Another Year Come and Gone

It's that time again: the day where, like many others, I congratulate myself on the fine job I have been doing blogging for all you wonderful people. IHTtS has gone through quite a year. In January of 2012, I was knee deep in Star Wars: The Old Republic hype, still loving the stories and the worlds of a galaxy far, far away. I loved exploring new, yet familiar, places and themes with my newlywed bride, known here and on Twitter as Sctrz—pronounced "Scooters" or "Scooter-zee," if you're curious; though I usually address her as Sweetheart or some other sappy pet name. :D

In March and April, I wrote several posts in a series called 20 Days of Blogging; though it stretched out over more than a month. And I only actually got to Day 15 on the list. I should finish that off when I need inspiration to write. In May, I had the privilege of participating in Syp's Newbie Blogger Initiative, posting seven entries related to the project.

Events I will not rehash dampened my enthusiasm for SWTOR; and by July, I was ready to just finish Versteckt's story. The Secret World was my new hotness, and I love it still. For the first time, theorycrafting and the progression system of a game truly interested me, and I wrote quite a bit about it in July and August. Sctrz was not so enthralled, but loves Guild Wars 2.

GW2 dominated my gaming time and my blogging this fall. I like the game just fine myself, even posting a couple Engineer builds earlier this month. Throughout the year, I branched out into other areas of interest though, discussing books and movies I've seen, gender politics in gaming, even reassuring a friend of his journalistic integrity. I highlighted blogs I like, and said farewell to a great blogging friend.

I reached some blogging goals I'd set for myself, averaging a post every 2.9 days in the past twelve months, and bringing up my average to 102 posts per year. I hope to be able to continue these trends.

After hitting a record near 4700 hits in December 2011, IHTtS settled into a nice average just below 4k for the first part of the year, with a nice little boost in May, mostly from the NBI. July saw a huge boost in hits, thanks perhaps to my theorycrafting posts about TSW. The hits per month have not dipped below 5k in the second half of the year, peaking in December with 9,637 hits. I have received 92,600 visits since Google started recording back in June of 2010.

My post about the movie Cloud Atlas carried me to that December record, becoming my most popular post ever with 5,698 hits (Hello, Thailand!) in only 2½ months as of this writing; though it wasn't the only star. The two most active comment sections (including my own) were on a self-pity post at the end of August (37) and my tribute to my ever-lovely bride, Sctrz (26). Thank you, my loyal readers. You may be few, but you are mighty.

I'm a little behind in posts already this year. I sailed to 80 on my "Engy" late last week, but failed to announce it here on the blog. I need to fill out the backstories of both my GW2 characters and my TSW characters. I also have reviews of Les Misérables and of the novel Cloud Atlas in the works. And the gamer couples survey results languish out laziness on my part more than anything. Hey, I made it three years, you've got no guarantees from here on out.