Art Predator Reaches 500,000 Page Views: Thank You!
“The most important step in developing skillful speech is to think before speaking (or writing).
This is called mindfulness of speech. Few things can improve the nature of our relationships as much as the development of skillful speech.
Silence offers us, and those around us, the spaciousness we need to speak more skillfully.
When we speak with greater skill, our true self–our compassionate, loving self–emerges with gentle ease.
So before you speak, stop, breathe, and consider if what you are about to say will improve upon the silence.”
–Allan Lokos, from “Skillfull Speech” Tricycle, Winter 2008
Sometime in the night, I will reach a major blogging milestone–500,000 page views here on Art Predator! I’m at 499,990`since I began in November of 2007 of 1410 posts; I would never have imagined attaining 500,00 views so I thought I’d take a few minutes to reflect, to note what people have been reading, to share a few of my favorite posts, and to thank Danika Dinsmore and Sophia Kidd who got me going, and Paul Squires aka GingaTao who encouraged me as a poet, as a writer, and as a blogger.
I know! Wow! 1410 posts! 50
0,000 views! That’s a lot! That’s half a million! Thank you, readers and subscribers!
I’d like to think that I have been “improving upon the silence”– that the words I have been speaking and writing upon this page, into this web, have been skillful and valuable, and that, as much as possible, my compassionate self has shown up here on this blog as well as my blogs Wine Predator “on the prowl for wine and adventure,” Compassionate Rebel “one who hears the cries of the world”, Bikergo Gal which is bicycle oriented, The Write Alley which focuses on business writing, and Whisper Down the Write Alley which is oriented toward my college students.
Over the years, I’ve published posts about art, literature, Burning Man, politics, environmental activism, travel, wine, recipes, rituals, and family life. I have lived up to my goal to provide an eclectic mix of content that revolves around Coleridge’s idea of the aesthetic as that which engages the soul by writing about what is enga
ging my soul. Read about how I became Art Predator Part 1 and Part 2.
Over the years, I’ve published my own writing and posts about music and films by Ron Wells, and about politics by Grant Marcus. And I’ve published my own poems, and with permission, poems by others including Paul Squires aka GingaTao.
Since I began in November 2007, four factors have changed the face of my blogging: Facebook, Twitter, multiple blogs, grad school.
As I got more into blogging in 2008 and 2009, I decided to start blogs on various subjects. So instead of having all of my viewers on this blog, they dispersed. Instead of averaging 350 pages views a day just on this blog, I had from 350-500 page views on average a day on my various blogs. Since I’ve cut down on my blogging, especially here, I average about 300 page views over my various blogs a day.
With the advent, popularity, and success of microblogging platforms like FB and Twitter, many of the topics that I might have blogged about are already moving around; there’s no need to blog about them–and I’ve already said what interests me to say on the subject on facebook or twitter.
Then, almost two years ago, I went back to grad school to get my PhD in Depth Psychology with an emphasis in Community, Liberation, and Ecopsychology–lea
rning about the heart and the soul of the world, learning how to “see through” as James Hillman calls it.
Grad school has definitely cramped my blogging style. In fact, when my husband asked how I was going to have time to do grad school, I told him I would be cutting back on my blogging and on leading the ArtRides, but when I told my friends I had stopped saying “no” to wine samples, they told me they’d do anything they could to help me be able to keep up my wine blogging–and because they’ve been so helpful, I have been able to maintain a regular publishing schedule there (posting twice a week or so); on some days, Wine Predator (with nearly 400 blog posts) racks up more page views than Art Predator! As I find that my writing on Compassionate Rebel is soulful, and inspires me with my writing for grad school, I’ve kept that up, posting there 1-4 times a month.
Those blogging practices have led me to reblogging posts from Wine Predator and Compassionate Rebel here so at least there is something happening on a regular basis for my subscribers!
Looking to the future, I imagine I will continue to reblog content from Wine Predator and Compassionate Rebel here–even if it means that Google doesn’t like me as much any more. But this summer, I will also be posting more original content related to my summer field work on “recreation” including travel, camping, backpacking, wine, and BURNING MAN! Just as in June I was traveling for 10 days, I’ll be out and about for 10 days in July and again in August.
I’m also going to be posting more of my Depth Psychology papers here–and yes, I think you will like them, especially the paper about Burning Man!
So that’s what the future looks like (plus getting my own URL one of these days) But what about the past?
What are some of my best ofs? When I think back over the 1410 posts (and probably averaging 1000 words each!), there’s a lot of content to consider. That’s a lot of words upsetting the silence.
My biggest day ever was Feb. 21, 2008 when I had 2,836 page views when my blog post about the lunar eclipse went viral. I was thrilled and surprised to see my stats shoot up and so many referrals; that day, my post about the eclipse was the first one you’d find on a google search–above NASA! That post has had over 5,000 views.
My biggest month of the year is almost always September because of the interest in Burning Man. September 2011 I had nearly 20,000 page views! Here’s a post from August 31, 2011 title “Black Rock City Night” that had nearly 1600 views–not bad for a poem!
My most viewed poem is “Man Ray Kitty Jumps” with almost 14,000 views!
My first and possibly most viewed Wine Blog Post is Chris Ringland’s Ebenezer Shiraz 2006: rich but not a tightwad with 3700 views.
My Top Ten Favorite posts– posts that are some of the most important to me but may not have the most views (in no particular order):
these posts about Chris Jordan from April 2013 :
Chris Jordan: Melting the Ice in the Heart
These posts about my trip to Portugal:
Miles from Now/Here: Adventures in Evora
November 2009
Poetry Lines Bicycle & Pedestrian Paths in Portugal; Lisboa Loves Literature! from March 2010
This March 2010 post about my husband’s miraculous recovery from a broken neck:
How Lots of Good Friends & a Hard Head Saved a Neck & other great news
And to round out t
he Top 10, some poems:
I am a scary smelly skeleton pirate: Halloween poems (2500 pages views)
(which I did with my son and his K-1 class)
The Rainbow Bridge: How we & dolphins came to be–A Chumash origin story (3,000 page views)
(based on several versions of the Chumash story)
Stars: Whether We Notice Them Or Not
(a 3:15 Experiment poem featured in my book)
The Ballad of Marcel DuChamp & the Gopher: There is Love
(a fun 3:15 experiment poem)
transformation
(another 3:15 poem that’s in my book–scroll down for the text)
For a “virtual reading” of sample poems, go here.
Finally, here are the Top 15 posts/pages with the most page views:
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