Sixteen years of blogging and still not finished yet!

This is the third article to highlight an anniversary for this blog, which was launched on September 9th 2009.

The first one marks the major milestone of the tenth anniversary. 

The second milestone article was published on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary.

I now think it best to mark the occasion with annual summaries.

I still monitor the Blogger Stats as, although I produce articles mainly for my own benefit, it is fascinating to see what people are reading - and from which countries. There have been some changes since my previous report.

Three articles about Benjamin Disraeli now appear in the top 20 All-Time statistics; one of them has even moved into the list of 10 most Popular Posts. This is unexpected, but it is good to see that Disraeli is still a person of interest.

I have no idea why the article about Diana Wynne Jones's witch Gwendolen Chant should have recently slipped into the top 20 posts!

I have managed to keep to my commitment to produce two posts per month. 

I still hope to find enough material for at least another year's worth of articles, even though my debts to certain authors and books in the form of tribute posts are well on the way to being paid off and I seem to have exhausted many relevant topics.

The cupboard is by no means bare: I have a list of leads and ideas for articles, and I plan to work through them for as long as the inclination to produce articles lasts and I still get some satisfaction from working on and publishing them. 

I will also need some more inspiration from Odin!

Fifteen years of blogging and still a little more to come

As mentioned in the article that marks the tenth anniversary of this blog, the very first post is dated September 9th 2009, the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the century.

It is worth repeating that the number nine is associated with magic and with Odin, or Woden, the seeker after knowledge and wisdom who is associated with magic and mystery and is said to inspire creativity.

Another five years have passed; today is the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of this blog, and once again it is time to take stock.

A little more about the viewing figures

In the article about the mystery of the most popular posts, I said that I monitor the blog statistics. This is just for interest's sake: I am not influenced by these figures when deciding what to write about. 

I have since seen a huge increase in the number of views for the article about Princess Margaret's death. I found that this happened just after one of the TV programmes that dramatise the royal family had featured her. People had been searching online for more information and found my article!

I was very surprised to see the first article about Madeleine L'Engle's Zachary Grey or Gray suddenly appear in the top ten list. I discovered that this is a case of mistaken identity: there are a few real-life Zachary Greys and Grays of interest!  

While it is understandable why the greatest number of views will always come from the US, it is still a mystery why this blog gets more readers from Germany than from the UK.

How many more articles will there be in the future? 

I have been mining the past for inspiration for many years now, and the returns have been slowly and steadily diminishing.

The mystery of the most popular posts

Blogger has some features that provide useful information to blog owners and blog readers.

One of these is the Popular Posts widget. I have configured it to display thumbnails of the top ten posts in descending order of the number of all-time views that they have had.

I monitor the Popular Posts to check for changes: some entries move up, some move down, some appear, some disappear and some of the latter group re-appear. 

It will obviously take a while before the more recent posts build up enough views to qualify for inclusion; I would expect the list to consist of the oldest posts, but it contains some relative newcomers.

The top two positions have always been held by the article about Princess Margaret and the one about Maria Callas and the Duchess of Windsor. This is not really surprising: royals and celebrities are of interest to a great many people.

It is completely unexpected but very gratifying to see two Curse or Coincidence articles in the list: they are much more representative of this blog than the royal posts are. I do very much wonder though why the posts about the poet and scholar Kathleen Raine and the Shropshire novelist Mary Webb have made it into the top ten rather then the one about the Brontë family.

I have been wondering for years why the article on Aryan Supremacy has always been popular enough to qualify! 

The article about Rudyard Kipling's New Year Resolutions has been moving steadily upwards and is currently in sixth position. This seems strange to me: it is not one of the oldest posts, and I would not have expected it to be anything like so popular. 

The article about Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and the Isle of Wight appeared in the list for the first time recently. It is another mystery why this particular article should have suddenly attracted so many readers.

The two Kipling articles have risen through the ranks at the expense of Nicholas Stuart Gray's named witches; all three have made the top ten in the past, but currently only one remains. 

Ten years of blogging and still going strong

The first article in the archives of this blog is dated September 9th 2009, the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the century.

Nine is an important number in Norse mythology; it is associated with magic and Odin, or Woden, the seeker after knowledge and wisdom who is associated with magic and mystery.

By coincidence, September 9th 2009 was a Wednesday! 

This date was not a deliberate choice at the time. I spent a few days setting up the infrastructure and creating some content, and the day I was ready to launch the blog and publish the first article just happened to be a significant date. 

Although it was accidental, the Odin connection is actually very appropriate. 

Odin, the Allfather from Norse mythology:

I started the Unseen Influences blog mainly for my own benefit. I wanted to log unusual experiences and strange coincidences and make a record of my ideas about a variety of topics. I wanted to produce the sort of interesting, inspiring, illuminating and useful material that I like to read. 

Researching, making connections and getting things down in writing all have a beneficial effect so, just like L. M. Montgomery’s Emily, I would still do them even if no one ever saw the results.

I knew that a huge majority of people would not find anything of interest to them in my articles and wouldn’t much care for the style of writing either, but I did hope however that a few people, proactive researchers with a mindset, interests and outlook similar to mine and people who have had similar experiences with unseen influences, might find the ideas, insights, information, and suggestions on here helpful. 

I also thought that the articles might introduce a few people to books, authors and ideas that they might otherwise have overlooked.

I started the proceedings by producing an explanation of the background to and purpose of the Unseen Influences blog.

The first article is an introduction to the way that Unseen forces can affect our lives.

Ten years have passed and the blog is still going strong. 

I have had many more readers than I ever expected. 

People from all over the world are finding their way here, and I don’t think that they are all bots! For some reason, there are more readers from the US and Germany than there are from the UK.

I have even had some visits from a plagiarism scanner, so perhaps someone is copying my content!

There are gaps in the earlier years for times when I was very busy elsewhere, but output has increased in recent years and there is still no end in sight. 

I would certainly stop, for the duration at least, if I had no inclination to write or no inspiration or ideas for articles, but there is no sign of that yet. The opposite is true - at least for now - in that the more articles I produce the more ideas I get for new ones.

So, there may be more to come about energy vampires, witches, writers, books that I like, cults, psychological black magic, amazing coincidences and anything else that inspires commentary. 

There are still many connections to be made and independent confirmation of my ideas to be discovered and described.