On last year and next year

On January 2, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

I went back and looked at the post I wrote at the end of 2022, and while I was willing to admit that 2022 had been a good year, I was clearly feeling pretty gun-shy about the idea. The notion that after the utter carnage that 2016 through 2021 had been, an actual good year had finally happened really seemed to beggar belief. I can’t justify any such hesitation about 2023; last year was a good year by nearly all personal metrics other than my own health, and even that wasn’t all that bad. In a lot of ways, I really don’t have anything to complain about, and I’m tantalizingly close to a major, major milestone in my life, one that ten years ago I didn’t think was ever going to happen: assuming no disasters occur (hah!), I am on track to be completely debt-free other than my house by the end of this school year. That’s entirely due to trends that started in 2022 and accelerated in 2023.

(I just took a few minutes to look, and I was officially diagnosed with sleep apnea in November of 2022, so that’s not 2023’s fault. I can’t even get mad at 2023 about that.)

Here’s the thing, though: 2024 fucking terrifies me. Like, bone-deep. Like, I don’t know how you diagnose someone with anxiety when the world is actually like this terrified. Why? Notice how I said “personal metric” up there? By that I mean, like, my life, my health, my family, my job, my finances. That sort of stuff. That’s all good right now, although I know how fast shit can change. Anything other than that? Fucked. Fucked. This was the hottest year in the history of humanity and nothing’s going to change. I have brought a child into this bullshit and he has to somehow survive for several decades after I’m gone while the world is busy being on fire. Israel is committing genocide in plain fucking sight of the entire world and no one is doing anything about it and there is literally nothing I can do to change anything about it. There’s a fucking presidential election this year. The state legislature is about to go back into session and who the fuck only knows what sort of bullshit they’re going to put on us this year.

(The pronoun bill? Sorta fizzled. Everybody just sort of mutually decided that we weren’t going to pay any attention to it, and nothing happened. I violate the pronoun law a hundred times a day and nothing is going to happen to me.).

I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to survive ten fucking months until the election. And the level of panic that sets in any time I try to seriously contemplate what I should do if things don’t go our way is indescribable.

So. Yeah. Last year was the last good year. Even if we win 400 electoral votes this fall I still have to make it to November before that happens. I just don’t see anything coming this year that I can look forward to, other than that whole “no debt” thing, which isn’t going to work out for me all that well when I have to sell everything and move to Canada on no notice. Or, y’know, not, since the fascists taking over could pretty much result in anything. Who the fuck knows.

Also, so far it’s been 2024 for two days, and I was woozy and sickish all day yesterday– I have never been hung over even once in my entire life, but based on how people have described it to me, I may as well have been– and last night I managed to throw out my back in my sleep because I’m 47 and that shit can happen now. So, yeah, fuck this year.

Anybody have the number for a good therapist? Maybe that’s where all my money can go.

Blogwanking 2023

On December 31, 2023December 31, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Geek1 Comment

I was thinking about waiting until tomorrow for this one, but unless someone decides to go through all of my posts between now and midnight (Feel welcome! Please do!) I don’t think the next few hours are going to make all that much of a difference to how my traffic looked in 2023. Interestingly, I like how the data is presented on my phone better than I do on the website, but here’s the main piece of data:

Here’s the last year by month:

And here’s year-over-year for the entire life of the site:

For those of you who are unaware, that huge spike in 2015, as well as a big part of the 2016 traffic, was from one post, and I obviously haven’t been able to reach that level of virality with anything since. Being up 14% over last year feels good, though, especially since I wrote less this year than I have … well, basically almost forever:

Does it entertain me that I sent my traffic up by posting less than any year other than 2017? Yes. yes it does. And even those 2017 posts tended to be longer; I only had one year with shorter average posts than this one. Interaction is way down, too, but blogs in general are way less popular than they were in the early 2010s and I have trouble worrying too much about it; while I enjoy looking at my numbers and pretending I have any idea at all what moves traffic one way or another, it’s not why the site is here, and I’d still be writing even if no one was reading at all. I had nearly thirty thousand people at least glance at my stupid little blog this year. That’s insane.

Even more insane:

I don’t have an easy way to quantify this, but that’s considerably more geographical diversity than I have gotten most years on the site. That’s just 2023. Here’s the whole time:

The very short list of places where I have never had blog traffic from: that blob at the top is Svalbard Island, owned by Norway, and I’m not completely convinced that traffic there doesn’t show up as Norway. Svalbard Island is my white whale, I think. North Korea. And then Western Sahara, which I don’t think is actually a country, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Gabon. That’s it, other than maybe some tiny islands that you literally can’t see on the map. Nine places. I can’t even say countries.

