Happy Bloggoversary to Me! Art Predator Celebrates 150,000 Views in 2 Years

Yep, it’s my blogoversary time once again. My blog is another year older today.

And what a way to celebrate! Because of this blog, and because of my rabid blogging in general about wine and adventures, I have not only made new friends around the world, but right now I am halfway around the world in Evora, Portugal, visiting castles and wineries by day and staying in a beautiful hotel M’Ar de Ar with views of an ancient Roman Aquaduct from my bed at night. I took that sillouette of myself yesterday at the castle at Monsarez so far east of Lisbon it is almost in Spain.

As I write this, I listen to fado singer Mariza, sip some intense Sandeman’s 2007 Porto which was given me at my third Wine Blogger’s Conference, and reflect on how I am on a tour of the Alentejo Wine region on  a trip sponsored by Enoforum where I have been wined and dined to my heart’s content. (And I haven’t held back–letting myself be my wild Art Predator self. Can you hear me howl at the full moon?)

So how did I get here from where I was two years ago? How did I go from averaging 30 pages views a day to 6,000 in one week a few weeks later to settling into an average of 100 page views a day for my first year and 350 a day for my second year?

Thanks to you, dear reader! You are the answers to my prayers offering friendship, support and an audience! Thank you!

I really couldn’t do it alone–I am sure I would have been discouraged it I hadn’t found it gratifying to meet an unmet need, to discover and write about wines and food, adventures, music, and travels, ideas and poetry that YOU wanted to know and read about.

So it’s a partnership. I write about what interests me and I write about what I think interests you. I try to tell as many stories as possible because I know that it is through stories that we learn about others and ourselves, that we learn what it is to be human and to be part of humanity in all its glorious complexity.

Unless you’re writing about a topic that’s wildly popular–and you’re the first and possibly only one writing–it’s going to take time and commitment. It can also be a fluke: the week I had 6,000 page views in my fourth month of blogging I wrote about the lunar eclipse and people were interested in the breadth of what I wrote about–astronomy, astrology, and ritual.

My writing about the Burning Man Project has also been wildly popular over the years. This recent September, I averaged over 550 page views–mostly Burning Man related. When I saw some cool photos by my friend Alan Sailer, I wanted to post them because I liked them–not because I thought they’d draw so many page views to my blog.

Since I started this writing project, I have blogged on average well over a post a day. Most months for the past year I have posted around 40 times; this will be my 838 post in 730 days. That’s a lot of writing and a lot of page views. That’s translated to over 200 subscribers.

Not bad for an eclectic blog which follows a dictum of Coleridge’s: the aesthetic is that which engages the whole soul.

Below I have the most viewed posts. They’re not necessarily my favorite posts or the ones I think are the best, but the ones which have been viewed in the past two years over 1000 times.Which ones do I think are best or are my favorites? I think that should be answered another day but during my first year I did a page “Greatest Hits” which still represents some of my better work here. I also like the poetry I presented in a reading in September 2009 which featured poetry I first published here. Which ones are your favorites?

The numbers below do NOT count page views by subscribers.

Top Posts for all days ending 2009-11-04 (Summarized)

All Time

What were the most read posts this past month? (please forgive the crazy formatting!