Numbers have always been my friends. Numbers are unambiguous, straigtforward and no-nonsense. They have clear relationships that form easy mnemonics. You can count with them and have absolute solutions. Numbers don’t lie, they just are what they are.
Now math, on the other hand. While it was still straightforward and dealt with mainly crunching numbers, I loved it. My grandma used to put me to calculating things like “We are driving 100km/h, we have 60 km to go, when will we be home?”on our drives (mostly back and forth between home and summer cottage) when I wasn’t even in school yet. She always claimed that solving math problems is the key to a sharp mind. I will never know (since she was dead before I thought to question) if it really was to shut my motor-mouth up for a minute, but I do know I got my number and math affinity from her.
I did good in math in school, all through highschool too, though I got extremely tired of it when all those letters and LIMs and such stuff (that I mercifully can’t even recall anymore) got mixed into the pot. It took the absolute out of math and numbers. I especially have never been one for statistical math, probabilities and all that shifty crap that calls itself math. I mean, sure, it too is based on calculations and whatnot, but what to I do with the knowledge that the probability of me NOT falling under the bus is 90% when there’s still the 10% and it can hit me any day (and knowing ME, it probably does – but how do I calculate THAT?).
So even though I really don’t like or do statistical MATH, I love statistics themselves. They are simply numbers in the end. I don’t even attempt to calculate mathematical relations or probabilities according to them, I just like to LOOK at them, UNDERSTAND them, CRUNCH them. To understand myself, my life, my *whatever* better just by studying them. I compare them, and I think to myself, that
- “this year I posted only 11 blog posts (to SFFM), but I read 105 books – clearly my interest lies more in reading than writing right now
- “then again, that was 5 more posts and 22 more books than the previous year – clearly I’ve taken more time for both reading AND writing this year”
- only 6% of the books I read this year were non-fiction, while roughly 50% of the books were fantasy – clearly I’m more into escapism through adventure currently, than understanding this life and world”
- “I listened to 10490 minutes of music in Spotify, which is roughly the same as year before, while in the roughish year of 2021 it was double – clearly I retreat to music when the going gets tough”
- “my main genre this year (too) was Rock, with Rush, Disturbed and Foo Fighters the top three – how did the Foos fall down to the third place?! In 2021 it was #1 with Rush holding the second place, then in 2022 the Foos were #2 with Rush at the top – I’ll blame it on the Spotify random generator, since I mostly played Liked Songs in shuffle mode”
That kind of stuff.
What do I do with the information? Absolutely nothing. I just find it highly interesting, intriguing, insightful. So, just for the sake of all of that, let’s look at some of the stats from last year.
SFFM stats
I wrote 11 posts with a total of 18 400 words, had 743 visitors and 1778 views. Half of the viewers found their way through search engines – which explains why certain old old posts still hold fast in my top viewed posts – roughly the other half came from Facebook, and there were some other random refers, with the WordPress reader being the least random.
May had the most views, for whatever reason, since I didn’t even write anything in May, May 18 being the most popular day with 342 views. October, on the other hand, had the most visitors, while only a moderate amount of views. Makes you wonder if there’s been some bot activity in May (maybe starting in April?). December had the most posts, with 4 posts published.
Out of the top five posts only two were published last year: My body, my positive and 9y ANniversary. The most viewed post was Elämää pikkusiskon kanssa (from 2015). Kuus-nolla lumierä (from 2010!) keeps on keeping on in the top 5 year after year.
Most of my readers are from Finland – quite logically, being that the majority of my posts over time are in Finnish, as are most of my friends. There are, however, always some readers from here and there, apparently one even from China.
Blogger stats
Out of all my different topic blogs in Blogger, the only ones I posted in last year were From Kitchen, with Love (4 posts), The Happy Dogs Diary (one post), and Artzy Bunny (8 posts).
From Kitchen, with Love had a total of 22 200 views last year, March 15 having the interesting spike of 1767 views (bots, again?) when nothing new was even posted. Out of the top five posts none were published last year, though the most viewed one, Perinteinen lohipiirakka with 683 views, was published closest to last year, in December of 2022. The most viewed post from last year was the Polpottone Proibito – Kielletty lihamuereke with 22 views, making it #12 on the most viewed list.
The Happy Dogs Diary has seen very little activity on my side since I started the hdd_doggos Instagram account (with 106 followers). It had a bit of a comeback in the summer of 2020 when Ace was a pups, but then I started the FB page Mama Loves Bully (with 37 followers), and again, the blog was forgotten in favor of the easier, faster methods of posting stuff. Last year I posted one article, the first one since July, 2020: 10 vuotta omassa kodissa, featuring Meggie’s 10 years in our home, her very own home at the end of November, 2023.
The HDD doesn’t see nearly as much traffic per year as the Kitchen blog, but it does see some, 6990 views last year, mostly of older posts. The top viewed one, Sukulaisissa ja keppileikkiä (15 views), is actually the last one I posted before the 1,5 year gap in posting. That only post from last year is not even on the list with all of 2 views.
Artzy Bunny is fully dependent and thus also reflective of my painting activity, showing that I actually painted a lot last year, while before that there was a 2-3 year gap in my artistic endeavors. My artowrk is also featured on the related FB page, Artzy Bunny (with 28 followers).
Last year Artzy Bunny (the blog) gathered 7430 views, June 23 being the spike day with 200 views. Again, nothing new was even posted that day. Also, again, none of the top five viewed posts were published last year. My painting of Ace as a puppy, Ace (Agent of Chaos) 6 weeks old (Acrylics on canvas) from May 2020 was the most viewed last year with 59 views. The #2, I’ll Be Watching You, from August 2020, was the last one posted before the gap of 2,5 years or so. Portrait of a Bull Terrier (Ace), my most recent painting (published in October, 2023), is #7 on the list with 13 views.
