2016 Wrap-Up!

Its the last day of 2016 and man, I’m starting to feel slightly pampered from previous years and the year-end reports that WordPress used to produce for the blogs. Are you missing that? Doesn’t it just give a sense of love and awesome? Still, 2016 has been cool. While my stats did drop from the previous year in general, I’ve also opened up my horizon to new projects and been working on some creative additions in the background. To say that 2017 might be a little change in direction could be good. After almost 6 years of blogging (in a little over 2 weeks), I think its time to change things up just a little bit.

Today is all about looking back at 2016! We’ll talk about 2017 tomorrow! 🙂

To start with a few stats, 2016 had 61,286 views and we’re now at 2,119 followers! You all are fantastic! Thank you for joining me here!

On top of that, we reach some nice milestones for the blog like…

• Total recipes: 146
• Total book reviews: 138
• Total movie reviews: 619

This year’s top five viewed posts here was actually not published in 2016 at all but previous years:

• Book Review: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (which grabs top spot everyday)
• Arthur and the Invisibles Trilogy
• Lie with me
• Fantasia Fest 2015: Anguish
• Book Review: The Starry Starry Night

Its funny to look at this list because a lot of these are from the earlier days of blogging and the quality is just so bad compared to now, which is much better. I’ve been meaning to reread and rewrite The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes review, just because its so incredibly cringe-worthy to read now.

As for 2016 posts, the top 5 are:

• Announcement: Ultimate 80s Blogathon
• Netflix A-Z: xXx (2002)
• Netflix A-Z: Nymphomaniac Vol 1 &2 (2013)
• The VVitch (2016)
• Netflix A-Z: Kiss of the Damned (2012)

There may probably be a new blogathon in 2017 seeing the success of 2016, but more when its all decided! I’m also glad that Kiss of the Damned made it as top viewed because my binge watching of Gilmore Girls is making me love Jess aka Milo Ventimiglia and he is in that little indie film.

2016 Recaps

2016 was a year of highs and lows for blogging. The good part of that I learned how to be organize and work a little ahead of time and at least have the material ready for writing beforehand. It only took five years but I got there! I’m liking the whole system.

Game Warp Podcast was the second achievement. Starting that up over at That Moment In with my awesome cohost, Elwood Jones from Fromt he Depths of DVD Hell. Funny how one thing leads to the next and how the blogosphere and Twittersphere brings out all sorts of cool friends and projects. Game Warp Podcast is something of a dream that I’m only starting to believe is happening. Its a first step into something that I had been thinking about it and I promise that more announcements regarding gaming and whatnot that is in the brainstorming stages will be revealed. But Game Warp Podcast is one of my main focuses right now and it has really made me grow and revive a lot of the love.

We never made any formal announcements, at least I never did but That Moment In Podcast is not longer a thing. It hasn’t been for a few months. It was extremely fun while it lasted. However, if you have dropped by That Moment In lately, I have dropped by with David for short movie discussions/reviews paired up with his written review. There has only been two so far but its been fun. Check it out if you have time. Here’s one if you’d like to give it a listen for Korean thriller, The Wailing.

Unfinished Projects

As with every year, there is always things that just don’t end up getting a spot or just simply get procrastinated. One of those projects is the Classics. I took a break from reading classics last year and really just read The Little Prince and didn’t even end up wrapping up the Jane Austen from 2015 which I was just missing Northanger Abbey. I do plan on picking that up in 2017 as I have some nice books lined up sitting in my Kindle longing for me to read it.

Netflix A-Z is currently in the progress of wrapping up its current round focused on indie genre films for the most part. We’re at T. So we’ll wrap that up in early 2017. And I’ll probably restructure it a little as I will for the movie reviews section.

Other than that, Baking Through Disney started out in the year pretty well until I got stuck on Fantasia and what to bake. I’m not giving up on the project though. I’ll be setting solid goals for 2017 that I’ll talk about soon.

Overall…

2016 was a bit of a mixed bag from my motivation to wanting to change where it was going to just in general everything. I did have a great time being more organized and podcasting more and learning new things. I think that is the main thing for me that I’ve learned over the course of 2016, blogging is the opportunity to explore new things and learn new skills. I love making videos and editing and all the work that goes with it. I’m embracing a different side of approaching it and also heading out to events and unboxing and really trying out new things. Events will become a much more frequent thing here. I’m starting to jump into what I want tomorrow’s post to be for the 2017 look ahead.

What I do want to say other than the stats and endless babble going on is…

HAPPY NEW YEAR! ALL THE BEST IN 2017!
THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE AND READING THIS AND JOINING ME ON THIS WONDERFUL BLOGGING JOURNEY!