happy 2nd birthday, change therapy!

happy second birthday ooops! i totally forgot my birthday – i mean, my blog birthday. today, december 19, it’s been two years that i’ve been writing on this blog. so i decided to go back to my 1st birthday post and rewrite it, in the light of the last 366 days.

it’s been an interesting 132,000 words to write (that’s how many words i estimate have accumulated here in the last year – about 24,000 more than last year)

what was the most surprising thing? i hadn’t anticipated i would merge my web site with my blog. from a technical point of view, that was a good thing. however, the “pages” section of this site (the old static web site) still feels a bit orphaned and static.

participating in some great memes and group writing projects has been a real boon. i got to know a lot of people through them. just to name a few examples, there is priscilla palmer’s personal development blog list, the W list, InspirationBit’s group writing project on – well, inspiration, and the fabulous 6-word project at middlezonemusings.

i still haven’t run out of topics – in fact, i have more than i can handle. sometimes i wonder whether i’m too general. but what can i say, i’m actually quite happy with the range of topics. here are the topics i was thinking about discussing on my last birthday post:

there’s an entry about a cognitive psychologist who has done research on our ancestors’ thinking – how people ten thousands of years ago used their brains. a book review about the supposed inherent violence of men. thoughts on men and obesity. on the difference between faith and hope.

i did write about the first topic – still love that image of the cavewoman, isn’t it great?

and i see that i still haven’t written a review of neil boyd’s book the beast within. i should do that soon – even more than a year after reading it, the book still stands out as an important contribution to both psychology and sociology.

men and obesity? not a thing. get on it, isabella! especially since nancy asked me to write more on overeating.

difference between faith and hope? meh. doesn’t sound very interesting right now (although who knows, maybe you’ll see me eat my words next month.)

other things i might write about are sam harris’ neurology paper on “primitive” beliefs and more on these topics: what and how to eat when recovering from anorexia, on quitting smoking, creative people, and on counselling theory, especially countertransference.

last year, i said i was happy how comments and conversations had started to happen and “if i would have been a little more confrontational, they probably would have happened faster.” there was a tiny bit of confrontation here and there, on the first article on the taser death here in vancouver, for example. but really, i’m not much into confrontation.

and stats – just like last year, an article on anorexia and sex had the most page views. the post on st. augustine, darwin, plato and freud had people glued to the monitor for the longest time, and one of the understanding “i don’t know” articles had the best exit rate (i.e. people didn’t get fed up with reading my blog after reading that post). it’s also nice to report that on december 19, 2007 i had six times more traffic than on december 19, 2006!

these were the things on my wish list for the blog last year

have some guest columnists
do more memes
have some sort of meaningful collaboration with other bloggers
have more conversations through comments – my goal is to have at least as many comments as posts by the end of february

i’m happy to report that all of it happened.

for the coming year, i’d like to

explore the possibility of monetizing the blog
do at least one big group writing project
get that #$&(@$ do follow plugin working
explore more interaction with readers – more comments but also more … what? social media type interactions? let’s see.

and again i’ll ask you, readers: what would you like to see more of, less of?

… following up on InspirationBit’s suggestion, this post became part of the blogging goals group writing project on daily blog tips. here is the list of people who participated in it.

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