Music (Spotify) stats
As already stated above, I listened to music for 10490 minutes last year (or the first 11 months of it, since Spotify actually gives the stats at the end of November, oddly enough). My top five artists were Rush, Disturbed, Foo Fighters, Avenged Sevenfold, and Seether. Rush and Foo Fighters are always in top 5, the three other ones vary from year to year. My top genre was Rock, as usual. The variations are Rock, Alt Rock, Alt Metal.
Photo stats
I took (or rather stored) 2636 photos last year, which is only a third of the more common amount of photos per year.
I made 218 posts in sannamarilka Instagram, with 1100 likes, and 110 posts in hdd_doggos, with 392 likes, at least according to the Best Nine app. It’s a bit annoying to me that IG and FB don’t really offer much in the way of stats to us normal peeps.
Flickr is another platform with very poor stats abilities. I mean, they do offer them, but but it’s either for all time orthe Daily Stats, which displays a month at a time. But nothing in between, like getting the stats for a year, as I would like, without way too much effort. So who knows how many photos I uploaded last year, or how many views they got, but the total of photos in my Flickr photostream is now 13931 photos, 0 videos, 415 852 views of my photos.
The most viewed photos of all time are the Maspalomas beach (from 2014) with 5821 views and 4 likes, and My nice new leather jacket (from 2008) with 5149 views and 3 faves and 3 comments. The most faved photo is Denim shoes (from 2011) with 6 faves (and 1161 views). Most viewers seem to find their way to my photos by searching stuff in Flickr (but this info is included only in the Daily Stats view).
Book stats
Actually my favorite stats, naturally! And since Goodreads offers a very meager amount of stats, basically just the amount of books and pages per year, I decided to start using StoryGraph for my reading tracking, too. I even got last year’s stats nice and neat after exporting-importing all my book data from Goodreads to StoryGraph. Unfortunately StoryGraph is missing three books from my last year’s reads, probably because they’re Finnish books not found in their database (I actually requested the add of two Finnish books to Goodreads last year, so not surprised if they’re not found in StoryGraph either).
So, the Goodreads stats tell me that I read 105 books last year, a total of 40 382 pages (what?! Year in books says 40 671! Someone is lying here now!). With the publication date stats I can conclude that the oldest book I read last year was Wutherin Heights (Emily Brontë), published in 1847. I read most pages last year in July, while not most books; those months would be March and November, 11 books each. Won’t even bother with the annoyingly difficult to read or non-informative stat pictures here.
StoryGraph, on the other hand, offers all sorts of cool stats. So disregarding the three missing books (no, I havent’ attempted to figure out which ones they are), here’s my reading-crunch-up for 2023:
- My most read genre was fantasy, 55 books, so about half
- Half of the fantasy was YA, 27 books – since I know that’s the only kind of YA I read
- I read 21 romance books (many of them also fantasy), nearly half of them LGBTQA+ (9 books)
- I even read two kids’ books, The Old Possums Book of Practical Cats (T.S. Eliot) and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland #1-2 (Lewis Carroll)
- The biggest part of the books I read were adventurous in mood – which is no surprise when reading all that fantasy, but also emotional, funny, mysterious, and lighthearted take up rather big shares of the mood pie (book moods are set by reader feedback)
- 59% of the books were medium paced, 27% fast, and 15% slow (book pace is set by reader feedback)
- 60% of my books were of average length (300-499 pages), 16% were 500+ pages, 24% less than 300 pages
- Only 6% of my read books were non-fiction (mostly autobios) the rest obviously fiction. I do prefer fiction mostly, while enjoying the occasional non-fic in the mix
- 12% of my books were in Finnish, the rest in English. This 12% seems to be rather the average when looking back a few years
- My most read authors of the year were Claudine Marcin (though actually only 4 books, don’t know why it states 6), Elizabeth Lim (6 books), Liz Braswell (6 books), Terry Pratchett (5 books), Tessonja Odette (4 books, though actually 6 since one was a trilogy bunched into one), and Walter Moers (4 books).
The sweet thing about these StoryGraph stats is that I can easily bore into any one detail or segment to get more info. Also, I can easily get the stats for all time; my all time (mainly 2016 onward, but for books in our library, also some from the 1990’s and -80’s even) most read genres are mystery (230 books) and fantasy (218 books), with romance (152 books, 35 of which LBTQA+) and thrillers (151 books) being the runners-up. Maybe mention historical here still, with 133 books. After that we plunge below 100 books.
My most read author of all time, by far, is Janet Evanovich 💜 with 71 books. Next come James Patterson (30 books) and Tess Gerritsen (27 books), both mostly from years long gone, then Cassandra Clare (20 books) and T.J Klune (19 books). Leon Uris, Astrid Lindgren, John Grisham, and Patricia Cornwell are all authors from the past for me, mainly 1980’s and 1990’s.
In the future, I can also get the format stats – digital vs. paper – but the editions for all imported books aren’t correct, so the stats aren’t correct; the editions will be correct from now on, as I track my reading in StoryGraph book by book,
Oh, how statisfying! Probably of no interest to anyone else, but simply going through these, writing about them, arranging them into an informative format, gives me such satisfaction! Until next year!
So, you know 🤷♀️ Still, I was born in the year of the rabbit. In my mind, it made a rabbit, of sorts.
System Failure for the Masses 