What gets measured gets done. Or is that what gets measured get managed? In any case, I’m a big proponent of gamifying a lot of what I do. As nerdy as it may sound, I actually enjoy tracking things and playing around with the metrics of it all. To that end, just as I did with the year in review last year, I’m doing it again as I look back at 2023. Let’s take a look.

Content I Created in 2023

In some form or another, I’ve been creating and publishing content on the Internet for over two decades. The specifics have changed over the years, understandably, but I anticipate I’ll continue sharing my thoughts and glimpses into my life online for many more years to come.

12 Blog Posts Written

Halfway through last year, I questioned whether blogging is now dead. In 2022, I wrote and published a total of 42 blog posts here on Beyond the Rhetoric. That’s less than half the number I wrote the year before. Well, the blog continued with this trend in 2023 with just 12 posts this year. I feel like I still have a lot to say but it’s gotten harder to find the time and I share more “in the moment” via social media.

Based on page views as reported by Google Analytics, the five most-read blog posts published in 2023 are:

156 Instagram Reels

While I’ve been blogging less, I’ve been creating more and more short-form videos. In particular, I created and shared 156 Reels on Instagram in 2023. That’s more than a 50 percent increase over the 94 Instagram Reels I did in 2022. Many of these are “slice of life” type moments, as well as foodie posts, dad jokes, and branded collaborations.

Based on the number of accounts reached, the most popular Reels in 2023 are:

4 YouTube Videos

The shift to more short-form videos continues to play out on my YouTube channel too. I cross-post many of my Instagram Reels as YouTube Shorts, including the collection of funny dad jokes. Not counting the YouTube Shorts, I only uploaded four longer-form YouTube videos in 2023, compared to five in 2022. Of the four, three relate to our #5DadsGoWild trip to the Oregon Coast, including this tour of the Adrift Hotel in Long Beach, Washington:

366 Articles Written

In 2022, I spent most of my “working time” at my “day job.” After they laid me off in January, I shifted my time, attention, and energy back toward my freelance writing business. Most of what I’ve done in 2023 was on a ghostwriting basis, so I’m not at liberty to share them, but here are a few highlights. I’m particularly proud of the two pieces I wrote for POPSUGAR, a Vox Media property.

Content I Consumed in 2023

Inspiration can come from all sorts of places. Along with the stuff I made, here are a few highlights from stuff I consumed too.

48 Books Read

Even though I didn’t make reading much of a priority in 2023, I somehow ended up reading 48 books this year. That’s up from the 45 books I read in 2022 and well past the soft goal of 36 books I had set for my 2023 Goodreads Reading Challenge. You can chalk some of that up to circumstance, in trying to cut back on my kids’ screen time. Some of my favorite books this year include:

63 Movies Watched

Okay, so the “cutting back on screen time” thing wasn’t especially successful. I watched 38 movies in 2022, but I bumped that number to 63 movies in 2023, representing a 63 percent increase! Several of these were rewatches, introducing the kids to classics like Scott Pilgrim and Elf. Not including rewatches, some of my favorite movies in 2023 were:

An Ongoing Work in Progress

Goals and numbers are curious things. Sometimes, when you pay less attention to something, you end up doing it more. Like watching movies and reading books, in this case. It also held true for another goal I had originally set for myself for 2022. I wanted to log a total of three million steps. In 2022, I came up well short at 2.6 million, even lower than the 2.8 million I had logged in the two years prior.

But maybe because I had added a “side quest” goal for 2023 to lose 20 pounds (which I failed), I managed to get in over three million steps this year. I broke the threshold sometime over the Christmas holiday weekend. Go figure. With just a few days left in 2023, I’ll be taking some time to ponder on what goals I should set for 2024. They say that comparison is the thief of joy, but maybe it’s only via comparison with your past self that you can grow and move forward. It’s a work in progress.

Do you have any goals for next year?

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Photo credit: Stephen Fung / Instagram