Best of 2022 | The Year in Blogging

It’s been a good year for the blog. And I didn’t realize how good until I looked at my yearly stats. I don’t worry about my blogging stats; this blog is just a place for me to come and talk about my life, and I love that there is now this community of other bloggers who are doing the same. We’re not trying to make money here; we just like having the space to chat and connect. But I do like doing a check-in at the end of the year to put together this post. It’s interesting to see what people are most connecting with, what old blog posts are still getting thousands of views (it’s so crazy!), and how many people are stopping by my blog on a daily basis. It’s always more than I expect!

By the Numbers

• 57,000 unique views
• 13,000 visitors
• 1,088 words per post on average
• 1,400 comments
• 180 posts
• 121 countries represented in my views (with the United States, Canada, and Poland being my top three)
• 165 subscribers

My number of unique views, unique visitors, and comments skyrocketed this year (+17,000, +2,000, and +600). My average words per post also increased (whoops) to over 1,000, and that’s an increase of 138 words per post from 2021. Will 2023 be the year I bring that average down to a more reasonable number? We shall see! I also posted a lot more—41 more posts, to be exact!—and that’s likely because I didn’t take two blog breaks, like I did in 2021.

My Top 5 Blog Posts of 2022

(Blog posts written in 2022, in order of most pageviews.)

• My New Rules for Dating – I loved writing this post after reading Logan Ury’s book, How to Not Die Alone. While I haven’t exactly implemented the rules I laid out in this post, I did enjoy thinking about how to make the dating apps work better for me. I really do not enjoy the dating life (which is why I’m not on the apps as much as I should be), but I do desire partnership so I need to get better about using the apps to hopefully find that special person.
• Stitch Fix | Summer 2022 – I think the reason this post made it on this list is that it was the last post I published before I took a few weeks off blogging while I was away on my Niagara Falls trip. In this post, I also talked about my body image and finding clothes that make me feel good no matter what my body looks like, which garnered a lot of (kind!) comments.
• TGIF (v. 42) – I’m surprised that this post wound up as my third most popular post of 2022! There were a lot of comments on this post, which might be due to asking everyone to vote on their favorite pair of glasses I got in my Warby Parker try-on pack.
• A Friday Morning Coffee Date – In this coffee date post, I got really vulnerable about my dating struggles, my mental health, and some weight-related challenges. Apparently, you guys like it when I’m really honest about what’s going on in my life!
• My Experience with Covid-19 – I got Covid for the first time ever in June, after my Niagara Falls trip. (Wear your mask on planes, folks!) In this post, I talked about my experience with Covid, which really wasn’t as terrible as other people’s experiences. I ended up giving Covid to my mom and my brother (and my mom gave it to my stepdad!) and they all had it much worse than me.

My All-Time Most Popular Blog Posts

These stats haven’t budged in a few years, and this is the second year in a row I have gotten more than 2,000 views on the “10 Things I Like About Myself” post. I’m not sure why that post (written in 2014!) is still getting so many views.

1. I’m 27 and Scared to Move Out (+221 views)
2. On Being a Socially Anxious Introvert (+2 views)
3. 10 Things I Like About Myself (+2,271 views)
4. “What is meant for me is already mine.” (+506 views)
5. Rules for Living with a Dachshund (+144 views)

Other Favorite Posts

1. Some Thoughts on 12 Years of Estrangement – I’ve been estranged from my father for 12 years now. I was just 22 when I made the decision to sever our relationship, which feels so young, but also, I am so proud of that girl who decided she wouldn’t accept that kind of volatile relationship from someone. Becoming estranged is not an easy decision (especially when the person is your own father), but it was the best one I could have made. In this post, I talk about that decision and what being estranged from someone really feels like.
2. That Time of the Month – I loved the discussion that Kelsey and Erica had about their periods on The Girl Next Door podcast so much that I decided to write an entire blog post about my own period—my history with periods, what periods are like for me these days, and funny stories I have about menstruation. I think we need to be more open and honest about things like periods, and I loved the discussion I had in the comments with some of you guys after writing this post.
3. Living with Mental Illness – This year started off with one of my worst anxiety nights in a really long time and in this post, I talk about that experience and what it feels like to come down from a place of heightened anxiety. Bringing people into the real world of someone with an anxiety disorder is something I’m really passionate about, not only because we need to lessen the stigma of mental illness but also because it helps me feel less alone when other people say, “I’ve been there, too.”
4. The Girl I Was Then – I’ve spent a lot of time this year reading through the archives of my blog as I work on my blog recategorization project, and it’s been really hard to read older blog posts from when I was in my early twenties and realize how hard I was on myself. I didn’t treat myself very kindly, and this post is a love letter to that girl to let her know she was okay as she was.
5. My Evolution As a Reader – I wrote a long post all about how my reading has evolved throughout the years, starting in elementary school and continuining through college and beyond. I have always been a reader and it was fun to think about the different ways reading showed up in my life during different times.

It’s been a good year of blogging and I can’t wait to see what sorts of things I feel pulled to write about in 2023!