2012-366 Day 366 – Finale

Wow, that was fast. After 366 days, 365 posts (Day 154 and 155 were a combo post as 154 was the one day I forgot completely), and 172,245 words, I’m actually at the end of this project. I’m not going to lie, I’ve been looking forward to this day for a while (actually tomorrow, but that’s beside the point). At an average of 472 words a day (all these stats do not count today’s post), a high of 2,190 words (Day 165 – Cars Land). a low of 34 words (Day 99 – Easter), and 182 pictures (wait, does that count as an extra 182,000 words?) a whole year has past us by. Some more number fun, I have 2115 spam comments in the spam filter from just six or seven months and 200 plus actual comments (thanks everyone!) on various posts.

I installed Google Analytics on February 26th and since then it says I have had 635 unique visitors to my blog visiting 3,061 times and viewing 4,078 pages, which I suppose is not too bad for a personal blog (I have nothing to compare this to, so don’t tell me if I’m wrong). The vast majority were from the United States, but I’ve had visitors from China, Canada, the UK, India, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, the Philippines, Austria, Belgium, and Germany, as well as a visitor from Brazil, Switzerland, Cyprus, Spain, Guatemala, South Korea, the Maldives, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Palau, Romania, Russia, Sweden, and Singapore. As for the States, I managed 41 out of the 50 checking in (though I did get Washington DC), with the majority coming from California (of course) and the top five rounding out with Colorado, Illinois, Alaska, and Washington. Sadly I do not have the motivation to go through the list and figure out which states I missed. Of the 3061 visits to the site, most were by direct links from Facebook, but 177 found the site from search engines (sorry Bing, 170 were Google, 4 were Yahoo, and only 3 were you), with the top phrase being “ragnar checklist” (6 times), with other multiple phrases being “blog(s) for/with two people”, “cozy cone fountain”, “epcot”, and, of course, “matt worland blog” (a whole two times!). The high point for visits was July 24th with 40, a day that featured the second part of my Hillside Lodge “review” as well as Jess posting a giant blog on what she had been up to the day before. The post with the most (“Beetlejuice” . . . er, sorry) views was Day 81’s Rave Review post making fun of all the spam quotes, which had 103 views, doubling the second highest post, the Cars Land review.

Outside of the statistics above, there are a couple of other things I wanted to take care of in the final post of the year. One thing is the final Resolution Update:

1) One blog post (long or short) every day this year. – Well, we’re here and I’m counting it. – COMPLETE.

2) Lose 20 pounds. – Well, I had accomplished this one for about a day two months ago, but the holidays and giving up on my running goal did too much damage and I’m currently back in the high 220s to low 230s. – FAILED.

3) Run 600 miles. – Again, once I knew I was missing this one, it became less of a priority, and the cold, rainy weather and vacation days have not helped with the motivation. Running 366 miles is nothing to sneeze at, but apparently I had set my sights too high. – FAILED.

4) Complete 5th Gup Green belt test by end of year. – I test for this one on Saturday, and I’m assuming all will go well. – COMPLETE.

5) Complete first novel. – This one doesn’t really count, as I was only going to attempt it if the other ones were too easy. That wasn’t the case, but for some reason I kept track of it anyway. – FAILED.

So the final standings, throwing out 5) leaves me at 50/50 for the year. Not bad considering most people’s resolutions don’t escape January. What this year actually accomplished was to give me a better framework for next year’s resolutions, so I can make them more effective and encourage a better chance of success. Speaking of which, the other thing I wanted to do here was introduce next year’s resolutions (forgive me if they are a day early, but I’m taking tomorrow off from blogging).

2013 Resolutions

1) One blog post (longer) every week this year – 2012-366 is transitioning to 2013-52. Rather than forcing myself to write everyday I will instead collect topics during the week and post a cumulative blog at some point on the weekends. I’m uncertain how this will compare overall length-wise, but at least it will keep me in the habit of writing and allow others to remain up-to-date with my activities, should they desire, and not worry about a daily deadline.

2) Lose at least 20 pounds – Same as last year, but this time moving from 230 down into the sub-210 range, which is within striking distance of my long-term goal of being around 200 pounds, if not a little less. I’ve learned a lot from the process this year and now know that I have to be more regimented in both my diet and exercise so that I can have a bit of a buffer heading into the last month and the holidays, while also setting a running/fitness goal that will keep me motivated all year through.

3) Run 400 miles. – I ran two half marathons this year as well as Ragnar, and trained fairly consistently until the last couple months. In 2013 I have two marathons on the schedule and will of course run Ragnar again, as well as training for each. I’m hoping 400 is on the low side, but that’s where I’m setting the opening bid as it will also eclipse the 366 miles I ran this year (and I just realized that I averaged a mile a day this year, which seems appropriate).

That’s where the repeat offenders end. Here’s the new resolutions for 2013.

4) Write an average of 500 words a day – Again, this is a stretch of my results this year, but I will be spreading out the beneficiaries of my output. I want to see where the novel I mentioned last year goes, so a lot of this word count will go into that. I may also work on the Variance project a bit, as I never developed it the way I wanted to. I have the topic for my second Cutting Edge Karate blog that I will be working on after the holiday, and hopefully several more of those through the year. The blog will also count, and will have longer entries even though there will be fewer of them. In all, I plan to write a lot, just not restrict myself to one forum.

5) Read a book a month – In all this writing and computer time, I’ve neglected books. This resolution started as two books a month, but remembering my over-reaching at the start of this year, I will instead seek to start low and eclipse this number. It’s time to read actual books again, as I’ve been stuck in the land of internet articles too long.

Well, I suppose that wraps things up here, and you can tack on another 1275 words to all the stats above. While I did enjoy certain aspects of this project and had some people tell me what they like about it, I am looking forward to a day (or week) of rest. Thank you all again for coming on this journey with me, however much of it you partook of, and I hope to see you all again for the weekly posts starting this weekend. I hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year’s Eve and a phenomenally blessed 2013!

Weight: 222 Loss: 18 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 366.7 miles
Fitocracy Level: 26 ID: disciplev1