That’s absolutely fucking nuts, even knowing full well that the wild majority of those hits were probably both accidental and brief.

Back to the site traffic, though, and the undeniable slowing down of how much I’ve been posting here: I hate to admit it, but the main reason I’ve been posting less is that I’ve been happy lately, more or less. And being generally content does not lead to blog posts. I’ll talk more about this tomorrow, I think (this, the third post of the day, represents the final snowflake of your promised flurry) but I’ve been in a pretty good place for most of the last two years, and there are just more days where I don’t happen to feel like I have something I need to hash out or complain about or get off my chest so I don’t inflict it on my family. Plus, hell, y’all got nearly 80K words out of me on a down year, so it’s not like anyone’s going to complain.

So yeah. I’d like to pretend I’ll be asleep by midnight, but I won’t, if only because being on break has shoved me more toward nocturnal than I’ve been lately and I will probably be up and reading at midnight. We aren’t doing anything, though. Too old for that shit. I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning, briefly luxuriate in the thought that I have been asleep for 99% of the year, and then find something to do with myself. Don’t do anything too dumb tonight.

2023 in Music

On December 31, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn Music5 Comments

I purchased– and yes, “purchased” is the right word– 72 albums in 2023. I am an Old, and I have never taken to streaming, and so I’m still paying for all this stuff, and the fact that I got handed $200 in Apple gift cards partway through the year definitely didn’t hurt. Obviously not all of that is 2023 music, and as usual, I’m going to talk about stuff that was new to me this year.

The usual caveat whenever I’m talking about music: I have no idea how to write coherently about music, and never have, and furthermore I still cannot understand other people when they write about music. I have seen a ton of “Best New Releases of 2023” types of lists in the last few weeks, and purchased some music based on them, and … I just don’t get it. I’m pretty convinced that you could take the actual review parts of this article, randomly swap the artist and albums’ names, and republish it, and no one would notice. So this isn’t a list of reviews, it’s not a Best Of, and it’s sure as hell not in any kind of order other than maybe reverse chronological order of when I bought them. These are just albums that I enjoyed in 2023. Maybe you’ll like them too.

And I can hear you already, going “Wait, Luther, there’s no way you didn’t have Diamonds and Pearls already!” And you’re correct! I bought it on release day when I was in high school. What came out this year is the Super Deluxe Edition of Diamonds and Pearls, by Prince and the New Power Generation, which, for all my love of Prince’s entire career, will always be my favorite iteration of him.

The physical version of this motherfucker is seven disks long. There are live versions and alternate takes and an entire concert and demos and remasters and I’m going to stop typing now because you’ve already clicked away to go spend money.

I discovered Ren in 2023; Freckled Angels is a 2016 release but Sick Boi came out this year. Sick Boi is absolutely a rap album; Freckled Angels is something else and I’m not even going to try to describe it. Ren is Irish and monumentally talented and even if you’re not generally into hiphop you might want to look into him. Good shit.

I think it might actually be illegal to write anything about music in 2023 without mentioning Guts, by Olivia Rodrigo, and, well … yeah, it deserves it. I am really proud of myself for never unleashing my feelings about Sour in this space; Rodrigo has been underage for most of her career and picking on an actual child for musical choices that most likely were made mostly by other people who didn’t have her best interests in mind (no goddammit I’m not gonna do it) is not a move I want to make. But Guts is a more mature and multidimensional piece of work in every imaginable way, and bad idea right? is a fucking banger and I no longer feel like she should be taken away from her parents. All good. We’re fine.

2023 is also the year Paramore finally clicked for me, and after spending weeks mainlining This is Why every time I got into my car I went back and picked up most of the rest of their backlist. I mean, Christ, the name of their album is half of the line this is why I don’t leave the house; it’s like it was written for me.

You may have seen Queen Omega freestyling her ass off over a Dr. Dre beat on TikTok; I did, over and over and over again, until I cracked and spent money. I don’t listen to a ton of reggae nowadays, and I listen to even less reggae that doesn’t have anyone named Marley involved with it, but Freedom Legacy was a great dip back into the genre, and I feel like I might explore what modern, hip-hop influenced reggae is doing more next year. This is a hell of a collection, though, and I’m glad I grabbed it up.

