In 2022 I took the road less travelled by – And it was different and better

Seven Circumstances toddled along nicely this year, according to the site stats:

Year	Views	Visitors	Total
2012 The birth of a completely obscure blog	259	11	270 Who could’a thunk that it would end up where it did?
2020	87,490	64,929	152,419
2021	149,547	114,725	264,272 “Look, Ma, no hands!” All grown up and suitably disreputable.
2022 (@Dec. 27, 2022) Ten years of blogging on Seven Circumstances	166,642	129,770	296,412 (12% up) Still obscure and independent.

Thank you, Dear Readers

The knowledge that there are real folks out there who do read the stuff I write on this blog, is both a concern to me and a comfort. I catch myself always editing out my worst comments and irrational rants before I press “publish”, because I think that nasty things don’t need to be said. The world is enough of a bad, sad place as it is. Best not to pass on the misery. On the other hand, I know that out there are people who read my words and, by doing that, have heard my voice. That’s a comfort. I’m think we all want that – otherwise, one might just as well fade away and disappear, like that tree in the forest that falls over but there’s no-one to hear it make a sound. So thank you, folks, for reading and commenting. I appreciate it.

A change of pursuits in 2022

In 2022, I continued to run our consulting business, Red Pennant Communications, with my Geologist husband. The world might be changing but the things in the crust of the earth stay the same, and his services are always in demand.

However, for me, my professional career has ended. So, I decided, in the words of Robert Frost, in his poem, The Road Not Taken, that “…Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” This less travelled road is the one on which I focus on music.

I decided to start winding down Seven Circumstances, and instead spent my time learning the ins and outs of publishing the music that I’ve written and produced. That turned into a major undertaking. Though I learned, by doing it, what music publishing, distribution, sales and promotion entails, it nevertheless challenged me. It is a complicated industry, legally convoluted, technically challenging and everything requires precision in every detail. However, so far I’ve managed to build profiles on three platforms: my blog, SoundCloud and Vimeo. (Also BandCamp, but that has not gone so well.)

Most important is that I learned the terminology that is used, and I got a lot better at composing music. That’s a whole new language and a whole new world.

What happened on Seven Circumstances

I published 44 posts, roughly one per fortnight. The rule for blogging is that, the more you publish, the more views and visitors you get, and vice versa. The growth in usage was less this year than in the prior years, but to my surprise the graph did go up despite the fact that this blog is specialized and obscure, and that I make no effort at all to promote the contents on other platforms. (I quit GoodReads a long time ago.)

The most-viewed posts of 2022 were:

• The Lincoln Highway, by Amore Towles (5,508 views)
• Nothing Comes From Nothing (4,161 views)
• Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir (2,547 views)

As always, the pages and posts that explain poetry were the ones people accessed most. It seems that poetry still puzzles people, and that I’m not the only one who tries to make sense of it.

I remain, as ever, a Bear of Little Brain, who writes bits of music and little poems, and who is curious and puzzled in equal measure about literature, music, art, technology, and everything.

2022 Deep Dives from a Bear of Little Brain Who Is Still Puzzled

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