So we’ve come to the end of another year, which means another year-end blog recap in the form of top 10 lists. I wrote in last year’s recap that one of my big goals for 2019 was to continue growing my blog. That certainly happened. Traffic increased significantly between last year and this, and I want to thank all of you for visiting my blog and for sharing my posts with your friends. It means so much to me ❤
Posts With The Most Traffic
For the second year in a row, my ENFP-INFJ relationships post is by far the most popular. The other top posts changed quite a bit, and feature a surprising (to me at least) number of my posts about fictional characters’ personality types.
I’m not really big on New Year’s resolutions, but people talk about them enough that the idea is something I think about. And so January has become a time for thinking about what happened last year, what I’d like to change in this next year, and how I plan to “show up” for my life.
Part of this focus in the new year comes along with participating in 30 days of yoga. I’ve been doing this Yoga With Adrienne program every January since 2015 and it’s a wonderful way to check in with yourself, get healthy, and focus on becoming a person who can serve others wholeheartedly. In addition to this, I happened upon an interesting blog post titled “Intentions Not Resolutions.”
“I no longer make New Year’s resolutions – they’re too easy to give up on after week one and only become a source of guilt. … Instead, a few years ago, I began starting my New Years by choosing a word to inspire the kind of intentional living I wanted to focus on for the year.” — Jen of E.C.B.C
I’d sort of tried this last year when I discovered a site called My Intent that makes bracelets with a custom word on them. I couldn’t pick one word, though, and ended up with a bracelet that says “Balance” and “Connect.” I rarely wear it any more, though those two concepts still resonate deeply.
I’ve been thinking for a while now that if I made a new bracelet it would say “fearless.” What with working through my breakup and (finally) getting counseling for the anxiety I’ve been living with for 15+ years, 2018 was a year that I realized that 1) I have a lot of fears, and 2) I don’t have to let them control me.
There’s another bracelet that I picked up last year at an art festival that says, “Encourage your hopes, not your fears.” I’ve been wearing that one a lot. It’s the perfect message to combat my anxiety, which generally pushes hopes aside behind all the things that could go wrong because of all the things that I’m sure are wrong with me. But if I spend all my time turned inward thinking about my fears, then I’m just encouraging my anxiety to take over.
If, on the other hand, I encourage my hopes it changes things. And if I can learn to do that more consistently it might drastically change things. I hope I can keep growing this blog to reach and encourage more people. I hope that I’ll stop sabotaging myself because I’m scared of dealing with everything that might come with being a successful blogger and author. I hope I can climb out of my own head more often and connect with others (including God) in a deeper way.
My intention for 2019 isn’t just one word, but I do have one. I’m going to encourage my hopes, not my fears.
What about you? Did you set any intentions or resolutions for the New Year?
Once again the Gregorian calendar advances by one year. Sticking with tradition, I spent New Year’s Eve with my cousin and sister and now I’m using my first post of the new year to share my blogging highlights from last year.
This has been a big year for my blog. It’s got a name now, for one thing, since we went from marissabaker.wordpress.com to LikeAnAnchor.com. The number of visitors is holding pretty steady from last year, though it did go up a little.
One of my big goals for this upcoming year is to continue growing my blog, but that’s a subject for another post. Today’s post is about looking back on the most popular posts of 2018 and celebrating all you lovely people who’ve been reading my work.
Posts With The Most Traffic
All of the top posts this year are about INFJs, which isn’t really surprising. I was kinda surprised that my ENFP-INFJ relationships post is the most popular of all my posts, though. I guess I’ll put that on the list of good things that came out of my (now ended) relationship.
I always spend New Year’s Eve with my sister and cousin. There’s just the three of us, but we call it a party anyway. The tradition started with my cousin’s family hosting much larger New Year’s parties, and then after those went away the three of us just kept spending New Years together.
Though one of us (my cousin) is an ENFP, our New Year’s parties are very much something you could describe as introverted. There’s a small number of people and the party activities are generally relaxed, stay-at-home sorts of things. And because our sort of New Year’s party is clearly the best kind there is, I’ve made this helpful little guide to help other introverts (and those who like “introverted” parties) to host their own.
How To Host An Introverted New Year’s Party
Step One: Decline all invitations to traditional New Year’s parties.
Step Two: Find a small number of people you enjoy being around and who will get along well with each other. Read more →
We’ve moved into another calendar year. As per a long-standing tradition, I spent New Year’s Eve with my sister and our cousin eating lots of yummy food and drinking sparkling grape beverages (Moscato d’Asti this year). And per a tradition established just last year, today I’m sharing post highlights from my blogging year.
I started doing this type of post last year with Top 5 lists. I’d wanted to do top 10 then, but there hadn’t been quite enough traffic to make the posts that didn’t make the top 5 lists stand out from each other. As you can see in the graph, there was quite a bit more traffic this year. And I’m really close to 1,500 followers now, so that’s exciting!
Posts With The Most Traffic
The INFJ User Guide remains firmly at the top of this year’s list. In fact, all but two of my most popular posts are directly relate to INFJ types. It’s so cool to see “Religion And The INFJ” on the list for this year. It’s become the most commented-on posts on my blog and I’ve been thrilled to have so many INFJs with different religious (and a-religious) backgrounds sharing their stories.
I’m so excited to see that several of my posts where I interviewed Christians with different Myers-Briggs types about their faith were so popular last year. And while most of the high-traffic posts on the list above were from 2015 and 2016, the newer ones did pretty good this year as well. Only the last one on this list was under 1,000 views. The top one had over 12,000.
2017 has been a year for narrowing the gap between the two sides of my blog (Christian and Myers-Briggs). Saturday’s Bible study posts still aren’t eclipsing the Monday posts in terms of traffic, but some of the most popular ones have over 500 views this year. Here’s the top 10 list:
The top 4 stayed the same, as I’d expected. And like last year, I have quite a few readers from south-east Asia. It’s interesting to see more people from India, Germany, and South Africa joining us. I’ve also heard directly from several readers in South America, which is pretty cool.
Another year on the Gregorian calendar has come to a close. I never really feel like a new year has started until spring comes, but since the rest of the world wants to start a new year in the middle of winter I roll with it (though I may still wish you a happy new year on Nisan 1, when the Hebrew calendar’s sacred year begins 14 days before Passover).
Anyway, for the first post of this year I wanted to look back on the top posts from last year. Turns out, only one of my top 5 most visited posts was written in 2016 (which is good, but doesn’t make for a good snap-shot of what I wrote last year). So I’m also doing top 5 lists of the most popular posts written in 2016. And, just for fun and because I was kind of surprised by it, the countries where most of my visitors came from.
my blog has grown so much since I started it four years ago!
Posts With The Most Traffic
Wow — had not realized that in just 6 months the INFJ User Guide become most popular post for the whole year. And I think it’s pretty cool that the INFJ Dark Side post from almost 3 years ago is still in my top 5.
The second one on this list was 6th overall and I only published it a month ago. And #3 is a guest post, which is pretty cool (I’m hoping to have more of those in 2017).
Not at all surprised by the top 4, but Singapore wasn’t what I expected. And if you take southeast Asia as a whole, they actually passed Australia in number of views. So let me take this opportunity to say “Welcome” to all my international readers — I’m so glad to have you here 🙂
Like An Anchor 