Looking back at 2024 from the bloghouse

I want to close out 2024 with a look back at the year on my blog.

You see, one of the rewards and pleasures of blogging is the way it expresses and illuminates emerging ideas. A blogger might have plans for what they’d like to do with their site over time, but life often intervenes. New topics appear. The process of writing yields emergent themes. Over time some unexpected patterns become evident.

So let me look back on the blog over the past twelve months. I’ll try to be objective.

Subjectively, I thought I wrote a lot about climate change and politics, probably one post per week.

Objectively… according to site analytics, I published 68 posts, or a little more than one per week, about every five days. I had been hoping for two per week, but the year was much busier than expected.

The posts which received the most attention (as in >1,000 views each) were, in descending order of clicks:

1. On JD Vance and going after higher education
2. One post on academic cuts, mergers, and closures (part of a lamentable series)
3. One of several posts on what a second Trump administration might mean for higher education
4. Another academic cut/merger/closure post
5. Starting the Project 2025 online reading
6. Yet another academic cut/merger/closure post