseling

February: Perspective

March: A tie: Warning Signs and Top of the World

April: Bloggers Beware

May: Househunters International

June: The Way You Write

July: All Dressed Up and No Place To Go

August: Better Than Sex

September: To Prompt or Not to Prompt

October: Missing the Point

November: Weird Words

December: I’ve Never Skied Naked

Yes, I know that this post has been one big brag about me and my blog. But were it not for all of you, who read and respond to my posts, there would be nothing for me to brag about.

The interactions you provide, your likes and comments, are what makes blogging worthwhile. You have embraced my FOWC With Fandango prompt more than I could have anticipated, and I owe a great big thank you to those of you who post regularly in response to that prompt.

And I want to thank the others of you who post your own prompts. Your words, photos, and challenges provide us bloggers with the inspiration we need to write such creative, entertaining, informative, fascinating, and sometime silly posts.

So in what I consider to have been an otherwise crazy, chaotic year, thank you for providing something to look forward to each day, for a way to cope with the nonsense swirling all around us. Thank you for reading my blog and for being my inspiration.

Happy 2019.

Count Along With Fandango

Fandango25 Comments

F0DBCFDB-4FB7-4AD4-9AF3-CB80998CE0F7Can you guess what these five numbers mean?

  • 2,000
  • 200,000
  • 31,100
  • 707
  • 1,503

Give up?

2,000 — In late November This, That, and the Other surpassed 2,000 posts. As of today, it’s 2,024.

200,000 — TT&O is currently 63 views short of 200,000 views.

31,100 — My blog is four visits shy of 31,100 visitors.

707 — The highest number of views TT&O received in a single day.

1,503 — The number of followers of TT&O.

9895D394-EC54-4E02-8231-56DD835165D5Okay, I know this sounds very self-serving, but I am stoked.

What can I say? I love numbers.

The Talkative Tag

Fandango18 Comments

D8215BD6-0928-4740-80C1-7538D06B6649There is a blogger, The Eclectic Contarian, who started a tag that he calls “The Talkative Tag.”

This tag, he said, is to offer a little “thanks” to those who have been very talkative and involved with his blog and to show his appreciation.

Eventually this tag found its way to Sadje, of Keep It Alive. And then Sadje tagged me, among others who have commented on her posts. She wrote, “What can I say about Fandango! He is a great writer. He is also the inventor of The Fandango One Word Challenge. We all look up to him and wait for his prompts. You also should check out his new series of questions; FPQ!”

So it seems what you’re supposed to do is bring up the screen from you WordPress stats where you can see who has been commenting on your blog, take a screenshot, write your own Talkative Tag post, include that screenshot, and mention the people who have commented on your posts the most.

And here’s that screenshot:B36070DB-D0D5-4B61-9161-0258BACAEACBNow I’m not sure what period this covers, but I also saw in my stats that so far in 2018 my posts have received around 22,000 comments, so I find it a little strange that these number of comments were so low. But, you know, whatever.

As to my top six list in the screenshot, Marleen, who tops the list, doesn’t have her own blog, but she does comment a lot on my posts and her comments are generally well thought out and insightful. And Sight, number three on the list, just announced that he’s taking an indefinite hiatus from blogging. So I suppose I can’t pass this “Talkative Tag” to either of them. And I can’t tag Sadje because she tagged me.

So I am going to tag the next three on the list. First there is Leigha Robbins, who consistently responds to my daily One-Word Challenge with great poetry and prose, and who comments on pretty much ever one of my posts.

And then there’s Teresa Grabs, aka, The Haunted Wordsmith, a prolific and creative flash fiction writer who also offers many of her own writing prompts to inspire us.

And finally, Marilyn Armstrong, a blogger who has been sharing her life with the WordPress community for a number of years and whose posts are personal, insightful, and inspiring, and who is a terrific photographer.

So Leigha, Teresa, and Marilyn, feel free to do your own Talkative Tag post. Or not. Your call.

#FOWC — Down But Not Out

Fandango24 Comments

1E5FB4E1-E8E7-4829-9CBE-D644DD5067B0My page views yesterday were down by nearly 50% from what they were just four days ago. After a cursory review of possible causes, I came to the conclusion that my duties as a tour guide for my out-of-town guests resulted in my writing fewer posts yesterday, posting fewer responses to comments people made on those posts, and reading and commenting on fewer posts by other bloggers.

In fact, I was so busy entertaining our guests that I even forgot to write a post in response to my own one-word prompt, “cursory.”

But far be it from me to allow my precipitous drop in page views yesterday cause me to feel woebegone. Oh no, I’m going to make that feeling of woe be gone. I’m going to plant my feet squarely on the ground, and take my guests on the best tour of San Francisco today that one can imagine.

5330D350-810F-4AD5-B29B-6F7C47F060A1I’ll be like that ant in the fairy tale that my Great Aunt Sally used to read to me. The one about the little ant carrying a huge load many times its size and storing up food for the long, cold winter while the grasshopper sings and fiddles away the summer, leaving it having to beg the ant for help.

(I realize that this Aesop fable, “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” seems to be a bit out of context here, but I had to figure out a way to use the words “great aunt” and “ant” in order to complete Teresa’s Three Things Challenge.)

Written for today’s Word of the Day Challenge, “woebegone,” for Teresa’s Three Things Challenge, where the three things are great aunt, ant, and plant, and for yesterday’s Fandango’s One-Word Challenge, “cursory.”

One-Liner Wednesday — Deep Thoughts

Fandango25 Comments

BE3EFD51-64C3-4B3F-9D91-833E75A99FB0

“It is better to speak profoundly to just one than to blather at a world of idiots.”

Suze who blogs at “Suziland Too or Obsolete Childhood”

Yesterday I wrote a post in which I bemoaned how my blog stats were recently in a nosedive. I admit that I was being a bit whiny, and that’s when Suze put me in my place. She commented, “It is better to speak profoundly to just one than to blather at a world of idiots…yes, you can quote me.”

To which, knowing that today, Wednesday, is Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt, I replied, “I just may do that. Stay tuned!”

I thought that Suze’s highly inspirational and motivational one-liner perfectly fit the bill for this prompt. I believe that Suze was telling me that

  1. I shouldn’t give quantity a higher priority than quality,
  2. most of my posts are nothing more than me blathering on about nothing,
  3. most of the people who read my blog are idiots,
  4. all of the above, or
  5. none of the above.

In any event, I thought Suze’s comment was, in and of itself, profound. Unfortunately, she has now set the bar quite high for me because I feel as though it’s incumbent upon me to come up with something profound to post about.

Omigod, where is Jack Handey when I need him?3A9F642F-96FA-47D1-8E56-1EB1EA37F669