Six? Six sounds good. Here’s the rest of the list:

In case you thought this year would be different

On January 2, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

So far 2021 has featured an ice storm and a power outage that is about to reach its 24th hour. We have booked a hotel for tonight and I’m writing this on my phone at my dad’s house.

Happy Same Fucking Year!

A brief first day report

On August 18, 2015August 18, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

Odd fact: when going through previous posts for posts about teaching to possibly include in Searching for Malumba, I discovered something interesting: I have not talked about the first day of school on most of the first days of school since I’ve been blogging.

Possibly because I get home and I am too tired to qualify as a living thing. So, the short version: my homeroom girls are nice. Scary nice. Like, “I don’t believe you, and we’ll see what I think of you in a week” nice. My afternoon kids… well, let’s just say that class is still in flux, because that’s where my special education kids are going to end up and we’ve not finalized class lists yet. “In flux” sounds like a fair way to put it.

So… what is that? Cautiously optimistic? I’ll go with cautiously optimistic.

Posts of the Year: 2014

On December 15, 2014December 14, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Reviews8 Comments

2014 Despite the weather today– fifty freaking degrees! Sweatshirt weather!– it’s probably about time to start doing some retrospective posts on 2014, and I figure I’ll start with Posts of the Year, since it doesn’t seem super likely that anything will be changing positions between now and January 1st. Here is last year’s edition; the rule for this year was that you had to be acquire the traffic after last year’s list to count for this one. There are a couple of posts that would be on both lists, namely In Which I Hurt Myself and Acquire Toys and The 10 SF/(mostly) F Works that Meant the Most to Me, but this post is all stuff that’s new since I wrote the last one.

Also, we’re doing a top 11, not a top 10.

MOAR BUTTZ, a tale told with pictorial accompaniment: January 16, 272 hits. This post is why this is a top 11; this is probably my favorite post of the entire year– I spent the entire time during the events this describes planning the blog post, and I was literally laughing myself to tears while I was writing it. I love this post.
In which I am still a bad student (pt. 2 of 3): August 2, 2013, 286 hits. This one’s interesting, and I had to think hard about whether to include it– because technically I wrote it in 2013, but it didn’t catch on until 2014. This is also the sole teacher post on the list, and is part of a three-part series on determining teacher quality. It’s one of my more thinky pieces.
Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: Super Why: March 6, 299 hits. True fact: at the time I wrote this, I was unaware that future seasons of Super Why actually added a talking dog to the cast. I have nearly revisited this post on any number of occasions, because the talking dog took a show I already hated and catapulted it somewhere… else. Somewhere darker. “Hate” isn’t even the word anymore.
In which my kid is weird as hell: October 13, 316 hits. There are a fair number of posts on this list that are generated somehow by my son; this one details his obsession with kicking hats that took over his life around Halloween. It’s fun.
And none could say they were surprised: on #Ferguson: November 25, 331 hits. I’m very gratified that this post has gotten the attention that it has. It’s the newest post on the list, too. I’m rarely completely serious around here; this is one of those times.
On “awareness,” with swearing: May 9, 367 hits. I have a theory that the angrier I am and the more times I use the F-word in a post, the more popular the post is destined to be. This one’s a little… intemperate. It’s about slacktivism!
Creepy Children’s Programming Review: Color Crew: February 16, 480 hits. The other thing that I need to do a lot to generate traffic? Review stuff I don’t like, as you’ll see below. I don’t dislike Color Crew as much as I dislike Super Why, although it’s a much, much weirder show. Interesting fact: all four CCPR posts (the other two are Peg + Cat and Curious George) are in my all-time top 20.
The Top 10 new (*) books I read in 2013: December 17, 2013, 577 hits. This is another one that was technically written in 2013 but was written after the top 10 posts list, and therefore it got nearly all of its traffic in 2014. The sequel to this is coming soon; right now my shortlist for my top 10 is 16 books long. That’s too many.
This one has some bad words in it: September 5, 2013, 852 hits. The third and final 2013-blew-up-in-2014 post; I got this one linked prominently in the comment thread on a Scalzi post, and it got a lot of attention. I’m not entirely sure it deserves to be here; it just happened to have a section that was perfectly relevant to the conversation going on over at his place, so I linked and got lucky.
Think before you post: February 16, 930 hits. This post combines lots of swearing and anger with a direct attack on a common Facebook meme, and ended up with a pretty high number of Facebook likes for one of my posts. It got linked all over the place and still picks up little surges of hits every now and again.
SNOWPIERCER: I hated, hated, hated, hated, HATED this movie.: August 5, three goddamn thousand three hundred and seventy-one hits. And, surprising absolutely no one, number one with a bullet, the goddamn SNOWPIERCER review. I am actually tired of this post, if I’m being honest. I hated this movie, although I enjoyed reviewing it, I haven’t come around to liking it since I reviewed it, and this post appears to have become home base for everyone on the Internet who sees this terrible, stupid little movie, wonders why it got such great reviews, and goes onto Google to search for like-minded individuals. Its popularity blows away anything else I’ve ever written– note that this is one of the newer posts on the list– and it’s still a rare day that it isn’t my most popular post of the day. I finally had to close the comments on it last week; people were starting to fight with each other and I am heartily tired of monitoring it. Stupid post. Stupid movie.

