Two years ago, I analyzed my blog posts. Back then, popularity on this site was dictated by 1) sharing this blog on my social media (Facebook, Gmail) 2) curiosity about the identity of a guest poster who revealed something intimate 3) interaction with a blogging forum.

Since then, things have changed. Shall we analyze?

7) 8 things I have to say about debate – READ

This one resonates with friends, and friends of friends because we all join the activity for the educational benefits, but we stay and prioritize the activity because of all of the amazing individuals that we meet. On a day to day basis, we don’t recognize its impact on our lives, but looking back, especially from the perspective of a “retiree,” it’s amazing when you realize how much you’ve changed because of it.

If you are ever doubting your abilities, debaters, just look back at yourselves a few years ago and look at the visible progress that we’ve made. I find that one of the largest factors that makes the activity so satisfying is the progress that you make.

6) About Catherine – READ

People want to know who I am. They see the name and they see my picture, but they want to know more than that. It’s natural. An audience loves a narrator with a personality, a story with which they can relate. Since the start of this blog, I’ve posted increasingly personal articles.

As people read along, they see the course that my life has taken over these past few years.

My About page is a clear, concise page that reveals roughly what I’m all about.

I want a place to express my opinions in a mature, yet liberated way. The blog will be mine. Here, you can find me writing as freely as I’d like, but being held accountable by the identity that I’ve created here on the interwebs.

5) Guest Post: So, What’s YOLO? – READ

S/O to my friend Josh, who occasionally writes deep, meaningful shit on his blog Fleeting Thoughts. He took a shallow, empty phrase thrown around by society and turned it into something that made me reconsider what I meant when I #yolo.

Google searches for “yolo” or “yolo gif” often lead people to click on this article. Haha!

YOLO is the ability to realize that, because we live once, we need to appreciate it. I won’t say that your choices are necessarily right or wrong: The only thing I can say is that once you make your choice, stick with it, cause that’s all you can do.

4) A Letter To My Sister on Her First Day Of High School – READ

People search for articles like these a lot; my guess is that teachers ask students this question, and students turn to the internet for inspiration while they write what is supposed to be a personal, individual article.

But it’s cool. It means more people know about my relationship with my sister.

Every year, when I look at her pictures and see how she’s gotten more slender, more mature, more womanly, it makes me so sad. I get so disturbed by the loss of innocence, especially since I’m moderately protective of my sister and hate to see her get hurt.

I just don’t want her to make the same mistakes that I have made. So I wrote this post, and another one a year later, containing everything I have to say to someone who is starting their sophomore year of high school.

You don’t have to find out your passion. You don’t need to decide what you’re going to be. High school is just the very beginning (a very painful and miserable beginning) of a path of stones that will lead you through life. Step completely and heavily and confidently onto the first stone.

3) Lack of dialogue – READ

This one surprised me. I remember writing it on the pages of my agenda while I was sitting in APUSH last year. We were doing silent research and I was itching to write about something other than Andrew Jackson.

I looked around the room at each of my peers and formed some sort of story, veering away from the personal, diary-like writing to which I had become accustomed.

If these individual students knew I had created a story that played on their personalities, they would be so creeped out. They don’t know yet; I don’t intend for them to find out anytime soon.

I posted it on a whim one weekend during a debate tournament, and was flabbergasted at how I was being bombarded with hits. It had made it to WordPress’s Freshly Pressed page! That was exciting.

It blew up. It was more than my amateurish blog could handle.

Sitting in class, I hear the teach say do silent work; you can use headphones if you’d like. I pull them on and work silently for a few. But silence is curiosity suppressed and I look up.

Across the room, an honorable boy uncaps his water bottle, bringing it nonchalantly, involuntarily to his lips. No one looks up.

A gurgle, and he chokes, water dribbling prematurely down the sides of his throat. He sputters a little, but no one looks at him with alarm because we’ve all been there, we don’t give a rat’s ass about his momentary suffering.

She watches him out of the corner of her eye. A twisted half-smile creeps onto her face. Inside, she is laughing at his suffering.

2) 7 Reasons Why We Love Summer

People google this! They can’t understand just why they are attracted to summer. They understand the overall feeling and aura that this season projects, but can’t articulate it in words. So I did it for them. Twice.

< Related: 5 More Reasons to Love Summer >

Also, people just love list articles. Such clear-cut information presented in a concise manner.

They’re called summer “flings” for a reason; when the summer ends and Labor Day approaches, you take that makeshift relationship and FLING it out the window!

1) English is My Favorite Subject – READ

I think people also drift to the internet to help them out with writing prompts. Teachers ask students to write about their favorite subjects all the time. Google searches like “why is English best subject” and “English best high school class” have led people to my humble blog, and now it’s been read thousands of times.

When analyzing how the posts on this blog are read, it is important to consider the concept of stock v. flow:

There’s an idea about the perfect amount of stock vs. flow a blog should have, stock being the posts that are timeless and people find through internet searches and whatnot, and the flow being the new things you write that are discovered through news feeds in real time.

The smart thing to do is to incorporate your stock posts into your flow posts, aka update your perspective. That will leave you with a delicate balance, what we all strive for. – Austin Kleon

Looks like this stock post has made its way to the top!

I am, and have been passionate about English for years, and I guess it may have shown through in my post.

Free writes are damn powerful; they actually provoke personal thought. Most of the time, we write with the expectation that our words will be read by other eyes, but free writes are different. We’ve been assured that our words are for our eyes only, and time is allotted every so often, cultivating a personal writing style that shifts through the years.

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