Welcome – a guarded, once bitten twice shy sort of welcome – to 2023. Ironic self-pity in my Review of 2022 aside, I am genuinely resolved to do a bit better with the blog this year; to post at least twice per month, so that at least I have a choice when it comes to selecting my favourite posts at the end of the year, and to try to be slightly less boring and self-involved. The latter may prove difficult, but my overall health is definitely better than it was a year ago, and so I hope to have fewer grounds for moaning about everything.
One thing I do wonder is whether I should have slightly more of an idea what I’m doing, rather than just randomly scribbling whatever happens to occur to me. The latter approach has served me pretty well over the years – but I was struck, when reviewing last year’s blog statistics, by how many of the most popular posts from last year were actually written in previous years; the two 2022 posts that really got some traction were two gratuitous bits of humour, rather than anything more serious or substantial. Of course, the older posts may be still pulling in readers because they happen to deal with topics people search for (“the daughters of Sphinx” is a steady banker), rather than any inherent quality – and this whole thing may be driven by a post’s success or otherwise in getting picked up on Twitter (and who knows what will happen if/when that platform collapses in flames – I have yet to see any evidence of people finding their way here from Mastodon or Post).
I think – this post may disabuse me of the notion – that I do have some regular readers, as well as people who end up here because of Twitter or specific search terms. If so, I am asking for your feedback, using the short survey form linked here – and do please amplify your response in the comments. What sorts of topics bring you here? What would you like more of?
https://nevillemorley.survey.fm/post-topics
I’m not going to ask what you hate, as I’m not planning to stop writing occasional bits of pretentious opera criticism or the like – you can always just ignore those, as most people do, given that I’m not attempting to charge anyone actual money for this stuff. This is rather, potentially, a rebalancing act, trying to ensure that I do offer something that people might actually want to read more than just a couple of times a year. But I would like to know if you find my long-standing habit of using more or less obscure musical references to title most posts bearable, or even endearing, or if I would do better to have more sensible and descriptive titles.
And I am not going to advertise this post on Twitter or any other social media, at least for a couple of days, so we’ll see if anyone does actually notice it if it’s not loudly advertised on social media…
Sphinx 
I ticked the first five boxes & only stopped there b/c ticking all seven would make my response meaningless!
Basically it’s all good. I suppose the posts I enjoy least are the personal ones, which tend to trigger various combinations of hypochondria and self-reproach (even at reduced capacity you seem far more active than me, in multiple ways). But that really is me, not you – and besides, it’s all personal in the end; it’s a blog, after all.
As a regular reader who sometimes does so belatedly because he allows things to pile up in an RSS reader, I’m just in favor of more. I personally enjoy the range of topics and generally find them stimulating.