Anyway, that’s it: my 11 most high-traffic posts of 2014. I will have to come up with new rules next year to disqualify the Snowpiercer post, as I’m sure that it will still be tops on the list. It’ll be interesting to see what’s blown up in the meantime.

Anything that ought to be on here? Feel free to wander through the archives all day. 🙂

Posts of the Year: 2013

On December 14, 2013December 14, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Writing2 Comments

Being a bit presumptuous in assuming I’ll still be here in a year, but hey: goals.

As of right now infinitefreetime.com has 234 posts. The following are my ten most popular/high-traffic posts for 2013; in other words, for the entire lifespan of the blog. Some of them are well-written and/or interesting and/or clever and/or funny. Some of them confuse the hell out of me.

(And ten is a good number to have chosen, because after ten we start getting lots and lots of ties. These stood out.)

In Which This Isn’t Quite What it Looks Like (part 1 of 3): July 5. Which happens to be my birthday. I’m glad at least one Serious Post made the list; this post, and the two that follow it, go into some detail as to how I think educators, schools, and students should be evaluated in the age of “accountability” and corporate reform. You really actually should read this.
Because God Forbid I Don’t Double-Post on Friday: November 8. Other than the picture being entertaining, I have no idea.
WHERE THE HELL IS MY STAPLER: September 10. I actually honestly wish this one wasn’t on the list, and it still gets several hits a week– in fact, pretty much all of these posts are still getting a few hits a week, and the top several are still getting hits every day. I was in an incredibly bad mood and had had an immensely bad day when I wrote this; I wish I hadn’t. But it’s on the list nonetheless.
In which something entirely unexpected happens!: October 18. This, and the post that immediately preceded it, I’m in this job for the paperwork, are both Teacher Posts, and both on the “serious” end of the spectrum. This one is also one of my ragier ones but unlike “Stapler” a minute ago I’m still willing to own it. I was at least trying for funny; hopefully I didn’t miss by too much.
Don’t read this if you respect me: September 20. In accordance with prophecy, one of my most popular posts; I have a misadventure with a new pet.
In which I fail at baking again: July 17. One of the popular “I screw up; it entertains you” series; I try to make ~~an apple pancake~~ cookies. I, well… I still do not end up with an apple pancake.
I’d part with my childhood but no one wants it: September 12. The popularity of this one, which is basically just me whining about being too much of a nerd, fascinates me. I thought of it mostly as a throwaway post when I wrote it, because I hadn’t had any better ideas. Still haven’t sorted the damn books. Gotta get to that this weekend.
In which TMI for serious: October 14. Another post that I knew would be popular from the jump because it involved me humiliating myself. I am a vegetarian for a week. There are… consequences.
In which I hurt myself and acquire toys: November 9. This post has sixty-seven more views than #3. It’s had three today! I have no idea why. It’s a mild Facebook rant. Also I brag about buying housewares. I don’t get it. It’s also the newest post on the list, which makes its popularity even more bewildering.
The 10 SF/(mostly) F works that Meant the Most to Me: October 15. This post has (whoa, weird) 67 more views than #2 does, which means it has 134 more views than the third most popular post. 250 total. It still gets multiple hits every single day and currently has 30 Likes and fifteen comments. I’m convinced it’s directly responsible for a dozen or so followers as well. Now, this makes me happy, of course, but I have to admit I do sorta wish my most popular post wasn’t directly cribbed from John Scalzi, especially if it’s gonna be number one with a bullet the way this one is.

And there you have it: my ten most popular posts for 2013. Go ahead, troll the archives: anything that should have been up here?

EDIT: Now that I’ve said that? I’m putting “On fathering” (June 16) on here. Call it honorable mention; the site wasn’t very old when I wrote it so most of you have never noticed it but it’s probably my favorite piece that I’ve written for the site. So now it’s eleven. Pbbbt.