Top 5 Posts in 2015

This felt like a good year on the Irresistibly Fish blog.

Every year WordPress sends out a Year in Review link that gives some of the stats of the year so you can see how you’ve done and this year their opening comment was this:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 120,000times in 2015. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see it.

Gazing back on a [mostly] good year.

TOP 5 POSTS in 2015

The five posts which were the most popular in terms of being read, shared and commented on this year [and probably no accident that my favourite section on the blog – The Taboo Topics – is where three of them came from] were the following:

[5] Taboo Topics: Transracial Adoption – Meet Abi and Babygirl

Abi graciously shared with us all a short but powerful glimpse into the life of a family that has adopted across race. Managing to weave pictures of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly [mostly in terms of other peoples’ actions and responses], Abi tugged at our heart strings while also educating us a little bit along the way. This series, and in particular this blog post, was very well received.

[4] Let’s compare fire with fires. [Some guest thoughts by Craig Stewart from the Warehouse]

After a huge fire swept through some of the more affluent parts of Cape Town and there was a HUGE [what felt to me disproportionate] response on social media and beyond i shared some thoughts about our responses to the different fires that happen n our city. Craig, who has a real gift with the words, wrote this piece for me which helped provide some much needed perspective and it really resonated with a lot of you.

[3] Taboo Topics: Addiction – meet Dave Luis

Dave is one of my “imaginary Facebook friends” who i have yet to meet in real life. Connected via a mutual friend and an act of service he did for me in delivering a gift someone had brought back from Americaland, we have laughed together, cried together, Tandem blog posted together and yet still not met in real life. But i have enjoyed or been moved by a number of his words as he shares really openly and honestly on his blog about some of his life struggles and achievements. This piece he shared with us on his addiction was one of the most powerful and popular pieces on my blog and worth a read if you haven’t yet.

[2] The breast of intentions: a response to the #ChristianCleavage tag

Hard to know when you have the word ‘breast’ in a blog post title how many people who arrived there may have accidently stumbled upon this particular post while looking for something else, but sometimes that is the craftiness behind a good blog title. Whatever the reasons, this post from way back in January, was the second most popular post of the year.

The Hashtag #ChristianCleavage started trending on the Twitterer and seemed like a great opportunity to share some thoughts, trying to capture the motivations of people on both sides of the debate and hopefully give us all something to think about.

Bringing us to the number one post on my blog this year and the realisation that i was actually only responsible for writing one of the top 5 blog posts this year, which is why i will keep insisting that guest posters continue to contribute to my blog… and HUGE THANKX to all of you who have in different ways… this blog definitely feels like a community thing…

[1] Taboo Topics: Parents of Young Children – Meet Terran and Julie [and their 5!] 

One of the Taboo Topics on my blog is written from the perspective of parents of young children when it hasn’t been particularly easy. i saw this status update from my friend Terran before he had a blog which he does now and he gave me permission to post it as a Taboo Topic piece and it exploded – busiest day of the year, over 1000 shares across Facebook and just a lot of resonation with many parents, even those who don’t have quite so many children as the Williamses…

WHICH WAS YOUR FAVOURITE?

So there you have it – those are the pieces the crowds resonated with, but what about you? Was there a particular blog post or series that caught your attention?

Perhaps it was one of the many pieces that were written on the topic of Race? Or some of my reflections on the local church?

Maybe you hung around for the more lighthearted stuff like Classic Poems being shouted at you in a bad germanesque accent by Erik with a K? Or you were someone on the Twitterer who got excited by and involved in the Hashtagging games that were a feature of 2015?

Or maybe it was one of the poems i got back into writing in 2015 and in particular the Micropoetry [really short poems with a punch] that i dabbled with thanks to my other “imaginary” Twitterer friend, Dante.

If you didn’t get a chance to check out one of the top five or some of these others, please grab a few moments now and have a catch up. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed or made Irresistibly Fish a more regular hangout.

Looking to have greater times in 2016 and hope some of you will continue to write with me…

[To see the Top Ten posts i picked as some of my favourites this year, click here]